[Converse]

For me, being male identified is more about not finding any recognition or connection within myself of anything that is normally perceived as female. When female pro-nouns are used it feels foreign, and has for as long as I can remember. But I also don’t wish to become a man. As a child I always wanted to be a boy, but not any boy that I ever knew- I actually recall one afternoon when I had been playing soccer and walking home thinking boys are really stupid I’m glad I’m not one, and then going with my mother to visit a friend who had a little girl my age- and feeling like she was speaking another language as I tried to make sense of the fact that this person actually enjoyed being in a room surrounded by sparkly things. I guess those feelings never really changed-

I was very young when my mother told me to keep away from “those freaks” that lived upstairs, and yet being in the same space as those “freaks” was all I wanted to do. Perhaps I am who I am because of the Butch-Femme couple that lived above us, lol. who knows? but for me, remaining female bodied and masculine presenting, is what feels the most natural- Butch for me becomes a gender, I don’t need to transition to another one. I use bastardized male pronouns because it is just a small attempt to ask that you try to see me not as male or female, but as Butch.