What the hell is my gender identity?
(22 transfem)
I'm about to have bottom surgery, and before that time, I want to figure out some of the finer points of my gender identity. Like, ok, I know for a fact that I am not cis and I'm not a man. The part that's consistent is that I like dressing/presenting feminine and I want a body that is more typically female - I also want people to assume I am a girl based on my appearance.
But there's other things that are a lot more inconsistent. Sometimes, my brain is very insistent I am a woman, I want people to refer to me exclusively by she/her pronouns and feminine terms. Other times, I feel a bit of discomfort being gendered female, and would prefer people call me by they/them, just not look at me in a gendered way at all. Sometimes, the idea of having breasts and a vagina feels very right to me, because I'd "look like a woman" so to speak. Other times, having these parts feels right, but I don't like the sort of gendered connotations that comes with it, y'know? I love the fact that I can kiss girls in a gay way. But sometimes I'm sad that as a girl I can't also kiss boys in a gay way. But sometimes I like kissing boys in a straight way too.
I also spend a lot of time in a sort of confused, like, in-between state, which I don't know wtf I want?
I don't know if it makes sense to describe this as my gender "switching" from girl to nb and back - or if it's that my identity varies in its intensity, or if I'm somehow both?!? Which, like, how can I simultaneously be neither a girl or boy, while at the same time being a girl?
Am I just a confused/insecure trans girl who just doesn't see herself as "enough" of a girl? Or am I a very femme nonbinary person who's too stuck in binary gender-norms to accept themself as an nb? Or is there something to the idea of that "bothness" to my gender?
Posted Mar 2, 2026, 4:02 PM UTC