[AtLast]

Originally Posted by Metropolis

Ok... I think I need to get rid of some well worn baggage and I'm just going to dump it here apparently.

For years I identified outwardly as Female ID Butch, and though I tried to be this I always had a wince reaction when I said it... and looking back in that feeling I was naggingly compelled every time (and I did 99% of the time) to follow with a "just to add" disclaimer that to me it only meant "being female bodied" (seriously I bet I've said that 100 times).

The few times I tried to identify with being a "woman" the wince was tripled, and again pretty much every time came with even longer disclaimers like "to me it means adult female"... "it doesn't mean... blah blah blah".... never felt like enough disclaimers, and definitely contradicting my whole point with them anyway I'm sure.

I knew I was doing it and knew it felt wrong, but really I wouldn't let go of it (the "identity"). Though through the years I'd many times discussed being GQ/TG/3G whatever, when I finally did start a thread like a year ago about not being of a binary gender and being a 3rdG and not ID'ing as female it felt like peaceful truth, even know it felt like having to suck up everything I ever said about my "ID" it didn't matter because it was right.

I did get fairly "worked over" by several friends privately who felt I wasn't seeing all a woman could be, but I was seeing that concept... just for me it wasn't applicable and really had ironically been a stumbling block in the first place. Hell it was what I kept trying to tell myself for years... "Oh you're just having trouble seeing all you can be as a woman/female" and using that as an excuse for not feeling like one, and kept me from having to face my own nagging doubts (maybe internal transphobia).

And... a while after some more internal stubbornness and bullshittery to myself started me slowly back-peddling again away from 3rdG/etc... stupid yep... really I don't know why but it had been a struggle for me to absorb.

Then I kind of got knocked into stopping the bullshitting myself. In starting a thread for Female and Women Butches, pushing OP submit button and immediately it just felt like all those "winces" swelled up ten times their size and punched me in the gut. And every post after, though I believed in "the cause" it felt like posing. Just like the veneer got too heavy and dropped... hell I had trouble sleeping. It wasn't any sudden revelation but more an internal "jeezus cripes just stop fucking kidding yourself". So I basically just spilled the facts there and pretty sure I lost some friends (if stopping talking to me is any indicator lol) but I get it and figured as much.

I've always been really proud of who I am as a person in this context, and I still am... I'm the exact same person... just minus the veneer, and actually living my life.

Ok... back to the regularly scheduled program.

Metropolis

ETA: Because I think it's significant.. what probably appeared to some over the years as my questioning male versus masculine is probably better represented as fighting a battle within myself with my pieces of my own identity. If that makes any sense to anyone but me.

Damned if we do and damned if we don't! Oh yes, those winces, etc. And then there are the fence-sitting digs. The problem is that any kind of a fence or blockade to one's gender identity is what is really wrong. And then there is that line drawn in the sand.. and the silence from those that just can't accept that for some of us, none of this is clear-cut and I can't imagine not taking a look at male vs masculine or female vs feminine as well as TG vs 3G, Pan-genderism, etc. and female or male as other or to be determined (theory evolves).. And the core problem remains with the traditional constructs of the binary!! The constructs are the problem, not the terms.

Please just live your life without that damn veneer!