Under 30 - Coming Up and Coming Out

[AlexHunter]

For me, the realization of being gay was a part of something bigger: gender dysphoria.

I always felt, well, male. When I was two, I asked my mom when I was going to grow a penis. Throughout my childhood, I had my hair as short as my mother would let me have it, dressed like a boy, played with the boys, and liked girls. It wasn't anything complicated back then; "boy" things felt "right" and "girl" things didn't.

My parents had a collection of old movies. I loved watching them and strongly identified with the leading male characters. I wanted to be a gentleman with a pretty lady on my arm.

I had my first memorable girl crush in first grade. We went trick or treating together. I was a big, scary vampire and she wanted to dress as a princess. I told her Halloween was supposed to be scary, so the princess idea was lame. She compromised and decided to be a zombie princess, instead.

I lost my virginity (to a girl) at thirteen. I had sex with several girls throughout high school, though my first serious girlfriend was not until senior year. I also enjoyed looking up porn with guys in it (had to be man and woman, though, I didn't care for the gay stuff), which briefly made me wonder if I was attracted to them, in addition to girls. I decided to explore something sexual with a guy and quickly realized I was disgusted by it. I just had a bad case of penis envy.

I never had to "come out." Everyone assumed. I was dead set on transitioning until I was 20 (I'm 28 now). I toyed around with several labels before I found out what was comfortable for me. I didn't want to claim butch status at first because I thought it was a term for "lesbians." The butch-identified people I knew were (in hindsight) either woman ID'd or soft butch (nothing wrong with either, but it's not me.) I read about "stone butch" and went by that for awhile. I am not 100% stone anymore but that is another story. For the last few years, I've claimed butch and genderqueer.