a post about gender
Jan. 3rd, 2020 01:36 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
I got rid of a bunch of clothes today, or rather bagged them up to take to Goodwill. Some stuff was too small, most of it I just didn't like. Most of it was stuff I was given for free or got for cheap from charity shops. I have always taken an approach to clothes that can be summarized as "is it sort of comfortable? does it not make me feel horrible to wear? okay, that's fine, let's go."
When I lived with my mom I acquired a lot of slightly feminine-looking clothing that "flattered" my "figure" and were just the right side of weird that she didn't give me a disapproving look. In deference to everything about my actual personality, they tended to be tomboy-leaning and not very bright colours. The end result was a wardrobe filled with bland things that didn't make me feel good to wear. At best, they just made me feel....not bad.
Which is fine. I just didn't really get that clothes could make you feel good. It's the kind of thing that never seemed worth the effort before because I didn't like the body I had well enough to feel good in clothes that felt like me. I mean, like, what can you do when you're wearing an outfit that feels perfect, but it's spoiled by being on you?
I am very slowly replacing my wardrobe with things that I actually love and that feel stylistically coherent. It's taking a while because I don't have very much money, and I still shop largely at charity shops. That is okay. Bowman keeps buying me things I really love for occasions, and even my lounging clothes feel better now -- I bought a pair of sweatpants that look like scifi fatigue trousers and I love them a lot. I am starting to get a better sense of how I actually want to look as I go, too.
This is all true but it's also kind of a metaphor for transition. When I first came out, I thought, like many genderqueer people, that I would never feel any need to transition. I wasn't even sure I'd want they/them pronouns in real life. I was like, okay, well, my body is fine and I don't have any dysphoria so this will just be private.
It's been....god...six? years since I came out, plus a few months, and I was wrong in almost every particular, except that my initial sense of my gender (as "gender labels feel itchy so I guess I'm agender, but in a slightly androgyne way") is very similar. I do have dysphoria. And physically transitioning is very slowly taking my body from something that makes me feel, at its very best, not bad, into something that I think will maybe one day make me feel good.
I have some pieces that are pretty good now. Not to be TMI but bottom growth on T, even after just three months, has made me happy in a way that i absolutely did not anticipate. For a long while it was like "I don't have bottom dysphoria so I don't want to go on T and see things change" but I was completely wrong! It's awesome! Not even for any coherent, explicable reason. I guess it just feels like, finally I have a coherent sign that this is not the body of a woman anymore. It's the body of some sort of...Something Else.
(This is not something I would say about any woman whose body looked exactly like mine. Obviously. It would not be true for her.)
Most of the things I like (my calves are bigger, my face is changing in subtle ways, my shoulders are getting slightly wider, my leg hair is getting darker) aren't even things I particularly wanted. They just make me look less...intelligible.
I have some tunics and dresses stored away to wear one day when I've progressed further. I'm still not really much of a skirt person overall, but it'll be nice not to be limited to a certain type of clothes by the thought that my body is betraying me.
So, things are still changing. I might not get top surgery in the form I thought I wanted; maybe I don't want a flat chest, maybe I just want a reduction. (If true, this is annoying, because my sister and mother are both quite small-chested and if I'd just gotten the right genes I could have avoided surgery in the first place, drat it.) I've decided I almost certainly want bottom surgery (just simple meta), which three years ago I would never have thought I'd be interested in.
I'm thinking about fully changing my name. I still don't know what to yet. Am I ready to let go of Katrina-variants? I guess we'll find out.
When I lived with my mom I acquired a lot of slightly feminine-looking clothing that "flattered" my "figure" and were just the right side of weird that she didn't give me a disapproving look. In deference to everything about my actual personality, they tended to be tomboy-leaning and not very bright colours. The end result was a wardrobe filled with bland things that didn't make me feel good to wear. At best, they just made me feel....not bad.
Which is fine. I just didn't really get that clothes could make you feel good. It's the kind of thing that never seemed worth the effort before because I didn't like the body I had well enough to feel good in clothes that felt like me. I mean, like, what can you do when you're wearing an outfit that feels perfect, but it's spoiled by being on you?
I am very slowly replacing my wardrobe with things that I actually love and that feel stylistically coherent. It's taking a while because I don't have very much money, and I still shop largely at charity shops. That is okay. Bowman keeps buying me things I really love for occasions, and even my lounging clothes feel better now -- I bought a pair of sweatpants that look like scifi fatigue trousers and I love them a lot. I am starting to get a better sense of how I actually want to look as I go, too.
This is all true but it's also kind of a metaphor for transition. When I first came out, I thought, like many genderqueer people, that I would never feel any need to transition. I wasn't even sure I'd want they/them pronouns in real life. I was like, okay, well, my body is fine and I don't have any dysphoria so this will just be private.
It's been....god...six? years since I came out, plus a few months, and I was wrong in almost every particular, except that my initial sense of my gender (as "gender labels feel itchy so I guess I'm agender, but in a slightly androgyne way") is very similar. I do have dysphoria. And physically transitioning is very slowly taking my body from something that makes me feel, at its very best, not bad, into something that I think will maybe one day make me feel good.
I have some pieces that are pretty good now. Not to be TMI but bottom growth on T, even after just three months, has made me happy in a way that i absolutely did not anticipate. For a long while it was like "I don't have bottom dysphoria so I don't want to go on T and see things change" but I was completely wrong! It's awesome! Not even for any coherent, explicable reason. I guess it just feels like, finally I have a coherent sign that this is not the body of a woman anymore. It's the body of some sort of...Something Else.
(This is not something I would say about any woman whose body looked exactly like mine. Obviously. It would not be true for her.)
Most of the things I like (my calves are bigger, my face is changing in subtle ways, my shoulders are getting slightly wider, my leg hair is getting darker) aren't even things I particularly wanted. They just make me look less...intelligible.
I have some tunics and dresses stored away to wear one day when I've progressed further. I'm still not really much of a skirt person overall, but it'll be nice not to be limited to a certain type of clothes by the thought that my body is betraying me.
So, things are still changing. I might not get top surgery in the form I thought I wanted; maybe I don't want a flat chest, maybe I just want a reduction. (If true, this is annoying, because my sister and mother are both quite small-chested and if I'd just gotten the right genes I could have avoided surgery in the first place, drat it.) I've decided I almost certainly want bottom surgery (just simple meta), which three years ago I would never have thought I'd be interested in.
I'm thinking about fully changing my name. I still don't know what to yet. Am I ready to let go of Katrina-variants? I guess we'll find out.
no subject
Date: 2020-01-03 07:22 pm (UTC)I read through this post with a giant smile on my face and a general sense of glee, which doesn't translate particularly well to text, but which I wanted to share with you.
no subject
Date: 2020-01-03 08:09 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-01-03 08:01 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-01-03 08:10 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-01-03 08:04 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-01-03 08:15 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-01-04 02:28 am (UTC)also YEAH the way things change is really weird. I didn't have bottom dysphoria until after I got top surgery, but now I'm saving up for bottom surgery.
no subject
Date: 2020-01-05 01:42 am (UTC)I guess it's like, one feeling is muting the rest and when the one goes away the others emerge, but it really is startling.