I might be a tboy but I still feel like a lesbian

[Masc_Cinderella]

You can ask further questions if you want. I just don’t know. I feel like nothing. Nothing at all

[char]

Hi Masc_Cinderella, sorry I just saw your post! My shift is ending soon, so I won't be able to help you much today, but I'll drop some questions:
- What made you realize that you might be a transgender man/boy?
- How do you define the word "lesbian," and what makes you think it might "clash" with the realization that you might be trans?
- What kind of worries or concerns do you have when it comes to the possibility of identifying differently from you do at the moment?

[Masc_Cinderella]

1. I just took further and further liking to being called a boy. I considered myself a lesboy. I hopped around calling myself either a butch/stud or a soft butch/stem (yes I'm actually black). I considered myself bigender, by being both non binary and a trans boy. I fantasize myself with a penis solely for sexual reasons (it feels inconvenient to have in literally every other scenario). These aren't 100% boy boyish identities/things, but what really drove it home I guess was reading a smut fic lol. I just connected to one of the characters in a way that couldn't be denied anymore. It wasn't even a fic about being trans or anything of the sort.
2. To be a lesbian is to be a non-man who solely likes other non-men. And, well. Look at me now. I'm still hesitant to call myself straight though.
3. Really what made (makes) me so conflicted and tired is that the way I love women still feels like lesbianism, if that makes sense. I don't know how to explain it, despite how stupid it sounds. Because theres no way to feel like a lesbian.

Most of this is in the past tense because I just figured to go ahead and try considering myself as a trans boy for who knows how long and see how I feel. Lesbians have complex genders all the time, so its not like I'm exactly out of the ordinary. But I really just feel like nothing, because of this and so, so, so much more. I'm losing my mind. I don't know if I can take another day.

[Heather]

Hey again, MascCinderella.

You know, as someone in my 50s who has been gender nonconforming for all of my life, really, I personally really appreciate how younger people have been doing a lot to make the way everyone thinks about both gender and orientation more and more flexible and less and less binary and rigid. So many of these frameworks were built by either people who weren't even themselves queer, trans or gender-diverse, or who were, but were still operating in very binary ideas of both, which I think is some of why some of them can feel rigid in these times. I think that perhaps one of the downsides of more flexibility is that it can make identity feel less certain (even if it wasn't really more certain before, it just felt that way), and that can feel especially...untethered, for lack of a better word, when you're young and wanting identities to hang on to and kind of steer yourself with, if that makes sense.

I understand what you mean when you talk about how the way you relate to women feels, and it doesn't sound stupid to me. I also think that even a lot of cis lesbians would understand what you're saying.

There's no such thing as things that are 100% one gender or another, because definitions and experiences of gender aren't universal: they are, as you yourself have experienced, deeply subjective. To me as an agender person, for instance, nothing I do, no way I look could be described as boyish or girlish, mannish or womanish, because I am none of those things. Someone else who experiences gender differently than I do, and who feels there are things that, for them, are masculine or feminine, will obviously feel very differently. But none of this is universal.

When you say you feel like nothing, can you try and say a little more about what you mean? Because I'm reading you feeling all kinds of ways, and when I look at how you define your own gender, it seems to me like you're pretty specific abou the ways that you feel. <3

[Masc_Cinderella]

I don't know how to explain it. Its not nothing in a nonbinary, agender, etc. way, because to me thats still something, just outside of it all. I feel like nothing in the same way that I feel like my age is nothing. That my personhood is nothing. I guess I just feel dragged around.

Its not really that I relate to womanhood,,, I let go of femininity and such a long time ago. I know for certain that I'm not a girl. Its more like I like women in a way that still feels queer. Maybe thats because it still is, because even if I am a boy, I'm still trans, and thats queer love within itself. But calling myself transhet feels weird and off.

I just want to be a pretty boy, really. A graceful boy fairy who flirts with pretty girls. Maybe I'm more so a boy in the stud way, or maybe I really am a full on boy. I can't help but to cling onto the former, but I can't deny the latter either. I'm sick of it. I can't deal with this on top of everything else

[Heather]

Thanks for filling me in more.

This really sounds to me a lot how it just often feels to be a young person, honestly. There are just phases of our life where it's so hard to put our finger on who we are.

I do think that often the best answer to that is to stop trying. No one needs to be able to describe their gender or sexual identity super-specifically to anyone, not even themselves, even if you or someone else really want that for whatever reason, including because it can feel frustrating not to know. But the fact of the matter is that so much of life is about learning who we are as we go, and we can only know so much about ourselves when we haven't had decades and decades to live life -- because life experience teaches us so much -- and to live inside our own skin, heart and head.

So, if calling yourself any given thing doesn't feel right, my best advice is not to call yourself that, and to remember you also don't have to call yourself anything. So much of the process of getting to know who we are will, if we're honest with ourselves and not just trying identities on like costumes, involve times where we simply don't know, and where "I'm just not sure right now" is the most honest answer to any kind of "Who am I?"question. It's not only okay not to know all of who we are or define that clearly, it's a constant for most people of just being alive and human.

Do you think you might be able to let go some of feeling like you have to know and just let yourself not know for a while and find out more over time?

[Masc_Cinderella]

I might. I'll give it a try. Thank you

[Heather]

Of course. I hope that you can start to feel better about all of this very soon. <3