Demystifying my gender

[HelenaDarling]

I'm a lesbian bio sex female. I'm very feminine. I love everything girly and pretty and nice. Sugar and spice, the whole 9 yards. I take the traditional feminine role in my relationships and usually in sex. But I feel like I should have a penis. I love my body and my breasts and I'm usually pretty happy with my vagina, but for some reason it feels wrong that I don't have a penis. But I feel like a woman. I don't think I'm trans or anything, she/her/hers pronouns feel right to me, although sometimes I like my partners to call me “good boy” and things like that. But I don't think that genital reconstruction surgery would make me happy, since apparently FTM genital transitions don't "work" like a real penis would, and that would just make me feel more insecure and uncomfortable and wrong. I'm just confused. Have you heard of this before? Am I just kinda crazy? Is it just a phase or something? I remember being really fascinated by having a penis even when I was little and would pretend to have one but I dont know, maybe that's just a thing all little girls do? Any insight?

[Sam W]

Hi Helena,

Ultimately, the only person who can work out/ gets to define your gender is you. And, gender is a really diverse thing, so being a girly girl who likes to be called boy in bed is not somehow out of bounds. It sounds like you've done some reading on trans men, have you done any on the concepts of gender-queer identities, or even drag kings?

(as an aside, there are actually multiple types of bottom surgery that trans guys opt for, each of which has a different look and slightly different was of functioning).