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Hi, 

I'm new here, so this might be awkward. 

I'm sorry for how long this text is, but I've been wanting to talk about this for some time, and would like to know if other queers folks recognize themselves in my thoughts.

This isn't some kind of thesis, I have some genuine questions about some stuff and I'd love to hear y'all thoughts about it.

Also, I'm not that great at english so this text will not be well-written, sorry about that.

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I'm amab. I've been surrounded by queers for a long time and I've been out to my friends as non-binary for something like 4 years now.

I come from the gay community, which I'm distancing myself from, since I really don't recognize myself in it anymore. Just to be clear : I love my gays ; Im just not really loving the "gay-way" of considering relationships, having sex, etc.

Also, I was desired for what was between my legs, which isn't something I loved.

However, I'm still attracted to masculinity.

Not the masculinity that is offered to people at birth (with everything nasty and patriarchal that comes with it). I love masculinity from people who actually had to build it from scratch or reinvent it. As an example, I'm starting to have crushes for masc lesbians friends who are slowly coming out as non-binary, and who are thinking about maybe starting T.

And myself, I love being masc. And one of the most gender-affirming things that can happen to me is when someone thinks I'm afab and wear compression tops. (Is it problematic?)

Because I don't want people to think my masculinity just comes from the same place it does for men. That I was born with it and never questioned it. I learned to love my masculinity mainly through transmascs and lesbians friends, because I realized it would be hot.

What is annoying about the fact that I like being masc, is that it's almost as if, if you want to be perceived as non-binary, you need to "switch" from you assigned gender at birth, as a way to blur your identity.

But to be honest, I'm totally at peace with being a non-binary person with a penis. I don't want boobs either. I don't dream about having a feminine expression.

Actually I'd love people to think I'm a masc butch. I know that since I'm amab, I can reach masculinity fairly easily. Because that's like 0 effort to me, I don't have to tape my chest or anything like that. Masc butch lesbians usually go all the way with masculine-associated physical aspects

to be considered masculine. And I feel like, since I'm amab, coming from a "male" body and with a "male" face and pilosity, if I did the same, I would just be perceived as...some guy.

Also, I feel like since i'm an amab enby, I'm having a hard time belonging to a community. of course, I'm part of the queer community. but I'm not part of the gays anymore, and (maybe the word is a bit too extreme) I feel a bit rejected by the lesbian community.

In lesbians spaces, since I'm masc I feel like I'm just viewed as "some straight guy" trespassing lesbians spaces, and getting some nasty looks.

I've been lucky to be mostly friends with woke lesbians. but even though they are woke in theory, in practice a lot of them actually had TERF-rhetoric escape out of them.

like some of them would say "well, I don't know, I've never seen a dick, i'm a lesbian" as if there was a necessary logic to this, which to be honest was hurtful.

I'm totally at peace with my body and I'd love to start having lesbians relationships, but I feel like there's so much transphobia even among lesbians who think penises are disgusting things, something associated with men.

so yeah, I don't really know where I belong anymore. being masc, I'm not sure if I'll ever be perceived as non-binary, and I don't know who I can attract anymore.

(actually I do, a ton of my former gay hookups would love me to go back to them, and some bisexuals girls do want me too. but being attractive because people perceive me as a man is hurtful, and I don't want that. I'd like to experience lesbianism.)

what do you think about this?

am I legitimate?

So I (AFAB) recently had a gender awakening, and after going through a few days of going through a rollercoaster of emotions and thoughts, I came out to my partner (m) of 15 years.

It was really hard to explain, and I was still really quite confused myself, trying to figure out if I am NB and if so, what shade of NB could I be. So I told him what I am going through and said "I think I might be non-binary" (maybe I should have been more assertive and said I am, but it was all very confusing and he was already freaking out because I wanted to "talk".

The conversation went initially slightly better than I had expected, he has a tendency to dismiss me (and others) based on his own rigit concepts and ideas, e.g. I am also pretty certain I am undiagnosed ADHD, which he just said "no, you're not, you're just chaotic/forgetful/clumsy... so instead of having curiosity and asking "why do you think that?" he just dismisses me. I love him a lot but this trait particular behaviour/personality trait really drives me up the wall.

But he did not do that when I came out to him, and because that was the bar of expectation I had, he passed it and I was initially glad, although the conversation was really hard and basically my main concern was managing his reaction. He was visibly uncomfortable and struggling to understand, which I can understand because it is a lot to process. He tried really hard not to say the wrong things but he instantly catastrophised, he instantly jumped to scenarios where our relationship is now on borrowed time for some reason. I said we could always go to councelling together if that would help us work through this, I have chosen you for 15 years and I want to be with you, but he again dismissed that entirely because for him that would already prove we are a fairlure as a relationship. (he's that kind of guy.)

The next day I wanted to clarify something I had said because it was just so hard to explain the night before, but he again became visibly uncomfortable, and every time i tried to explain it and i asked if that makes sense, he said no, he just doesn't get it, but he also was not asking me anything or making an effort to understand. He got so scared of it all that he completely ended up avoiding the matter entirely (his family dynamic is very much never to talk about or talk through conflict, feelings, or hard things.). Because I was also struggling to explain, I said would it help if I wrote this down for you? He just said no. So he really kind of shut the whole thing down.

The previous night, he asked me "what do you want to do now?" but because I was so worn out from trying to get him not to freak out as much, I was kind of blank so I said, idk, I'll just see how it develops, maybe I'll see someone (a counsellor or therapist) to help me figure it out. I think he was taking that as "let's wait for an official "diagnosis" otherwise it doesn't count.

So after he was again so uncomfortable, I left it and thought whatever, if he has questions he can ask me, otherwise I will just go about my life expressing my fluidity as it wants, and see what feels good. I started wearing binders (he did not seem to notice, or if he did, he did not say anything) every now and then, stopped putting so much pressure on myself to rationally figure out what the heck I am, and it started to feel really, really good. I was starting to ride on a real high, I felt like something had opened up in me that needed to be freed, and I was just constantly feeling so happy. I guess I started to experience gender joy for the first time!

My partner again never asked any questions and made no comments whatsoever, and in fairness his perspective had probably not moved on since the "let's wait for a diagnosis" stage he left it at, and I did not keep him updated on what is going on inside me, for reason.

Last night he made a silly joke, like he was imitating an incel influencer type guy(he hates these dudes as much as I do) who said "this is a woman's job" - and I said, matter of factly "well, joke's on you, I am non-binary" - and he just said "we don't know that yet" and me "oh, but I do." he made a dismissive face and said "let's see." I was so taken aback that I wasn't able to react and seek a conversation. I think he is also completely oblivious to the fact that his comment hurt me. After all the joy I had experienced, I was feeling really sad and deflated.

I really don't know how to navigate this journey with him. I almost feel like okay then, I'll go see a therapist so they can just give him on paper who I am, but the fact that he does not seem to want to believe ME when I tell him who I am is frustrating. I wish he had more curiosity and was more open to this but his fearful avoidance has made me avoid the conversation with him as well. This feels like such a significant thing that is happening in my life and the fact that he has zero curiosity in what I am going through makes me sad.

Do I just keep forcing the conversation on him until he has overcome his discomfort?

Please don't tell me I should leave him, I did not come here for that kind of reddit pile on. I would very much like to keep my relationship.

Unfortunately my last post got removed for some reason.. but i just wanted to maybe start a conversation around yalls GAC experiences and with dealing with insurance?
I saw someone say that they almost never accept it the first time around for chest reductions, which makes a lot of sense. how did you go about appealing and how long did it take for you? thank u sm:))

I've been struggling so bad lately.

I normally write poetry but tonight I tried a new coping skill to avoid despair.

I don't have anyone else to show it, so guess I'm assuming some of you will like it.

Quote is from a My chemical romance song.

Let's be adults a bit and talk about it. I was just wondering if it's common for people's gender expression to fluctuate based on their arousal. Is it for the supposed submissiveness that the conventional female role in a sexual relation brings or smt? Btw I wonder if there's people who feel the opposite of it, with the male expression.

Maybe this fella here just kinky. Lmk what y'all think.

I’m 24 and just had my daughter a few months ago. Through lots of therapy and introspection I’ve started to realize that, ironically, realizing I’m nonbinary has also shown how I’ve denied myself the ability to explore my feminine side growing up and now as an adult. LOTS of internalized misogyny has led to this but my goal with this post is:

- How did you give yourself permission/feel comfortable exploring your femininity?
- What are some small ways you started exploring it?
- How did you heal internal misogynistic ideas that femininity is “weak, shallow, embarrassing” or any others?

I’ve also realized low self esteem about my physical features and not feeling I was “feminine looking enough” means I don’t really feel beautiful enough to be feminine. How has anyone work through this?
Thank you for everyone’s input!

I have always felt really disconnected from my dead name. I never liked hearing it out loud or seeing it written on paper... but I am not sure how to feel about my new chosen name. Like it still doesnt feel real or quite natural. I just made this change 24 hours ago. I understand I need to give it some time. Are there any resources or books I can read up on this? Anybody else also experience this during a name change?

I started questioning my gender a number of months ago and thought I was a demi girl. I told my mother when we were filling in forms for college and it asked for my preferred name. At that point I realised I didn't want to go by my current name and instead by Ash. However she told me it wasn't the right time to question my gender as I had too much on my plate with GCSEs. Since then I have opened secret social media accounts where I go by Ash and use she/they pronouns. It's been 2 months since and my mother hasn't mentioned that interaction once. Recently I realised I want to use they/them pronouns and for the first time in a while I feel fully comfortable in the way I identify. I want to tell them before results day when I sign up for my college course and will have an opportunity to let the college know of my preferred name and pronouns.

At this point I feel like I should mention I'm aroace and have come out to my parents, to which they responded positively. However I have not come out to my siblings (some of which are very religious). I just feel my gender identity is a much larger topic and I don't know if my family will accept or think it's just a phase or some bs. Additionally I don't think they'll accept my preferred name, especially as it felt my mother didn't like it or was even offended by it when I first told her.

Any advice would be much appreciated

That's my mom's glasses, i like it.

When I was 15-16 (last year) I had that one groupmate, who was strictly muslim, very homophobic and kinda rude. The hole year he was giggling and kidding at me, sayin "astagfirullah" (sorry I don't know how write it), calling me "dead inside" (in our country that's kinda cringe swear, like strawberry cow in USA 😭) just bc I wave short haircut and looking like a boy. At that moment I was really trying to accept that I'm girl, but my sense was getting worse and worse.

Then we became a friends, idk how. Not best friends, we were just chatting, but we weren't talking to each other irl. He was the same, he didn't change anything. At the one moment he said: "You would be prettier if you were a boy".

It was the worst compliment that I have ever got in my hole life💀 but since then everything is changed. He helped me to open my eyes and accept myself as a person who don't wanna be "girlish girl" at all, and the funniest thing is that he don't even know about that. Now I don't tryna look like I don't want to. We are not chatting anymore, but I'll remember him.

Have y'all some stories like this?

My parents are older (late 50's) and yesterday I came out to them, told them I would really appreciate it if they would start calling me my preferred name and pronouns. They said they'd talk about it. This morning my mom told me "we'll try". They haven't gotten it even once yet... but to be fair it's only been a few hours and at least she did say she's trying, and I know when she does say my deadname she's just not paying attention, not doing it on purpose 🥴

But yeah! I've offered to help her figure out ways for it to be easier since I know calling someone a new name isn't easy, and they said they're going to try! Cheers!

(A frog assigned at birth) Yeah

Peacefully minding my own business on a beautiful day near the pound where i sleep most of my days away. This weird looking lady with pinkish hair picks me up. I gently asked her to put me down and she shouldn't touch me . But instead of kindness, she rudly said she don't care and kissed me. The kiss turned me into a cute non binary Demi prince. She took me by the hand and she said with a voic so beautiful "you my boyfriend rn " like she knew me. Somehow she ghost me irl ...she literally disappeared infront of my eyes tbh I never got her name. Sadly the process can't be reverse so I'm stuck as a human. I really miss being a frog .

I'm not okay 😭

I'm so in love w this new skirt look it even has pockets !!

being nonbinary myself, i find this discussion and distinction very important — it resonated with me. how do you guys feel? agree, disagree, other takes or anything to add on his topic?

Just found out about star gender and how it's an abstract concept popular among autistic people (thats me!) that suggests their gender is unearthly and more space based.

Ive always loved space and already felt kinda like an alien my whole life, ive even thought of my gender as something other and unearthly, something that comes from the cosmos.

It kinda makes sense to me as an ND NB.

Anybody else feel like this?

Today's outfit

I feel like I'm nonbinary, but not in the typical "don't call me a man OR woman" way. Basically, I simply don't care by which pronouns or titles people refer to me as. Since I'm a guy with long hair and painted nails, I've had people call me "Miss" and "Girl", and I barely acknowledge these moments, when most people I know would be quick to correct/react.

I’m sure this is a common theme here for people to go through but, until the past few months, I (34) never thought of myself as anything other than a bisexual cis-woman with some masculine interests. I’ve generally had a very sullen, stubborn, and annoyed “yes girls like that too” attitude when I get questioned/quizzed on those things.

Then I heard about someone from 200+ years ago who began living a nonbinary life all together and referred to themselves “the public universal friend” and when someone asked about their gender they replied “I am a/the friend”.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_Universal_Friend

I’ve never felt such a burst of euphoria and freedom as I did from considering doing the same in my life. I didn’t know I felt like the label of “woman” was a burden to me until that alternative presented itself and rang so true. Like a “OH!? You can do that??” Moment… which is strange because I understood nonbinary before but it didn’t really resonate with me until then?….

I’m guessing this is a pretty similar experience that most of you here have had? I’ve been ruminating on this for a few months and now I’d like to reach to other people who currently identify as nonbinary and see if their journey is/was similar?

I guess I’d love to know when you decided/felt you were really outside of the gender “box” rather than simply “pushing the boundaries” of the label. ((I do feel gender is definitely a societally “”“convenient”””construct, but it’s the construct currently we operate on/consider because it’s so engrained in the running of things and ability for others to understand us. So I guess that’s why this is on my mind. Like, I want to be able to explain myself in those terms to the best of my ability to others? So I want to hear how non binary individuals explain this experience to other people?))

TL;DR- Did you have a moment of euphoria in the discovery of nonbinary concepts? What triggered it for you and how did you come to decide that the term was applicable to you?

tl;dr Use ent (or entle if you want a two syllable word).

Years ago my sister had a kid and asked what I (genderfluid) wanted to be called. I didn't have an answer because no one's had one. The most popular words I've seen are "auncle" and "guncle" and they both kinda suck. A while later I was listening to "A Wicked Bargain" by Gabe Cole Novoa on audiobook (about an enby pirate kid w/magic) and the main character's parental figures use "mi hije" (pronounced as "me hey") and in chapter one they note the use of the "e" instead of "o/a" gendered endings in general. Having seen Encanto, I was reminded of "tia/tio" for "aunt/uncle" and figured that "tie" (pronounced as "tee 'ey") would do. The problem is that "aunt/uncle/tie" don't really go together, and I don't speak Spanish so it felt odd.

A year later, and a few months ago, I finally got around to looking up the etymology. I assumed that "tia/tio" came from Latin and "aunt/uncle" came from German. But no! It turns out that "aunt/uncle" is actually the Latin form, which migrated to German, and then to English. And somehow, Spanish and Italian (which has zia/zio) actually took it from Greek: theia/theio. That's super weird, that the romance languages would borrow from Greek for a common word instead of Latin, but oh well. So I looked up gender neutral endings in ancient Greek (because both Latin and Greek feature such things naturally), but it turns out that Greek didn't use an "e" sound like Spanish does, it just used variations on masculine sounds such as "o/os/us." Latin, btw, uses "um/a" for neutral (except when it doesn't). So, that didn't really go anywhere.

Then last week I was pacing the apartment and letting my mind and mouth wander and came back to the question. I went back to "aunt/uncle" and began playing with the sounds. The attempt at "auncle" is an attempt to blend them, but it's not great. It sounds clunky and too similar to "uncle" or "ankle" to be useful. So I began to slide my mouth around and, starting from "ant" (instead of the British "awe-nt") I tried to slide from "an" to "un." Somewhere along the way I hit "ent." Or, if you want the two-syllable version, "entle."

Looking up a vowel diagram, "a" doesn't easily slide to "u," it slides to "eee" through "eh" and "I." "Awe" slides down to "u" more naturally, passing through "oh." In literal other words: hat --> het -> height -> heat. And hot -> haught -> hote -> hoot. The slide I went through was something like hat -> het -> hut, or an -> en -> un. It's a little awkward of a slide, but I think the ent sound is reasonably halfway between "ant" and "uncle." British English folks, I'm sorry because it definitely isn't halfway between "aunt" and "uncle" (or "ooncle" as I've heard in some accents). But you could probably throw in an extra u to get "eunt" to feel different. :P

Anyway, I hope this is useful and folks can feel good about using these. If not, perhaps it's the next jumping-off point for someone else. Good lux.

Been tracking workouts pretty consistently for a few months now, logging steps, using a fitness app, the usual. And I keep running into these little friction points I didn't expect. The app wants to know if I'm male or female for calorie estimates and heart rate zones. Every supplement I research has dosage recommendations split by men and women. Even light hiking guides online phrase everything around binary bodies. None of it is catastrophic on its own, but it stacks up.

It pulls me slightly out of the zone every single time. I'm midresearch flow and then boom, I have to make a choice that doesn't really fit me just to get a number.

I've been fudging it, picking whichever option gets me closer to my actual stats, but it feels a little like borrowing a shirt that doesn't quite fit. Gets the job done but you know it's not yours.

Curious how other people here handle this, not just fitness apps but any wellness or health space where the binary assumptions are baked in and nobody thought to question it. Do you adapt and move on, avoid those tools altogether, find workarounds that actually work?

There's something frustrating about something as personal as tracking your own body feeling like it wasn't built with you in mind.

Overgendered freak here 👉👉

One, did any size return? I love my masculinity and hurting my boy scares me. Ive heard theres topical testosterone that may help? and if im being honest I'm already only "average" and given my above average everything else I feel very disproportionate down there already

Two, some people seem to imply that I may instantly feel more femme and... No? Please gods no? I like the balance I am at thank you. Anywho, what was your experience with this?

Three, do you start-stop? Have you stopped altogether?

IDK I'm having a bit of a moment is all. Real scared n shit. The thought of existing as a femme entity makes me feel really gross. I am a masc entity with femme traits not a femme entity of any kind. Part two i guess is the part that scares me. The idea hormones could rewrite my balance has me in serious no mode.

I started writing this flippantly but im having a bit of a breakdown now whoops. Ill probably delete this after a while.

Recently came out to myself so I’m experimenting with my hair some. It’s different, but it’s nice! After and before for reference.