I've often told the story of coming out in rural ND, and starting a GSA on my campus in the mid 90s on this auspicious day. It's a good story no doubt, but a story I've told many times. I've been out as a dyke/lesbian for 30 years now, so its kind of old news.
On the other hand, I haven't been "out" as a non-binary they/them for that long. I recently posted a couple blog posts about my gender-journey, so lets see what else I can tell you...
Coming out as NB has been more difficult than I would like to admit. I think having been unabashedly out as a lesbian for so long I thought it should be easier to come out as NB. As Shrek says, "Ogres have layers", and my story has many layers as well.
As I mentioned in my recent posts, although I have hated being a "girl" since I was a child, I had a lot of therapists divert my gender dysphoria discussions, into discussions of trauma as it affected my relationship to my body. As a result I spent literal decades trying to unravel my hatred of my female-body by working on trauma (spoiler alert: it didn't help). Not that in most of those cases either I or the therapist had words like "gender dysphoria", but the message I got over and over again was that my relationship with my body wasn't an organic issue, but a trauma issue, so even when I had the words, I'd been talked into thinking my issue was more trauma related, even though in my head I knew that it was more than just trauma.
Secondly, the term "non-binary" is fairly new. "Gender Queer" I did learn about around 14 years ago, and I immediately resonated with that. It would take a few years before I heard about NB, and agender, both being terms that I use for myself. Anyway, not having the right language/words for myself made "coming out" a challenge, because I didn't know what to come out as.
Thirdly, shortly after my wife and I got together (about 13 years ago?) I stopped going by my legal name, and a lot of folks had a really hard time with using my new name. As much angst as that caused, I knew getting people to use my preferred pronouns would be a super-shit show, especially since so many of us had teachers like my beloved Mrs. A who beat it into our heads that they/them is NOT singular. (Yet we have no problem asking who the "they" was who lost their keys.) And honestly, because of my beloved Mrs. A. I too had a REALLY hard time with they/them, even though both "she" and "he" made me feel gross. It was until I was in a Safe Space training with Transgender Resource Center at UNMH in 2018 that I finally said aloud that my pronouns were "they/them", and it was until a year or two ago that I started asking friends and family to call me they/them.
Now that I'm thinking about it, it was working at my current job in a senior living facility where I've had several of my patients (interestingly, mostly men) call me "he". I noticed that it actually gave me a little gender euphoria to be not called she/her, and that was the catalyst for starting to be more open about being non-binary. And for awhile, I just told people they could call me whatever pronoun they preferred..."just don't call me late for dinner". It took a bit longer to have the confidence to say, "I use they/them pronouns."
I still suck at correcting people. I don't have the energy for peoples' defensiveness, or nastiness, or their Very Big Feelings of feeling bad about misgendering me-and I never know what reaction I'm going to get, so I just engage in some old fashioned avoidance. And I am VERY appreciative of the people in my life who do make the effort to use my correct pronouns, and for the people who correct others when they don't.
And I'm grateful AF that I've finally been able to have top surgery so I feel a whole helluva lot better in my body. Perfectly comfortable, no. I still have the distinctive "pear" shape of a menopausal woman in spite of a "torso masculanizing" surgery that was painful AF. In some ways, I feel worse after the surgery since I thought waking up on the other side of it I'd finally have the body that aligned with my gender identity (and I could finally stop eating in such a significant calorie deficit), but due to some miscommunication (?) with the surgeon I got fat sucked out of places that wound up just emphasizing the "pear" proportions.
Maybe if I'd written this post yesterday I'd be a little bit more positive/celebratory, but unfortunately, the grief about my body hit pretty hard again today. And a lot of that grief is specific to my surgery results, but some of it is the grief of not being listened to by a man...again. I finally met with my surgeon for a postop appointment this Monday, and although he presented some options, they weren't necessarily great options for getting the results I want, and he said I would need to wait a year before doing any further surgeries (and that's assuming my insurance will pay for any further surgery, and that's assuming my brain can handle another round of anesthesia...this last one fucked me up pretty bad.)
Anyway, I exercise a ton and eat in a calorie deficit trying to achieve a more masculine/neutral body, but there's only so much one can do to counter menopause, and a previous massive weight gain (fuck you, Buspar). And through the weight lifting I've been doing I am building more muscle and changing my silhouette to a more masculine one, and in doing so, I'm feeling, bit by bit a little more comfortable in my body. Maybe some day I'll be able to call my body, home.
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