A reader sent in some excellent questions about gender-squishiness and bisexualism, and I’m using one of them as a prompt for today’s blog post. So here we go!
Reader Question #1: If I sometimes, sort of hope I was genderqueer, does that make me genderqueer? Is “hoping to be” the same as “being” when it comes to gender?
At the end of the summer before my last year in college, a few months before I came out to myself and others as a man, I advertised myself as a lady who likes ladies on the online dating site OkCupid. I had changed my sexuality status from “bisexual” to “lesbian” after my most agonizing year of trying to figure out who I was, combined with maybe a few too many episodes of the L Word.
A young, lesbian-identified woman sent me a message on the dating site, and we made plans to hang out. As we sipped beverages on the patio of the town’s favorite local, downtown coffee joint, she told me about a friend of hers.
“He used to be a girl, but he still liked guys, so he became a gay trans guy.”
“Hah, that sounds like a lot of effort,” is what I said aloud, but I was silently thinking: that’s who I want to be!
—
Earlier in October I dropped my therapist.
A few weeks before then, we were digging through my history, attempting to piece together a gendered chronology. I didn’t make any statements like “I’ve always known I was a boy,” or “being a girl just felt wrong.” Instead, I told a story of when I was in fifth grade, and I was looking in the mirror of my friend’s bedroom.
I asked her, “do you think I could ever look like a boy?”
“Uh, no,” she said flatly.
I decided not to ask that question again.
“Do you understand the difference between saying you want to be a boy and saying you are a boy?” my therapist demanded.
“No, and I don’t understand why that difference would be relevant. I transitioned and it worked; I was right about being a man.”
She wasn’t taking me seriously and she wanted to be the one with the answers.
—
From my experience, being outside of the gender binary starts with wanting to be outside of the gender binary, since we’re all born surrounded by a cis man/woman culture. I wanted to be a lesbian once, because that would have been easier than being a trans guy, but it didn’t fit at all. Exploring identity, and taking some wrong turns, takes just as much courage as being truthful about who you are.
Re the blog post: That’s like me as well. One thing I love about this comic is that you’re speaking from not always realising you were meant to be a dude, and that really resonates with me. Mel’s struggle to find acceptance with his parents does the same thing.
So, thank you for creating this wonderful comic. <3
Thanks for sharing!! It was great finding other guys I could relate to as well. Really gives me strength, and so do you!
i am in similar boat as hector. i have medical issues that make presenting as genderqueer painful or impossible, and likely cannot take T.
Thanks for the comment. If you ever have any ideas for Hector’s character based on your experience, feel free to let me know by sending me an email!
Thanks for sharing.
Thanks for the questions :D
Thank you. It is nice to know that others have similar feelings on the idea of “I always knew…”, that it isn’t needed and that just because you didn’t know that this was who you were when you were five doesn’t mean you’re being transgender ‘wrong’.
Thank you!! I’m trying to figure out if I’m a man and well.. sometimes I feel like because I’m not 100 % sure and soo not macho at all and didn’t question my gender identity until puberty – perhaps I’m just an unsecure woman who WANTS to be a man… and that thinking of myself as male would be wrong because of this… Oh and I really love your comics!!