“I found this community of proudly gender non-conforming women. Women who don’t conform to society’s restrictive view of “woman”. I immediately felt the freedom to be who I wanted to be, and to not feel that I had to “prove” my womanhood.”
Submission by: @oops-im-a-radfem
24 from Utah
When I was a child/teen I was very gender non-conforming. I didn’t like “girl” things, I hated the color pink, had short hair, small boobs, wore mostly “boy” or gender neutral clothes.
If Utah was more progressive, and the trans cult had a presence here in the last half of the 00’s, I probably would have become a trans boy.
But, I didn’t. I went through my teen years as a tomboy, nothing unusual about that. I hated the clothes I had to wear to church. I felt uncomfortable in the girl’s bathroom because I was worried I looked out of place and that I would get yelled at. People asked me all the time if I was a boy or a girl, and I got mistaken for a boy and called a boy on many occasions. I was asked if I was a lesbian in middle school.
Basic stuff for a tomboy, I think.
When I was about 20, I found feminism. Through Pinterest, of all places. From there, I went to Facebook feminism. I learned the libfem version of “intersectionality” and wanted to be the best feminist I possibly could be. At that time, I didn’t really know much about the “queer” and “mogai” community, because I wasn’t on Tumblr. I had heard a bit about trans people, but I didn’t really know all that much about it.
In the fall of 2015, after being polyamorous with my husband for about 6 months, I met a girl. My husband and I started dating her (that’s a whole different story) and she told us about how she was genderfluid between being a woman and being agender. Her “agender” days basically consisted of body dysphoria and a desire to wear masculine clothing. After about a month or so of dating her, I started up my own Tumblr at her suggestion.
Once on Tumblr I learned all about the millions of identities within the “mogai” world. It was a lot of information, and I was confused and unsure that any of it was real. But I chalked those thoughts up to ignorance, and dove deeper into it all.
Throughout the entire time I was in the libfem world, and the Tumblr world, I grew more and more detached to my previous identity as a “tomboy”. I felt that since trans women have to perform femininity to be taken seriously as women, I had to as well or else I was depending on my cis privilege to be seen as a ‘real woman’.
After only a few weeks on Tumblr, I realized I had never questioned my gender. Because of Tumblr, I knew it was a cis privilege to never question gender, and to never have my gender questioned, unlike the experience that so many trans people have. I asked my girlfriend how she determined she wasn’t just a woman, and she directed me towards some blogs and labels for me to look into. I kept coming back to agender, because I was realizing that I didn’t fully “get” gender, and I wasn’t sure it was even real. Real for me, anyway, of course I knew it was real to others and I should respect that. But for me, gender wasn’t a real thing to worry about. I decided that because I didn’t understand gender, I must simply not have one. And so, I started claiming the identity of agender.
I started using they/them pronouns, I tried out my girlfriend’s binder, I started embracing my masculine side again. I liked the binder, but soon after this I broke up with her and she took it back. I didn’t like it enough to get my own, so I didn’t get one. After some time of people not catching on with the they pronouns, I went back to she/her. Since I was still mostly feminine presenting it didn’t seem to matter to me.
I discovered nounself pronouns, and decided that I really liked the bun pronouns. I tried using them for a bit, but it felt silly and wrong. Plus not a lot of my friends used them for me, so I just decided to go back to she.
After that, I didn’t really care about my agender identity. I still used it, and I still made sure people on the internet knew about it, but deep down I didn’t care. I didn’t want to go back to identifying as a woman, though, because I knew once I did that I wouldn’t be able to speak about trans issues. I wanted to keep that, I didn’t want to be treated as a silly cis woman who has so much privilege she can’t say anything. I also didn’t want to give up the freedom I felt to not conform to gender roles as a woman.
In about November of last year, I decided that my romantic orientation wasn’t what I thought it was, because I was struggling with romance in general. I have never really felt totally romantic, and I decided to look into the aromantic spectrum to see if there was anything there that I liked. I found idemromantic (which basically means not understanding romantic attraction). I briefly used it, and when I was searching the ‘idemromantic’ tag for more people like me, I found an ace exclusionist blog.
I embraced the ace exclusionist perspective, and started critically examining everything I had been told by the ace/aro community. I learned how most of their labels were really about homophobia and the fact that the sex positive movement has given kids an unrealistic view of sex and romance.
At that point, I dropped the agender label, because through interacting with the ace exclusionist blogs I would occasionally see a post by a radfem that made good sense about why non-binary wasn’t so great. I once again felt the feeling of being restricted by my “woman” identity. I also still supported trans people on principal, I just felt a little better about not claiming that as part of my identity.
Then, the women’s march happened. The backlash of trans women feeling like their experience wasn’t centered enough and they were excluded happened. I noticed that even before that actually happened, I expected it. I knew that the pussy hats and the abortion rights signs would be offensive to trans women. I knew exactly how they would react. And that pissed me off.
I began thinking again about how gender has never made sense to me. I have never understood how someone can just “identify” with a gender. Gender roles are restrictive and assigned based on sex, so why would anyone want to “identify” with any “gender”? My year of identifying as “agender” didn’t do anything about my oppression. I was still affected by laws and expectations of women. I couldn’t just identify out of it, so how could trans women identify out of their male privilege? No matter what they wore or acted like, no matter the surgeries they got, they could NEVER be oppressed as women. They remain the oppressor class.
At that point, I decided to tentatively start researching radical feminism. I discovered this whole world of kick ass feminist women who don’t listen to male opinions, who don’t center male people, who live their lives for themselves and demand liberation.
I found this community of proudly gender non-conforming women. Women who don’t conform to society’s restrictive view of “woman”. I immediately felt the freedom to be who I wanted to be, and to not feel that I had to “prove” my womanhood. I felt a sisterhood I had never felt with trans women.
I felt free to re-embrace my natural tendency towards being gender non-conforming. I knew I could wear what I wanted and not be told I was less of a woman because of it. Now, I’m planning to get my hair cut short like it was when I was a teen (though, a bit more stylish). I want to wear “men’s” clothing and not be called either a man or some “non-binary” gender.
I feel like myself again.
I am a female by birth, and I “identify” with womanhood because I know now that womanhood is the simple matter of being an adult human female. I don’t have to do anything or act a certain way to be a woman, I just am one. And I no longer feel the need to identify as something other than a woman in order to be who I am.
Notes
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