Being non-binary vs. the world

[ratherslowseal]

Hello,

This one has been sitting with me and evolving for years, ever since I first thought that I could be non-binary when I was about 13 (which I suppressed and tried to fit myself into a binary trans male identity, because that was too scary for me at the time).

What is mostly sparking thinking about this again is going back on testosterone. I was on T for almost a year from June 2024 to June 2025, and I have loved and appreciated almost every change it has given me (except facial hair, which I just don't like how it feels and I don't really care for the look, even if I could grow a decent looking beard, which I don't want to). I love having more body hair and I love having a deeper voice.

I'm mostly wanting to go back on T (after having to go off for financial reasons) and wait for it to give me a bit more hair on my thighs and belly (which it did the first time, but it didn't really get to finish its job), let my voice settle a little deeper, and basically to fix my estrogen-induced erectile dysfunction (which is unfortunately temporary and it'll go back as soon as I go off of T... sad).

I've never really wanted to look unambiguously masculine, and I still don't now. My transition goals are like.... androgynous hobbit. I feel relatively comfortable in my body now, after being on T for a while in the past. At least infinitely more comfortable than pre-T. I am still quite feminine, I am relatively dainty and thin, I have long hair (which I really don't think is a decisive factor in whether or not someone reads me as "girl"/"woman", I don't think short hair would really help me and I like my hair long too much to cut it, it's a very important form of gender and self-expression for me), and I dress notably not in a super conventionally masculine style (at least here in my small midwestern town), I would describe the masculine elements of my style as more tomboyish, if that connection makes sense. Which I like. I feel like still having a relatively feminine appearance gives me the opportunity to dress masculinely without veering away from ambiguity. I have been happier with my expression and presentation now than ever before, I've found something that works for me and that I find comfortable and feel myself in.

But, then there are other people...

I've always been very non-confrontational about getting people to gender me correctly. Which I can and should work on, though it is also in part to having a really slow reaction time and not wanting to interrupt people. But, even when people do gender me correctly, sometimes I catch a slip-up which just... gives me dread. If someone has only ever known me as myself, who is to be referred to by "they" or "he", then the only reason why they would slip up is if they have to consciously "translate" their thoughts about me from "she" to "he", which just makes me feel like they don't actually see me as the gender I am. I love the dissonance between my somewhat feminine outward appearance and my internal identity, but sometimes I wonder if the way I feel most comfortable and myself has just condemned me to a life of eternal misgendering. But I can't change how I feel most comfortable.

As a non-binary person I feel pressure to, at least externally, conform to either binary gender. Either I continue my transition in such a way that would (theoretically) allow me to present as unambiguously masculine, to be read as a man (I'm a "boy" but not a "man"), which I would Not Like, or to suck it up and accept that people are just going to misgender me my whole life, which sounds fucking unbearable.

I also feel like we live in a society that simply doesn't account for androgyny outside of being a subject of ridicule, at least for people who are perceived as men. The equation for "androgyny" is often "man who presents femininely" or "woman who presents masculinely", and I don't really want either of those things exclusively. I want to take parts of both of them. But most people just don't know what to do with that, we don't live in a society where people are primed to understand and categorize presentations outside of the gender binary. It feels like a losing game.

I just don't know how people deal with this. I don't know of many non-binary adults on the internet who are similar to me in this way. I've always been a fan of Ashton Daniel (YouTube), but I don't have quite the same kinds of experiences he does, as they are more masculine and content with being perceived as a man than I (which I couldn't now even if I wanted to).

Edit: I almost forgot, but I also feel like I am at the point in my transition where top surgery could be decisive in how I continue. I DO want some things from going back on T again, but if I get where I want to be in another year, then I honestly wouldn't be on T for longer than that. But, already with my existing more male-typical body hair pattern, the most prominent object of physical dysphoria for me is my chest, with bottom dysphoria being second. A lot of my experience in figuring out my gender and how I externalize it has been unraveling my impulse to compensate for being read as a woman (generally, it is hard to say how often people perceive me as a woman vs someone with a more masculine gender, I do get "he"-d in the wild sometimes). I guess I just think that I might feel like I want a greater degree of masculinization from hormones without top surgery than with it, though I think keeping that in mind is probably protective enough.

[Heather]

I am still quite feminine, I am relatively dainty and thin, I have long hair (which I really don't think is a decisive factor in whether or not someone reads me as "girl"/"woman", I don't think short hair would really help me and I like my hair long too much to cut it, it's a very important form of gender and self-expression for me), and I dress notably not in a super conventionally masculine style (at least here in my small midwestern town), I would describe the masculine elements of my style as more tomboyish, if that connection makes sense. Which I like. I feel like still having a relatively feminine appearance gives me the opportunity to dress masculinely without veering away from ambiguity. I have been happier with my expression and presentation now than ever before, I've found something that works for me and that I find comfortable and feel myself in.

Good morning, ratherslowseal. I pulled this text out from your post to start with because the timing of your post and the timing of some exchanges I had with a cis friend at a couple dinners this weekend are kind of amazing. I present a lot like you do. I also have very similar feelings about my hair, with the added connection of my Dad, who was one of my favorite people, being the parent of mine who had long hair, and we share the same hair texture, so keeping my hair when I can has extra meaning for me. I also learned in my 20s and 30s, to my great disappointment, that I wasn't one of those people who could shave my head or cut it short and have people stop gendering me. I actually think people read my face as more feminine with short hair, and for me, who grew up around a lot of hippies and men with long hair (my current partner is also a long-haired man), the idea long hair is necessarily femme also just doesn't square with my life experience.

Personally I don't even divide these things up into masc or femme because as a solidly agender person, those terms just don't mean anything to me. I've lived in a similar culture for over half a decade, so it's not like I don't know what people tend to put in those boxes by now, but top me, they are totally arbitrary, and even the idea long hair is feminine or not breaks my brain, you know?

So, I want to share with you that this weekend, and two separate dinners, my friend -- a cishet woman -- and I got called "ladies." And I had that unfortunately experience so many of us do where, when I bristled about it, my friend decided to explain to me her ideas of why that happened, and they were as bad and as hurtful as they usually are when cis people do this, a range of theories about people not trying to say "guys" but then quickly moving into an uncomfortable semi-lecture about how I must know that I -- according to her, apparently -- present pretty femme. Now, I tried to explain some things -- before I just gave up and decided that I was 1000% not in the mood -- like that I have the kind of body that even with top surgery (which I don't want for a range of reasons, from a lifetime of surgeries that haven't been a choice for me to a lack of money to the fact that I personally am absolutely fine with my breasts, and the only reason I'd even consider it is to get people to gender me correctly, which not only seems like quite a thing to ask of me when just asking should suffice), it probably wouldn't do jack, because I'm very hourglass, and there aren't surgeries to change that, even if I wanted and could pay for them.

I absolutely hear and echo what you're saying about feeling like the way you're comfortable = having to be misgendered. How we choose to present should be for us, after all, not other people, and no one should be assigning gender to us without our express permission and without finding out from us what that is. And yet, it will happen or be seen as acceptable, sometimes, like with me this weekend, even with people who have known us as we are for decades. You're also right that this is even more complicated if and when we're not binary cis or binary trans. I'm so sorry, because you're right, it just sucks and can be really hard to live with.

Here's the thing though: I think all of this really needs to centrally be for US. I think if you do top surgery or not should be based on what you want for your own body above and beyond all else. After all, even if and when someone is binary trans (or cis, for that matter!), no way we look will ever guarantee people "match" our gender, or lack of it, in the way we want them to, because we just can't always make things physically legible, period, or legible in the way we want to everyone. To boot, you'll spend more time in your body by yourself with no one but you experiencing it, and certainly no one experiencing it as directly as you, and so how *you* feel in it, all by yourself, really matters. If your chest is a source of dysphoria for you and you think top surgery is in your reach and can help answer that, that sounds like a great possible option for you. Of course, if getting some extra legibility of your gender where others are concerned is something surgery or other ways of presenting can give you, and that itself makes you feel more at home in your body, that is also valid and real.

Do you want to talk more about those choices? Or to talk more about simply dealing with being nonbinary in a very binary world? Both? I'm happy to do any of that or more with you, and I'm so sorry this is a kind of struggle for any of us that it just really shouldn't be. <3

[ratherslowseal]

Thank you so much for such a thoughtful reply. It means a lot to me that I am not alone with my experience. I mean, logically I know that I'm not, but I think part of my frustration comes from my lack of experience with seeing these struggles talked about and given their due time.

Maybe it's because I'm more secure in my identity now, I have access to GAC, and I have an incredibly supportive family, partner, friends, and community, that I am left with facing the more... existential (?) struggles that come with my transness. When you're just discovering yourself as a queer person, at least based on my experience as a young adult who figured a lot of this out through information and connections on the internet when I was a younger teen, a lot of the conversation is (understandably) focused on immediate, positive experiences: exploring different labels, experimenting with a new name, pronouns and gender expression, coming out, going on HRT, medically transitioning... and then it's all fine and great, at least if you do it "right". There is also, of course, passing, which I feel is more difficult to speak about in a truly constructive way and is still influenced by the transmedicalist zeitgeist. So I feel a little... leftover, both because I have (in some ways) grown past those experiences and because I was never really included in them. It can be a little isolating and frustrating sometimes.

I think my feelings are a pretty sensible product of living in a world that doesn't really accommodate my identity, or only parts of it, or only when I make room for it myself. Still, maybe I'm just not looking in the right places for community and knowledge, or maybe that's something I could do myself one day.

I think there is an element of internalized transphobia, too. Even though I know it's false, a tiny part of me feels that it is my own fault if I get misgendered, because if I really prioritized being gendered correctly, then I would just make every effort possible to pass as a (presumably) cis male, and even if I "failed", then at least I'd be "making an effort" and would earn the "right" to complain. But this of course isn't true. Being effectively pressured into trying to pass is a product of living in a cissexist society where that responsibility is forced onto trans people, regardless of whether or not they want it for themselves.

It's easy to talk about exploring gender expression and affirming your gender identity with changes and interventions (social, medical, legal), these are all centered on the individual. But, when the tables turn and affirming your gender starts to give that responsibility back onto others and demand social upheaval, well... it is both illuminating and can make you feel very, very hopeless.

Which I guess turns me back towards centering myself as an individual, what myself and others can do to affirm my gender. Because, even though my power and value as an individual is not zero, it is not within my ability as a single person to transform the form and function of gender in our society. At the end of the day, I only have control over myself.

[Heather]

You're so welcome. I'm glad it's meaningful and helpful for you.

Even though I know it's false, a tiny part of me feels that it is my own fault if I get misgendered, because if I really prioritized being gendered correctly, then I would just make every effort possible to pass as a (presumably) cis male, and even if I "failed", then at least I'd be "making an effort" and would earn the "right" to complain. But this of course isn't true. Being effectively pressured into trying to pass is a product of living in a cissexist society where that responsibility is forced onto trans people, regardless of whether or not they want it for themselves.

It's easy to talk about exploring gender expression and affirming your gender identity with changes and interventions (social, medical, legal), these are all centered on the individual. But, when the tables turn and affirming your gender starts to give that responsibility back onto others and demand social upheaval, well... it is both illuminating and can make you feel very, very hopeless.

You know, it's interesting you saying this in light of the exchange I told you about with my friend. Because when she started talking about how I presented myself, it took me a minute to notice that I had kind of fallen into the trap of starting to explain why I couldn't pass the way she was suggesting might be less gendered, even though I know full well from my experiences and those of so many other people that no, these things that people, especially cis people, think we can do that will change everything for us in this regard very rarely do, especially for those of us who are nonbinary. What you said here about the pressure to pass in cissexism is so well said and so exactly right. It also is why so many of us can wind up feeling so hopeless, like you also describe.

Personally, I often have different experiences with younger people than I do with many people my age or older, so I am really holding out hope that things get a lot easier for all of us, especially people in your generation and younger, because of there being more people identifying as gender-nonconforming, and so many younger trans people who are also less binary in both their presentation and their experience of gender, yet who still identify as women and men, because as those binary categories get less rigid, it seems to me that it's going to be at least a little bit easier for people to wrap their heads around those of us who aren't binary at all.

I also think that maybe people like you and I might need to remind ourselves that there is also a power in whatever resistance we can muster -- and no shade to anyone who can't, or to us when we can't, either -- to the pressure to present to get other people to accept us for who we are, and base that on who we tell them we are, not who they decide we are or must be based on their own ideas about or experiences with gender. Because after all, the more we can insist that how we present (or how we don't: for me, as someone who just doesn't feel like I experience gender at all, my outward presentation just really isn't about gender, period, it's about other things like physical comfort or what color I like that day or what parts of my body I am or am not feeling) is for US, and not for them, the harder it will be for pressure that comes from those folks to really get its hooks in us, you know?

Do you live somewhere where you can connect with more nonbinary people in person? I know that for me, having close nonbinary friends and community in person goes such a long way, even if all it does on a given day in regards to gender is give me places and times where I don't have to kind of be on guard all the time, ready to have to defend or explain myself at a moments notice, or where I can dress how I want and have people be like, "Oooh, that's a fun pattern!" rather than, "I don't see you in feminine things like that often!" (The kind of response where you want to deadeye the person saying it and be like, "And that kind of response is why, pal.")

[ratherslowseal]

Demonstrating and communicating the truth that how I/we express gender (or lack thereof) is done for ourselves, rather than for anyone else, being protective against that pressure is a good point. I'm more choosy with where/around who I dress "femininely" (I do have some kind of connection to masculinity and femininity, but I'd say my relationship to them is much more nebulous and convoluted than the "normal"), but after I came out... almost three years ago now? I realized that I probably wasn't going to get gendered correctly if I "tried" to conform to a more conventionally masculine gender expression, so figured that I might as well have fun with it anyways. I've grown to feel a little differently, because getting gendered correctly is very important for me and my mental well being. I guess I'm just figuring out how to strike a balance.

Luckily in my little Midwestern city, I do have a little LGBTQ pride group on my college campus, and I do know one person who I would like to try and befriend, but I've been working since the new year started so I've made it to a meeting like, once this semester. Thankfully if all goes as planned I'll be returning to school this fall, so I'll be able to go to meetings and generally have way more social opportunities. Even though none of my existing friends, family, and partner can really "get" my struggles (since they're of very different gender experiences), I could not ask for more supportive people in my life and I'm never judged based on what gender the clothing I'm wearing supposedly corresponds to. I also have very accepting coworkers, and, since I recently made the move out of the culinary department and into stocking, I don't have to keep my hair away any more, and it was very affirming to hear that my long hair is super cool and awesome, just like I'm any other guy with long hair, which is what that choice feels most like to me, as opposed to a remnant of imposed femininity.

The world sucks, but, I just gotta keep taking care of myself and making time to connect and spend time with people who honor my gender unconditionally, regardless of my presentation, and that makes what I can't change a little more bearable.