23 year old AMAB. All my life, I’ve considered myself cisgender, but recently, I’ve begun questioning that. I’ll sometimes see posts like “if a potion/pill/button existed that could turn you into the opposite sex, would you use it?” and think to myself “Yeah, I’d be down to at least try that.” I know that doesn’t automatically make me trans, but it does make me question.
At the same time, however, I get a lot of euphoria from presenting as a man. When I start questioning my gender, I’ll look in the mirror, or at pictures of myself, and think “I look good with this masculine hairstyle”, “I like getting dressed up in a suit and tie”, or “I want to try growing a beard”. And the idea of being a father someday does bring me a lot of joy.
I’ve done a bit of research already, and based on my experience, I think I’ve narrowed my possible identities down to two options.
- Cisgender male who is just curious about the female experience
- Demiboy with a secondary identity of female
The thing is that I’m not sure where to go from here. This isn’t exactly a problem, since I feel no dysphoria when presenting as a male, so am comfortable living as cis in the meantime. But I would like to figure this out at some point, ideally sooner than later. Do any of you have any suggestions?
Side note: I’m currently living with my parents, and while they’re generally nice people, they hold some pretty transphobic views. I do expect to move out sooner than later, but anything that would require a totally safe physical space might have to wait.
Thank you. I’m definitely not trying to rush, because I realize this is something to handle delicately.
On the subject of sexuality, that’s actually something I’m quite certain of. I’m attracted to women and only women. Labeling that might be a little difficult if I do end up being NB, though.
Maybe “femme presenting people” would be a more accurate term than “women”?
I’m in a similar place to you in many ways, AMAB, cool with being cis but not really sure about it, mostly have my sexuality figured out (I think I do anyway). I personally say “femme people”, “femme bodies”, or the first example I gave to describe my sexual attraction, though I haven’t figured out other aspects like romantic and sensual attraction, still working on establishing those concepts in my mind.
I wouldn’t worry too much about getting labels exactly right, this is a messy conceptual space and English isn’t great for understanding it. Lots of terms that are common today were invented pretty recently online, and there are some weird linguistic quirks and assumptions that cause issues still (easy example: ‘they’ being a 3rd person singular pronoun still causes confusion among some people). I imagine our collective understanding of gender and whatnot will improve over time in new and unexpected ways, and as that happens the meaning of labels might shift too, or new ones will be created. Then again, if labels are important enough to you go ahead and worry about it.
Good luck on your journey!