Is it a boy? Is it a girl?

Over lunch the other day my friend Jason introduced me to a term that I hadn't really heard used before: 'Gender Queer'. I liked it. It resonated. You see, winter before last I was really struggling with gender stuff. I spent a fair bit of time chatting with my therapist about gender, specifically my discomfort with being a woman. After a long period of being shutdown around my partner I decided it would strengthen our relationship to share with her my gender-distress. Her side of the conversation went something like; "Well I'm a lesbian, and that means I need to be with a WOMAN, and I am with you because you are a WOMAN, and you can't just decide one day that you aren't a WOMAN." That is the shortened version, but you get the idea of whose needs needed to be met. And we never talked about it again. More importantly, I never talked about it again. To anyone. That's a lie. I talked to my friend who no longer talks to me since she started dating said ex-partner, even though she made such a big deal about how much she valued our friendship and didn't want anything to come between us when she started dating L.

This gender stuff has been particularly up for me as recently in my human growth class, I read a chapter about how ideas of gender and gender roles are formed. The thing is, textbook didn't cover what I thought/felt(think/feel). Where is the chapter for those of us who don't fit the "normal" mold? And this shit doesn't feel all nice and neat because there isn't a black and white sense of gender for me; I'm not the person who feels like a man trapped in a woman's body. Most days I just feel like...well, not a woman. I often don't feel comfortable in a woman's body, nor do I feel comfortable with the gender role assigned to women (although, I don't know too many women who can say that they are), and I certainly don't feel comfortable with the term "woman". So, where does that leave me? I'll try 'Gender Queer' on for size for awhile. It sounds so much more fun than 'gender dysforic'.