I’m confused about my gender identity.

[niveeda]

Let me apologize in advance because i always write way too much. I can’t share this with anyone else so here we go..

 

I’ve always lived my life as a..person.

I never thought that it would be so hard to say my gender out loud until they asked me at school about my gender and sexuality.

The first thought that popped up in my head was “I am a girl because i have a vagina� but at that moment i couldn’t say those words.

I’m not sure why. It seemed pretty obvious but It didn’t feel right somehow. I couldn’t be sure about it, so it was not as obvious as it should have been. I guess.

I don’t ‘feel’ like a girl. I think. I’m not sure about anything at the moment...

I mean i have been offended many times when people talk about me being a woman and what not.

Why? I’m not sure..and that has been disturbing me for a very long time now.

 

I was raised in a very homophobic family with a very dominating culture.

My brother is supportive no matter what i do. But i can only talk to him. He can’t help me even if he wants to do so.

And my parents would leave me without hesitation if i did something “shameful� or “unnatural�.

That’s what they told me a while ago.

I was very isolated as a kid. I had to endure a lot of rules because i’m a girl. But my brother had all the freedom in the world. I have a little more freedom today but..it’s pretty much the same situation.

So i’m carrying around A LOT of frustration.

I thought maybe that’s why i don’t want to be a girl but it’s not that simple..

 

As a kid i don’t remember a lot (expect all the bad things that happened then) so i can’t say i liked all the girly things i had to do back then. Like being all dolled up and wearing big puffy dresses.

Maybe i did. I was only a kid so it doesn’t matter..i guess..?

I mean I hate wearing a dress today..

Today i can’t imagine doing those things.

I’ve tried and i’ve been forced to try to be more feminine. I felt uncomfortable most of the time. I rarely felt good in it. I don’t necessarily feel ugly as a girl so many times i saw a pretty girl in mirror and other times i was just ugly. I can’t describe the feeling in any other other way than that. I felt ugly and uncomfortable.

So i appreciated compliments. I had moments when i tried to wear makeup and a dress. I just wanted to be accepted by others. So it made me happy to see others giving me compliments and not criticize me in a negative way when i tried to do what i thought every other girl was doing. Other people told me that’s not me. Not sure how i felt about that..

Friends and family has called me a tomboy though, saying that i dress like a boy and i act like a boy. I don’t know but i liked those comments. Maybe it’s odd but I felt proud.

I’ve been daydreaming about looking like a boy too.

Wearing clothes from the men’s department + pulling off a stylish short haircut + hit the gym for a masculine body = you see what i’m talking about?

 

Today I don’t like my upper body i didn’t realise it but i’ve been trying to hide it a few times..whenever people started noticing my tits. Also I’ve never liked my voice and i don’t like my hair. I’ve always had super long hair and my mom never let me get a haircut..

 

So somehow i wish i could make all this daydreaming become my reality. But at the same time, I don’t know why i have this strong desire to make this happen.

Do i really want this?

 

I know i’d lose most of the people in my life if i started looking like a boy no matter what my intentions are. Even if that means i only end up cutting my hair shorter and start wearing clothes from the men’s department.

I know i could let my hair grow and i could change my clothes if I change my mind in the future.

If not, i could move forward and make this official. Whatever this is.

 

I have so many questions though. I have no idea why i feel this way. Why i don’t wanna be seen as a woman and why i have all these ideas of “becoming� a man in the future.

Honestly I’m so tired of standing in the middle.

I try to be feminine or whatever and I hate it. I hate how people look at me. I hate how people treat me. I hate how people assume things about me.

I try to be a little more like myself and people hate me for it. People judge me and they wanna change me.

In the end i’m always unhappy and standing in the middle with many confusing thoughts in my head.

 

There’s so many different things out there and i’m learning about those things now.

I feel very overwhelmed.

Someone told me i might be dealing with gender dysphoria.

Is that possible if i didn’t mind my gender when i was much younger?

Many people are saying they’ve been dealing with it since they were much much younger.

I can’t say when all of this started for me because of other reasons but it’s been quite a while now. A few years.

The more i think about it the more i start obsessing over making all these changes as soon as possible.

 

Honestly i’m freaking out over this because i’m dealing with these thoughts every day now. Before it was not this like this. This is intense. The feeling has been there for a very long time but this is becoming an obsession. This is gonna sound ridiculous but sometimes i kinda try to make my voice more masculine (if you know what i mean)..without knowing i’m doing it. Imagining me as a boy in the future is very unsettling but very exciting.

I don’t know what to do

Edited July 20, 2019 by niveeda

[Remi]

Hello Neveeda,

 

Welcome to our community and thank you for being really brave and sharing this with us here.

 

I hear that you are feeling confused and frustrated lately, but it is perfectly normal to question your gender through your teens.

 

I have included this resource which I always find really helpful when talking about gender as it is never enitrely black and white or binary we all exist within a spectrum and gender performance and gender indentity can be separated. Have a little look over The Genderbread Person and see what you think?

 

I think it's important to remember that there is no 'right' way or 'wrong' way to be a woman. If you feel like presenting your femaleness with short hair and masculine clothes then that is absolutely your choice. And maybe before exploring anything too deeply you could just start by making some subtle changes such as making your hair a little bit shorter and not wearing make up or dresses.

 

Personally I identify as quite a masculine woman because I am very confident and bold and I don't like to wear make up or dresses but I still feel like a woman - so you can have some of the qualities you want without feeling male however only you will know your true feelings right now.

 

Give yourself time and patience on this journey and I would recommend making some small personal choices now to make you feel a bit more comfortable in your identity.

 

I hope some of this helps you.

 

Remi

Genderbread-Person-v4-POSTER.zip

[Lauren or Tom]

Hi Niveeda,

 

I have experienced the same thing. I was born girl too and all the way up to puberty, I was fine with my gender as I was a kid, I never gave two shits.

When I hit puberty, my mum reckons I got scared of everything. You know, periods, boobs, the lot. This was when I started to fight with my mum on what to wear and she would try to get me to wear something more formal like a dress if we were going out for dinner etc. I didn't want to wear that, I wanted to wear more masculine clothes. My mum just didn't get it but she would say different tho. My mum would complain that I never had clothes but whenever I agreed to go shopping (yay) it would turn into female clothes shopping. Even the actual shirts that were more female made me uncomfortable and depressed. If I wasn't depressed then, I was close enough.

I eventually won and my clothes always now consist of a cap, a shirt and jeans. Whenever we go out formal, I wear flannel and jeans. I love jeans btw. To hind my boobs, since I don't have a binder (I'd love one), I use hoodies and layers for now but since I live in Australia and it's nearly summer, I have to get a binder soon.

I cried so much during those years and a friend introduced me to the term, tomboy, and that was what I called myself but my mum didn't want me to label myself things like that. She's never been homophobic or anything but whenever I would tell her that I was a tomboy, she'd deny me and she would tell me to be myself and not label myself. Only I am trying to be myself and some people need to label themselves. My username had the word 'tomboy', I wanted my licence plate to say 'tomboy' because I knew what I was and I was proud of it.

I was also at an all-girls school for high school and that really made me think that I was different from all of my peers. We had to wear dresses down to our ankles and I hated the stupid rules and excuses the school had and it was the way my mind worked was different from all of those girls.

I only lasted a couple of years as I had retreated so much into myself and I was having trouble with a couple of friends. My mum knew this and after my mind finally gave up, she homeschooled me for a year and now I'm here at the school I'm at now. I love this school, my whole bloody school accepts me for being me.

I had only heard of the term transgender once when I was younger but I didn't know what it meant, then at the start of this year, I was on wattpad reading a story about a trans boy born girl and he said that he would be so upset whenever his mum would force him into a dress. I related to him so much. That was when I started to research and that was how I found myself on Ditch the Label.

My parents found out and like I said my parents accept the LGBT community. My dad accepts me no matter what but my mum just does not want me to label myself and told me what she's been telling me what she's said for years. BE ME.

Ever since this year, I've discovered things that I never knew about myself. I'm asexual and aromantic. I think I'm non-binary and I've gotten the friends who I trust to call me, Tom, and somehow my teachers know but one of my teachers call me, Tom. Of course, I can't ask my mum to see someone because I don't know whether she accepts me and my dad, I don't really talk to my dad about my feelings because I think it makes me look vulnerable to him.

 

My tip to you if your questioning your gender is to find someone who's gone through a similar process.

At my school, I have a trans boy. He's super nice. I can bounce my ideas off him and he'd give me some tips but that only happens when I feel confident.

 

Hope this helps,

Tom