Transition as Spectrum

Don't get me wrong - I love using spectra to convey gender and sexuality-related concepts to people, particularly those that have no understanding of nonbinary gender and/or presentation and/or attraction. We use it in all our campus education, and it surrounds all the more enlightened conversation regarding sexuality and gender I'm around. Because the feasible alternative at the moment is rigid binary, I've always breathed a sigh of relief when people around me start talking in terms of spectrum. But it really only goes so far, and when you're seeped in it, it breaks down, like anything.

My criticism arises, as always, first and foremost with my own experience with gender. "Transmasculine" is the label that applies to me by definition. I'm FAAB, DFAB, and grew up as a relatively feminine girl. I am no longer a feminine girl, instead opting to wear more masculine clothing and identify more closely with man identities than I used to. It seems at first glance to fit.

The reality is, however, that regardless of my presentation, I've been growing into and becoming a fan of femininity - my femininity - more and more the less I identify as a woman. This stuff's complicated, and the words "masculine" and "feminine" can be sticky. I'm uncomfortable identifying as transmasculine for the same reason I was uncomfortable identifying the she/her pronouns I used to use as "feminine" preferred pronouns. I didn't identify as feminine. Why should my pronouns be? I also don't identify as masculine. I've got something of my own that becomes more concrete as each day passes, but which remains obstinately nebulous and mysterious.

When I think of the type of body I want, it's not necessarily a masculine or male body I want, although I apparently see much of what I want in masculine, male bodies, because I envy them. When I think of the type of strength I aspire towards, it's not a woman's strength, but I desire and am humbled by and drawn to and inspired by women's strength. When I interact with feminine gay men, I feel a sense of other, but there's something about their characteristic confidence and love of desire that gives me energy. When I interact with butch lesbians and dykes, I also feel a sense of other - a more urgent sense of other, because I can feel myself being identified with them - but I also adore their preternatural combination of toughness and emotion. I never feel quite home among any of these groups, but I learn from them and create something within myself in their image.

I've often heard my trans* siblings describe a shift in their transition from transitioning toward a certain gender, a certain goal, to transitioning into themselves. I've long made this intellectual shift, but continuing to understand transition as binary, even with the grace of no man's land in the middle, means that I'm continually subconsciously defining myself in terms of men and women, when men and women aren't the point of this conversation. Has it ever fully occurred to any of us that there might be a space where neither men nor women belong? Neither men nor women own the space and have right to speak on behalf of it? That's the space I live and move and breathe in.

Self-justified merit to existence is an important realization that takes many queer people a long time to absorb. We are worthy to be defined as proper entities, not as opposition to cishet people. It's the, I'm not gay because I'm not straight - I'm gay because I am the way I am. I'm not bi because I'm a little bit gay and a little bit straight - I'm bi because I'm attracted to this mish-mash variety of genders and expressions and types of relationships I am attracted to. I'm not a woman because I've decided not to be a man - I'm a woman because it's the way I describe my identity. And just as all queer people must eventually come to this type of realization to grow into a proud self-identity, genderqueer people must realize that being what we are is not deciding to become less of a woman and more of a man, or less of a man and more of a woman. Binary people don't have to rule our worlds: we have every bit the right to define it as they do. For us, the norm is not and does not have to be femininity bound to femaleness bound to boobs and vulvas, or masculinity bound to maleness bound to dicks and flat-chestedness.

Perhaps it's not so for most people, but in our world, everything can be mixed up. It's beautiful, and it's okay. We are allowed our big, crazy salad of gendered and ungendered traits and tendencies and desires.

I'm not attracted to the type of femininity I am because of my "femininity," nor because of my "masculinity." We have no language to describe other traits, but I'm attracted to the type of femininity I am because my genderedness relates to the genders of people I'm attracted to in the way it does. I don't have long hair because I'm part woman. I also don't have to justify my long hair as part man. I feel badass with long hair and it's a perfect expression of my genderedness, and that's why I have long hair. I feel free and powerful in a flat chest and my South African accent - who knows what the hell the latter item has to do with my gender, but apparently it does. I do with my gender whatever makes me comfortable, I'm not trying to please or appease cishet society. That's the point of empowerment: getting rid of boundaries you may never have even thought you had, gaining the freedom and power within your own self to achieve the state of mind that allows you to completely and fully be.

So no, I'm not sure I like describing my gender in terms of "transmasculinity." Because I'm a man-ish transfeminine FAAB genderfuck of a mess, and I love it this way. I wouldn't have it any other way.