When You Don’t Feel Cis or Trans Enough
By: W.E. Massoud
Tags: Culture, Questioning, Non Binary, Transgender, LGBTQ

When You Don’t Feel Cis or Trans Enough

Navigating your identity without a community

Photo by Nigel Tadyanehondo on Unsplash

I’ve been questioning my gender identity since middle school. Probably longer. I don’t question it because of overt gender variance. I don’t fit that narrative of the female-bodied individual who doesn’t conform to society’s expectations of gender.

I don’t get along better with boys. I neither have traditionally masculine interests nor do I have predominantly masculine traits. I don’t consider myself to be a feminine person, but I’m certainly not masculine either. As a result of this, I’ve spent years pushing my gender identity to the back of my mind. However, it always finds a way to resurface.

Externally, I do not stand out among most women, but internally, I’ve never felt a sense of belonging. For some time, I rejected femininity to find some answers on who I was. I wasn’t fond of wearing dresses or carrying handbags because in my mind, those things were associated with women.

Then I realized that the problem wasn’t wearing dresses or expressing femininity. It was trying to fit myself into a binary gender and convincing myself that I was a girl.

When I accepted I may not have been cis after all, wearing dresses, putting on makeup, shaving certain parts of my body and doing other things deemed “feminine” didn’t bring the same discomfort they used to. Wearing clothing from the men’s section or wearing my hair short didn’t make me feel any more authentic, even though I enjoy that at times.

I have a strong preference for gender-neutral language and pronouns being used for me, but I don’t have an attachment to a specific gender expression. Neither masculinity nor femininity represent my “true” self.

Most days, I pass for a cisgender girl, and society sees me as one, and that comes with a lot of privilege. It’s a double-edged sword due to the erasure that follows, but I acknowledge the difference between battling the internal struggles of an identity versus dealing with the external consequences of that identity. Using the women’s restroom isn’t completely fitting, but I can use one with relative ease without causing a commotion. I don’t face discrimination due to my gender expression/identity on a daily basis or battle unbearable dysphoria to the point of needing sex-reassignment surgery.

That’s why I continue to try to shove the turmoil around my gender identity into the depths of my mind. I try to convince myself it’s all in my head. Maybe, I am trying to be a “special snowflake.” Maybe, my problems aren’t legitimate.

But this conundrum always returns. Something always triggers some form of dysphoria. Something someone says. Something that’s a natural part of being biologically female. Something most cisgender girls wouldn’t linger on. I try to tell myself I’m cis, but then I remember that most cisgender people don’t think about their gender identity this much.

Everyone thinks about gender, but most cis people navigate it in the context of society’s expectations, gender discrimination, toxic mindsets related to gender and other comparable downfalls of trying to fit people into predetermined boxes. A cis person may question their manhood or womanhood due to not fitting a mold, but most cisgender individuals don’t question being a man or a woman.

I identity as AFAB— assigned-female-at-birth— but I can’t identity as a woman without that familiar dissonance rearing its ugly head. The same dissonance that’s there every time someone refers to me as girl, woman, sister, daughter or any other gendered language. It doesn’t matter how much I try to convince myself I’m cis or live my life like a cis person, that mental unrest persists. That incongruity of who I am and who everyone sees me as makes itself known.

That’s why the term queer resonates with me. It embodies not only my bisexuality but also my gender identity. Most people are not aware of this because I’m more vocal about my bisexuality than I am about my gender identity, but I know, and that brings me solace. I wish I had the same insight and openness in my gender identity as I do in my bisexuality, but part of this is because I know I have a place in the bi/pan community. I feel validated, despite rampant biphobia. I cannot say the same about being non-binary. It’s an arduous task to explore and confirm your identity when you don’t feel deserving of the support of a community.

Instead of being firm in my gender identity, I’m left in a state of perpetual confusion and questioning. I feel like an outsider among cisgender women, even though I’ve lived my life like so many of them and I face sexism and misogyny on a regular basis. I’ve always wondered why the label of woman can’t just fit. It’s not internalized misogyny because I love and support women, as family, friends, and potential romantic/sexual partners. I wish that label felt right. I want to feel a sense of solidarity with people who I share similar experiences with.