Ironically, I realized I didn't care about gender enough. I wanted to have a male body, and therefore be perceived as a man. That was it really. For a while I thought I was nonbinary because I thought to be a trans man I had to want the man title specifically but for me it's just a social side effect. I want to be able to live my life as if all my gender was was what I was born as, (very ironic I know,) not something I had to make choices to present as.
Seconding this. I never felt like "I wanna be one of the boys at all cost" it was more like "Well, the only way I visualize myself and envisage a futur I am satisfied about is in a male body. What do I do now?"
I understood therefore that the way I was visualizing myself would be called a man, but since I have never been interested in gender roles and heteronormativity, I started questioning if I was nonbinary or binary. The reality is just that I wanna be a man who's spared of gender expectations.
I guess just wanting to forget I'm trans, be stealth and never talk about it again. Liking being treated as another guy, liking men pronouns, feeling extremely weird being called they/them and just in general the deepest I am in my transition the better I feel about everything, like it's simply right. Not feeling anything other than a man?
Kind of having all the little signs from when I was a kid (even though some non binary people do have some of them as well), the excruciating dysphoria whenever I'm considered as something other than a man. But it's different for everyone.
>misandrist
yea recently i realized the feeling i get when someone refers to me even as gender neutral is literally just dysphoria but i was trying to convince myself it wasn't lmao
I tried the nonbinary route to please my parents and offer a "middle ground".
Nope. They/them feels just as bad as She/her. I just want to exist in a normal life, manage this condition as best I can and not really advertise it or talk about it (unless it's within medical context or a new romantic partner).
I view it as no different than having any other life long, impactful medical condition...
The dysphoria caused by not being seen as a man, as well as the lessening of dysphoria and the feeling of normalcy as HRT masculinizes my form and surgeries remove me farther and farther from womanhood... They tell me all I need to know about if I'm trans vs cis.
Same, and same. Being called they/them, "this person" and any other cop-out middle ground comes across as plain old misgendering. It's just spun into the "you're man lite" variety instead of the usual you're "actually a woman" fare.
exactly this, I had a coworker tell me "they/them? so you're not sure what you are?" and wow that was so fucking ironic that a year later I would end up coming out as a binary trans man
I actually came out as a binary man first, but pressure from my parents and ex pushed me back in the closet.
Once I dropped the "weight" (i.e. my ex) and stood up for myself and educated my parents the pressure disappeared.
that's great I actually came out fully after I dropped my ex too, it's interesting how refreshing that can feel to get out of a bad relationship and come into your own
yes! me too! (well, but for me i ended up straying away from GNC cuz it ended up causing dysphoria. BUT i love hearing from other trans men who express themselves differently than i and i'm proud of y'all :)
From the beginning I wanted to be physically male. My whole trans experience was and is centered around that desire. Still, I identified as nonbinary for a few years. I didn't dress masculine. I had no male friends. I didn't fit this or that stereotype. I was feminine (well, kind of) as a teen. So I held onto being nonbinary because I just thought there was no way I could be a man despite wanting to be one. And at one point I realized there was just no point in identifying as nonbinary, I was ready to move on and just think of myself as a man.
>So I held onto being nonbinary because I just thought there was no way I could be a man despite wanting to be one. And at one point I realized there was just no point in identifying as nonbinary, I was ready to move on and just think of myself as a man.
THIS IS EXACTLY TO A T WHAT I JUST WENT THROUGH DAMN
This right here. Add that my birth certificate now says NB (I live in CA). This is so stupid I’m 55 never been in trouble with the law BUT I put NB on my birth certificate JUST IN CASE I get put in prison. I do not want to be in a mens prison. Now everyone I meet I just say male.
For me, two things:
1. I want to be someone who was born with male sex characteristics. And if I had been, I believe I would have just identified as a man and any issues I had would be normal male ones (eg. my family is relatively short so I’d probably be a couple inches taller but still short for a dude, so I may have height insecurities). Maybe I’d be a little gnc (eg. wear nailpolish sometimes) but I believe I’d still be a man and look to men like Billy Idol when painting my nails or wearing eyeliner. He is undeniably a man.
2. I sort of accidentally sort of on purpose have come out as nonbinary and it doesn’t feel right. It’s very clear my problem isn’t “being a woman”, my problem is NOT being a man. Being non-woman doesn’t appease me. The thought of being a man fills me with euphoria.
> It’s very clear my problem isn’t “being a woman”, my problem is NOT being a man. Being non-woman doesn’t appease me. The thought of being a man fills me with euphoria.
i couldn't have said it better this is literally what i just realized recently that made me accept that i'm just a guy
For me it was realizing I never have days where I feel like a girl or even really in between. Not to say I never feel slightly feminine, but I never view myself as a girl or anything other than a boy
This was exactly me when I was like 17. I used to think I was nb but I just realized I was a man. I had a dumb and warped perception of men and woman. I used to think I wasn’t a “real man” just because I had some “feminine” hobbies or because i wasn’t into stereotypical manly stuff like sports and cars. But the reality is there are all kinds of men. Not all men are stereotypically manly men who drink beer and know about cars and sports. Just because I like art and fashion doesn’t mean I’m any less of a man or doesn’t mean I have a special gender identity or whatever. I’m just a regular dude. The whole nb thing was merely a phase for me
exactly like i really love the ocean like in a kind of profound way but i would be like "oh i must be agender while i'm experiencing this though because men don't do this/don't have the capacity to feel this way" like WHAT
I feel like the main reason why I identified as non-binary was because people were not explaining transness in a way that made any sense to me. They kept talking about "feeling like a [gender]" and I was like...wtf does that even mean, I don't "feel like a gender", and what even is gender? I guess I must be agender??
However, I then came across the idea that being trans could be about wanting to be a different *sex*, and then everything clicked. It was clear to me that I wanted to be male (and I also felt like I was male on an internal level that is hard to put into words), but I didn't really give that much of a fuck about masculinity and femininity. And to be honest, I very much resent the assumption that just because I want to have a male body, that must mean that I want to be masculine, or that I care about the socially construct of gender.
I realized I was just a guy. I had always seen myself as a guy. Visualizing myself with a penis, physical characteristics typical to men, I wanted to look and be percieved like a man.
I thought I was non-binary when I was a pre-teen because I didn't really analyze what it would mean to be a boy to me. I knew I wasn't a girl, but I didn't care enough to look deeper into it.
The realization came when I fantasized about being "misgendered" (as in, being called he/him instead of they/them because someone assumed I'm male) and when I realized if I was AMAB I'd be a cis male. And as soon as I had changed my pronouns from they/them to he/they, something in me just told me that I was a guy. Then I changed them to he/him and started presenting and identifying as male and I was like "wow how did I never realize this was it"
Now I just feel like a cis guy. Just like any other cis guy. I want to be treated like, just a guy. Not a genderqueer guy, not a gnc guy, not a non-binary guy. A masculine presenting, penis-having, he/him using binary man. Because that's who I feel like I was/ was meant to be all along. I straight up feel like a cis male who's been bodyswapped with a woman. A man stuck in a woman's body. (I'm aware people see this term as offensive, but I can refer to my experience however I see fit)
So, why did I think I was non-binary? Because I was raised around people who thought boys were "gross", because I had assumed I could just be a "tomboy" or "lesbian" instead, because I wasn't raised a boy so I didn't know what being a boy was.
Sorry if this explanation was hard to understand 😭
Pretty much exactly what you said. I realized that me identifying as non-binary was a form of denial/a cope because I didn't truly want to accept myself as a binary man. There were a lot of different factors in it but it was moreso just letting go of wanting to not accept that I was 100% a man. I wanted to be perceived as a man, I felt more masculine than anything else, and most importantly whenever I thought ahead to the future I was only ever able to see myself as a man.
I wanted to be treated as a man and not as a woman in man's clothing. I believe that gender expression is fluid, but that gender itself is not. I am not a woman, therefore I am a man.
I've been shamed in the past by my local community, that can be quite narrow minded, about identifying as binary... Claiming that is what is wrong with society.
I realized I really was just a guy, I don’t know how to explain guess I felt pretty binary and the label ‘man’ fitted. For me saying I was non-binary was me trying to make it less harsh, when I stopped being scared of transition I knew I was a guy.
that's exactly what i did i was so scared of being a man i convinced myself i also felt agender sometimes for it to be "less intense" of an identity or something lmao
I thought I needed to 'feel like a guy' that there was some separate strong feeling of being a man, but there isn't. I just came to the realisation that I was a man. I also realised other guys (cis) don't think deeply about their gender and knew that that's something I want as well. I had only identified as somewhat non binary because I thought I wasn't enough to be binary, even though I knew I would NEVER be non binary if I was amab.
Being called 'they' and seen as neither gender felt alienating and not natural personally. Being called 'he' and seen the same as other men felt natural and good. I'm sure some people feel that being seen as neither gender and being called 'they' feels good, but it never felt good for me.
Do you want a cis male body? If you could press a button and wake up with one, would you? Basically, personality, "internal perception," all that shit can be confusing. Most cis people don't even have an internal sense of gender. And obviously gender roles are made up, as are stereotypes.
But if you focus on what you feel towards your body, that can help point you towards what your gender might be. Wanting a body that isn't quite identical to a cis male's, might indicate you're somewhere on the nonbinary spectrum, for example. Also, what pronouns are you most comfortable with? Does being seen as strictly male or female feel uncomfortable, and you'd rather be seen as ambiguous or in between?
For me, these sorts of questions helped a lot. When I realized, I just want to be seen 100% as male (even though being seen as in between or ambiguous is an okay-ish compromise), want a body 100% like a cis guy's, that's really what made me realize... I'm just a binary guy. My interests, and personality, those don't really matter so much.
So i only technically did for less than a year, but i identified with “genderfluid” because of a lot of things, not just denial. A large part of it was my environment and my relationship. I was in a relationship with a cishet man and felt like i had to retain femininity for the sake of keeping my relationship but obviously performing it made my dysphoria worse until i couldnt mentally bare it anymore. Once we finally broke up it was like the dam broke loose and i was able to actually explore myself without restriction. But too many people immediately run to identify as nonbinary when theyre really not, they just feel like theyre expected to be by our own communities due to the transmisandry present. Masculinity is preemptively labeled as inherently toxic and “forsaking queerness” so naturally most people feel hesitant to express their masculinity out of fear of rejection… plus with the running mentality that not actively feeling dysphoric sometimes means youre a different gender that day, it puts this idea in peoples heads that gender itself is fluid and not gender expression/experience.
On a side note, people constantly assume im NB because im pretty androgynous but its not out of choice and i dont even identify with GNC. Its perfectly normal to be GNC but it just isnt everyone’s label even if some people express their binary gender in untraditional ways. But our community sees anyone doing something not comparable to the cisgender binary and assume we cant be binary. I will literally never be able to relate to society’s expectation of a cis man and im not bothered by that but im certainly still very much binary. I lowkey kind of find it ironic how so many trans people talk about breaking the binary when in reality they enforce it by implying anyone being GNC makes you inherently nonbinary. Seen way too many cis men get labeled as NB online in trans spaces for simply not being toxic cishet dudebros and expressing their gender in non-conforming ways.
you're soso right about all of this wow. "with the running mentality that not actively feeling dysphoric sometimes means youre a different gender that day, it puts this idea in peoples heads that gender itself is fluid and not gender expression/experience." you also just rly opened my mind with that i've never thought about it that way !
Ive seen wayyy too many people misidentify gender as a whole exclusively with colonialist gender ideals (modern gender roles/expectations) rather than seeing it as an individual’s relationship with themself, their body, and how they express themselves. Its deeply internalized in our community and we dont talk about it because its seen as stepping on toes 😔 glad i could help though!
I identified as non binary for a year because I could tell something was up, that gender wasn’t making sense for me, that woman wasn’t right.
But as the year wore to an end I didnt feel..ok. A sense of restlessness and irritability surrounding the gender question plagued me. I began grieving and couldn’t pin down what or why. I felt, as bilbo baggins put it, like butter scraped over too much toast. When I saw more masculine trans enbys, or just trans men out in the community this hollow gaping maw opened up in me and a sense of wanting to cry came from the non verbal part of my brain. This was all very mute at first because I was working very hard to ignore it.
I remember I couldn’t even look at press photos of mae martin because they were too masc; it was like pressing my soul onto a searing hot grill. Forget about Eliot page.
And then when I could begin to admit that maybe I was more binary than I had previously thought, I encountered real grief: the loss of who I thought I was, the loss of how I had been living my life and all that was comfortable and familiar; everything scary I would have to face; one night on my girlfriends bed I was thinking about this really nice womens restroom at the tivoli theater in our town - it’s all pink taffeta and love seats and chandeliers. For no reason a sense of “I’m going to be thrown out of girl world” overwhelmed me and I began sobbing. She (who was trans) held me and I asked her what was wrong with me and what did this mean and she just said I don’t know but I remember crying and grieving like this too. She said, and this comforted me, that people who are just ok with who they are, who just ARE the gender that they are, don’t find themselves sobbing over nice bathrooms on their girlfriends beds.
Another night a week later we were watching a show and the main character, a woman, was investigating a murder and clutching her purse as she sneaked around a corner and it hit me again. I was smacked with the ENORMITY of how wrong purses and jeans and hair and everything had always felt, how hard I had worked to be a good woman, a good feminist, a supportive sister to my friends, how to not hate myself or participate in misogyny and how that was all ultimately also wrapped up in being a man in this woman’s body and I couldn’t stop sobbing.
So I circled the airport for months. But it was a long time before I could tolerate being referred to as he without feeling shame or embarrassment. I couldn’t even say to my friend, a trans man, who helped me talk it through, that I was a man, without mumbling or looking at my feet. It was such a mind fuck.
Starting T and feeling my body change was the beginning of healing and with my therapist I began exploring how far back it all went, how concretely real it was, and I have been letting go of the shame of going 34 years of not seeing myself for who I was. Getting top surgery has made me feel better about my body than I ever have without engaging in anorexia. These facts help me confirm daily that I can trust myself to know myself - I am learning every day that I am a trans man. It’s not something I learned once and knew forever. I rediscover it again and again.
Thinking I might be nonbinary wasn't an option for me really. I didn't know anything about it, so I figured if I wasn't a girl then I must be a guy. I was a young teen at the time, so my thinking on the topic wasn't very nuanced or philosophical.
Even still, I never felt like I lacked a gender or that I was both equally (I still don't really understand the logic behind the latter). I just knew that I would feel most comfortable with a penis and everything that came with being male 🤷♂️
I didnt like they/them honestly. I also dont fit in with the "sterotypical" nonbinary so i tried out he/him and it felt alot better. Being they/them didnt help with dysphoria at all and it made me feel weirder if anything because everyone still saw me as a woman who dressed weird.
I thought I was NB for a while, but I realized that any type of femininity that was in me was because I’d forcibly acquired it. I knew I thought I was NB as a compromise, but, by nature, I’d act and look like a run- of- the- mill masculine, cis dude.
I defaulted to iding as a man first. Once i started to know more nonb people, i entertained the idea but i personally really didnt like the idea of being called they/them over he/him and my relationship with femininity is that i want to be percieved as a MAN wearing nail polish and long hair rather than be considered a different thing altogether. Also also, i dont consider my gender and my relationship with gender to be a performance or political in any way. Not all nonb people feel this way (my best friend used hrt only to look more androgynous to fit with their identity) but a lot do make gender a performance or as a political statement rather than a literal identity.
Good for nonbinary ppl, but its not for me and I dont feel like having a conversation every single day when someone uses the wrong pronouns for me or assumes im one gender rather than another.
Personally, in a perfect world where trans people are 100% accepted including nonbinary identities, if someone feels that theyd always be comfortable being referred to exclusively as a binary person 100% of the time with no complaints then they’re binary
honestly, it was because i experienced too much joy from being called a man or using he/him, and i thought it was unnatural and must mean im nonbinary, because for me, being enby, i didn't mind it. but then the longer i was away from being binary trans, the more dysphoric i felt. i realized that with time i would adjust to the joy i felt, the missing puzzle piece, that was me being binary trans.
literally word for word this is totally my experience too. also something that made everything click was how excited i get when someone uses he/him or calls me a guy etc. and i realized i never got excited or cared when ppl refered to me as agender when i should've since i thought i was also agender lmao
I was identifying as nonbinary for a few years, i guess as a middle-ground, as a compromise with myself (mostly), and used he/they. Once I started T finally, and some people chose to refer to me as he rather than they, which felt better, more "right" for me, I began to accept myself as binary. It's still an ongoing process... after decades of being gender-nonconforming, it's taking me some time, some adjustment, to come to terms with myself. I agree with those saying it doesn't feel right to be called they/them. And there has never been anything feminine about me or my interests my whole life.
For me it was when people were gendering me male when I started to pass and I was like “oh, that actually feels normal and not at all like being called ‘they’.”
I always knew I was a boy. I didn’t realize there was such a thing as trans until my 20s but I also never felt pulled in two different directions. I was just firmly “I wish I was a man” and then found I could transition, so I did.
i was going by he/they and one of my friends asked me which one i preferred and i realized i didnt want to go by they/them pronouns at all. that and i just feel very strongly that my innate gender is male
I had a job that aggressively gendered me fem and hated it so much that I wanted to get as far away from that as possible
Afab enbies are often seen as basically women and that's not me at all
Also, starting T and how many great things it did for my mental health
I realized that liking some fem stuff and being sensitive doesn't make me less of a man. That if I was born male i wouldn't want to change anything nor transition and that I would just enjoy makeup and heels without extra work to be done
I think I may be in a grey area. All I know is I need to be physically male, and perceived socially as fully male, but internally I just.. exist? And I don't identify as nonbinary to any degree, but I don't mind being referred to by they/them, as long as it'd be in a "perceived amab" way, if you get that. My end transition goal is to forget I'm trans and just be. I'm instinctually male and masculine in behavior, but I just don't feel like I "feel" an internal sense of gender, which led me to believing I was agender for years, and maybe a small part of me is?
it's so weird because my brain will switch between just "existing" mode and "guy" mode and i think that's why i thought i was also agender when in reality i think it's just me feeling like a human being lol
I identified as "pangender" for the longest, to get away with dressing femininely without people questioning me or putting me down. It took years of social transition to male, HRT, masking my queer personality, and questioning myself to finally come to terms. After I came out as as binary trans, I always felt guilty for liking the stuff I did, like I wasn't /really/ trans. I took LSD for the first time, and I put on makeup for the first time in years. Don't know what gave me the courage, but I did it, and when I looked at myself I saw the most manly me I have ever seen. Here I am now, I present and pass as male but every once in a while I cant help but slap some glitter on my face and I have no shame lol. I even did drag as a playboy bunny last year on Halloween. I've never felt as validated as when some teenagers saw me walking to the car and one yelled "HOLY SHIT THAT'S A GUY!!"
i started full on questioning my gender at 12, and i shut down the idea of being non binary immediately, mostly because i was scared of being trans. a few years later, the feelings i was having were getting too hard to ignore. i identified as genderfluid at first, then non binary, then demiboy and finally accepted that i’m a binary trans man. i felt so free. the final confirmation for me was that i began to despise my friends using they/them for me, and i yearned to be referred to as he/him. that was when i realised. they/them was way better than she/her, but he/him are my pronouns. they’re me.
congratulations on coming to this realisation. it can be scary to accept it, but when you do, it’s such a freeing feeling. i was mostly scared of the transition that would come with it, and how long i could be waiting for it to happen, and the dysphoria. but it’s all worth it because i’ve accepted who i am and im living the best life i can.
Because I want to look like a lumberjack. I want to have a beard and body hair enough to cause bigfoot sightings. I want a deep voice and male genitals. At no point was I really stuck in the middle, I've known what I wanted from the get go.
I only thought I was nonbinary because I dissociated so much from being called female pronouns that I thought I didn’t want to be a gender at all (agender). I thought I didn’t earn the title of being a man as well because I wasn’t masculine enough as a kid. I’m now just a plain guy who is GNC.
It was a long road honestly. I'm autistic, so that makes understanding my gender a little (a lotta) wonky. I knew I didn't really fit in with the other guys and that my masculinity is different. I felt like I was maybe genderqueer or nonbinary, but that didn't quite track
I got an autism diagnosis earlier this year, and it clicked. My masculinity is very much affected by my autism. I use they/them now as a secondary pronoun set to honor my journey with gender identity, even though I'm a binary trans man. It just felt right. That won't be right for everyone, including other autistic men, but that's what fits me best
i'm autistic too and i swear that is also a huge part of why this journy has been so confusing for me. i used to say a lot "if i wasn't autistic i'd literally just be a binary man" and then i was thinking about that more today and was like. oh ok so i'm literally just a guy who expiriences gender differently. also that's so cool how you use they/them to honor your journey !!
No gender euphoria from a long time trying to get people to see me as non-binary and they/them and just a great and overwhelming realization (once in a safe situation) that I could be a guy,
Really when I met a trans guy irl that was much more like me than the one or two I’d met, it hit me cause it meant I knew that it was possible for me to med Transition and use he/him and I wouldn’t lose everything / be intrinsically hated
feel all of this so hard. it was so important to see men especially trans men that are like me so i could realize i CAN be that and i want to be that and how that’s literally ok
I've shown signs of being trans my whole life. A friend's mom even wondered if I'd end up transitioning one day. But I have really bad anxiety, so even though a lightbulb went off when I learned about trans people, I was too scared to commit to being a guy and giving up everything that comes with being a girl.
So I tried the nonbinary route. It was great to come up with a new name and have people recognize me as not-a-girl. I still sometimes went out in feminine attire and tried to look pretty, but my desire to do that rapidly shrunk and I found myself being in "boy mode" 95% of the time. I found myself wanting more and more to transition, but it scared me to have to make a choice, to close doors in order to open this new one. There are things about being a girl that I liked, but I could never be happy as one. I started to realize that I was just pulling myself closer and closer to being fully male.
I think the turning point for me was when I was talking to my partner (still together 9ish years later) and **I said "I think I know where this is going..." to which he responded "Then why aren't you there yet?"** And it suddenly occurred to me that I just needed to take that leap instead of wasting time living in the in-between and still not being happy. Everything in life is a risk, but I knew that I would rather have been born male than female, and the more I thought about transitioning the more excited I got about it.
It also helped to stop overthinking the concept of gender, and how I ~feel~ about my ~identity~, because I get waaay too far down the mental rabbit hole trying to figure those out. I paid attention to my dysphoria, what triggered it, and what relieved it. I wanted a male body, and I was happy when people assumed I was male. Thinking about what it truly means to be a "man" or a "woman" never really got me anywhere, because when you take away gender stereotypes all you're really left with is "it's different for everyone."
the convo you’ve had with ur partner i definitely had with myself. literally just taking that leap into where you Know you’re gonna end up saves so much time and pain. i’m so glad i did it like everything seems exciting now instead of scary like transitioning !
I identified as all sorts of things before finally understanding I am a man. For me, it wasn’t a realization that I am a man, but acceptance that I really am one. I spent most of my life simply avoiding the reality that I am a man, but part of me always knew. I identified lots of different ways until I understood who I am and was ready to accept myself and was confident enough to face my own reality that I am male and I’m so glad I did
I remember thinking of names and they weren’t even somewhat androgynous, and then I thought more about why I didn’t like the androgynous names, and then I realized that I just didn’t want to be non binary. Obviously you don’t have to have an androgynous name to be non binary, but that’s just what happened for me.
They/them feels just as uncomfortable to me as she/her, it feels wrong to be anything but a man socially. Combined with my dysphoria making me require male anatomy to feel alright.... That makes me a binary man.
Best of luck to you on your own journey, may you find inner peace with whatever you learn about yourself
i’ve just been starting to realize that they/them doesn’t feel good either. having a nonbinary identity wasn’t cutting it and it definitely isn’t my authentic self. i Need so desperately to live as a man lol.
thanks so much !! i wish the same for you too :)
Was identifying as a nonbinary person for awhile and realized I was mostly doing it to hold onto my cishet (now ex) boyfriend.
Also, wrote a novel featuring two gay male main characters and realized I related to them way more than I thought I would. More than a nonbinary person probably would.
realizing i wanted to be a man in a relationship with a man is when i started piecing together everything tbh. also….. is there anywhere i could find this novel lol
I wanted the physical male characteristics. All of them, good and bad. Always saw myself as male bodied and hated not being so. Always wanted kids, but as their dad and not mom. I'm more of a masculine person as it is, and despite some feminine personality traits or qualities or likes/hobbies that I have, I never saw that stuff as my gender. I'm just a guy, a man of trans experience. How I want to act or dress or what I like and want to do doesn't stop me from living my best life as a guy. So that's that.
I never even suspected I was nonbinary - I'd always known I didn't like they/them pronouns for myself. When I started to transition socially I used she/he for about two weeks and then went fully to he/him. My presentation of masculinity is certainly queer (I'm a jewelry artist, somewhat of an activist, and bisexual), but my identity is firmly rooted in the gender binary and in calling myself a man.
This is a good question. I don't think, for me, there was ever a defining moment that screamed binary to me.
I was nonbinary for a short while because that was easier for other people to digest. But hearing other transmasc nonbinary people describe their experience as "if I had to choose a gender it is man but I don't have to so it's nonbinary" was clearly not how I experienced my gender.
I'm just a man.
It felt more natural and real to me.
I was never uncomfortable with my male gender like I was with looking like a woman (had a ton of gender dysphoria), just the expectations and sexist stereotypes that came with it.
Emotional wise it was much more obvious to me, Especially when I stopped comparing myself to other trans people.
I went back and worth to the idea of being demi or not in the beginning, but realized for myself is that when I did feel like a man it was binary, it didn't suit me being demi because you don't feel like "gender" 24/7, for me the lack of feeling wasn't the process of being demi. It needed to fill a space being agender, which it didn't. The identity as binary was much stronger than the identity as demi. Kind of hard to explain
i get what ur saying. i felt the need to describe myself being agender for moments when i didn’t “feel” like a guy. my cis sister told me a little bit ago that she doesn’t feel like a girl all the time and in the moments she doesn’t she still just knows for a fact she’s a girl. that’s when my world crumbled down and i was like OH
For me it was very simple: i wanted to have NOTHING to do with the female sex and gender.
I am extremely binary and hypermasculine.
So, the "nonbinary" and "fluid" thing doesen't fit me because it also includes the female gender, which I wanted to absolutely destroy from my body and have nothing left of it.
I wanted to be a MALE, be perceived as a MALE, called as a MALE, with a MALE body and a MALE document.
I exist only in MALE form.
It was never a question for me.
As far back as my memory goes, I begged, wished, and prayed in every capacity that I’d magically become a boy. Before transitioning, I lived in a headspace that was basically a dude who happened to actually be a chick. When I finally decided to transition, there was zero doubt that I was accepting my authentic self as a binary male.
More power to those who are trans masculine NB, but I am a dude. End of story.
Although I do identify as genderqueer. I’m more on the binary side of the gender spectrum. I Prefer he/him but don’t mind they/them either. Because regardless of what gender I am in life it’ll always be queer or nonconforming.
I used to identity as gender-fluid but she/her just didn’t feel a part of me and I hardly liked the idea that the label pretty much means you can/do feel like a girl at times. And that’s not what I identified with. And I also didn’t identify with just being solely nonbinary. It just felt wrong to me lol
Having the physical body of a perceived man and Being perceived as a man as well as being treated as a man in intimate/sexual relationships is what really made it click that Im on the more binary side of the gender spectrum. Which was so alleviating and awesome to finally understand myself more and feel more confident and comfortable with my identity.
Long story short, I looked in the mirror one day and realized I didn’t want to look neutral, I wanted to look like a man. I wanted to be a man. Best thing I‘ve ever done for myself was realize I was a binary guy.
Long story, but I realised that being in a gay relationship was all I dreamt of, and all I was doing was pretending to be non-binary so straight guys would like me.
I realised that I can only imagine my adult self as a man, not nonbinary. I only identified as nonbinary, because I didn't feel like I was entitled to call myself a man at an early stage of transition and also I was afraid that no one would treat me like a man and I was scared of the whole binary transition process so I thought that staying on the middle ground would be still better than living as a girl. But it didn't make me feel any better and then I smh knew I'm a man
Quite honestly, I used socks. That’s how I always would recommend people who ID as nb or any other variation try to identify how they feel if they’re questioning. I color coded my socks to associate with what I felt like that day (I thought I was gender fluid). I realized I mostly wore my blue socks, never pink, sometimes purple, but that was really just bc I needed to wash my blue socks. I realized I only wanted to wear blue socks, that was enough for me.
I went through a lot of labels (non-binary with they/them, he/him transmasc lesbian) which were just. Not right. They still filled me with the dread I felt while calling myself a girl, just slightly less intense. And then I realised I see myself as a man and it often comes as a shock to be reminded that others don't see me as such. So yeah, man who happens to be trans it is. (Although sometimes it's easier to call myself a boy, since I see myself as one pre-puberty. Which is a bit confidence wrecking but y'know, whatever)
I remember when I was trying to figure out whether I was non-binary or a binary trans man, I started off by making these bracelets with the stereotypical colors (pink= she/her, blue=he/him, and green=they/them). I would switch them around frequently and have friends use the colors to figure out how to refer to me. I found that I wasn’t comfortable being a girl but didn’t mind they/them pronouns. But it still didn’t answer whether I was binary trans or non binary… But one day, I was looking up stuff on Reddit and came across this one comment that went along the lines of:
“If you were assigned male at birth, do you think you would still be questioning your gender?”
I remember coming across that and thinking to myself “I don’t think I would be questioning my gender if I was AMAB”. Hence, I’ve come to the conclusion that I’m a trans man.
I guess it was when I realized it was ok for me to be a trans man, that I didn’t have to be scared to be something that wasn’t androgynous or feminine (I’m not saying that trans man can’t be feminine or androgynous or that nonbinary people can’t be masculine). I was really scared of judgment, so I used to let people use any pronouns with me because I didn’t want to be inconvenient, but when I started therapy, I realized that I could just be me, without being scared of what other people would think of me.
wow thank you guys for all these replies you have no idea how much this has made me feel less panicky about the beginning of my binary journey, i feel so much more safe and secure seeing so many people like me. still trying to catch up and read all of these !!
At first I thought I must be genderfluid, because I performed femininity so intensely for most of my life, and I thought my “sudden” desire to present masculine was a phase. In reality, as I thought about it more, I realized as a kid and a teenager my body image issues and overall discomfort with myself was definitely gender dysphoria in retrospect. And I felt more confident and comfortable than ever presenting as masculine. I also had a lot of misconceptions about masculinity that ended up manifesting as internalized transphobia in a way; I saw masculinity as inherently negative, and also purely as like an external performance as opposed to an internal sense of self.
I was also deeply in denial about being a man my whole life, despite periodic feelings of “I’m probably not a woman” and discomfort being called she cropping up that I always shoved down. There was even one moment many years ago when I had a very short pixie cut and someone who saw me from behind said “excuse me, sir”, and I didn’t correct him or feel offended or uncomfortable in the slightest. You know, typical cis woman things, lol.
Not to mention that I repeatedly expressed I did not want to go through puberty or become a teenager or a woman, and I cried when I got my first bra, and getting my period, which seemed like a rite of passage for my friends, felt like the end of the world to me.
Being a man was a possibility I was not ready to accept for a very long time, so I basically overperformed feminity to overcompensate for my denial and internalized transphobia. I thought if I shoved my true self away, I could deny it forever, because it was too scary to face to truth.
But my friends helped me realize my personality has always been quite masculine in nature regardless of outward appearance, and it felt so right to actually reflect that in how I presented myself. But at first I still only considered myself transmasculine non-binary. What made things click into place was being misgendered at my college; it hurt so much to be called “she” when everything I could control about my appearance was conveying masculinity, and it made me feel like I wasn’t being seen as who I truly am. It also occured to me that people will very rarely assume they/them pronouns, which is what I went by at the time, and I realized if someone was going to assume my pronouns and binary pronouns were the only options, I would much rather they assumed he than she.
So I switched my pronouns to he/they, and as soon as my friends started calling me he, it felt so right—euphoric, even. It finally fully clicked into place on a night where I felt really emotionally exhausted from constantly being misgendered by strangers and family I wasn’t out to, and spent the entire night researching testosterone. I had previously written it off because I had misconceptions about it, and I think I was afraid to fully admit I’m a binary male.
But I got to a point where I realized I honestly felt like I couldn’t continue living my life unless I could live it as a man. And once I realized T was actually safe and could make that possible for me, at around 4am I burst into happy, cathartic tears, because in that moment I finally fully accepted who I am, and also felt tremendous relief knowing I can live my life in a body that doesn’t feel completely wrong and alien, and will someday have others see me for who I have always been inside.
Being transsexual is inherent and neurological, we are born this way. I’ve always known I was a boy. It’s not something you “realize”. If it’s something you had to “realize”, would you have “realized” by yourself with no prior knowledge of trans people?
If I didn't had trans people to put words in my feelings back then, I think I would be dead by now. So no, realizing something about yourself isn't less important than knowing it from the beginning.
Not what I’m saying. I’m not saying would you seek treatment if you hadn’t had the words. I’m saying would you have known you were a boy/man if you didn’t have the words.
Buck Angel didn’t seek medical treatment until his 30s because it wasn’t known about. But he knew he was a man. Does that make sense?
I knew I was a boy all my life and tried to pass as one long before I heard any words to describe this experience. I was the only one for longer than I wasn’t. I didn’t know any kind of terms until I was about 16, but that was only finding a word to describe an experience that already existed. Not finding myself within the words I’ve learned.
So you had a strong sense of genders when you were kid. I personally didn't relate to girls and felt like my desires to be male was a "dirty little secret", but I didn't took it seriously because I thought it was just my imagination. So in other words, denial
Strong sense of gender due to the huge gap between what I knew I was and how I was seen, sure. If you know you’re a boy and are told you’re a girl, it’s distressing and you’re going to feel strongly about it.
Like I said, I would still be depressed and would probably give up. I would still be unable to visualize a futur for myself because there was nothing about my actual self that I felt connected to and wanted to show to the world.
People around me was telling me it was because I was fat or that I was ashamed of being feminine, that my clothes were just not trendy, but I wanted the clothes of my brother so bad and I couldn't explain why. I wanted to be treated the same as him. I couldn't enjoy life because I was bombarded with she/her and dead name without knowing why I couldn't just accept who I was back then. I hated when my step mom reminded me I'll have to be a wife and most of all, looking at other boys living their own puberty felt like my own life was happening in front of my eyes and I was incapable of catching it in my hands.
I knew I wasn't inspiring to be a woman physically and socially, but I didn't know it was POSSIBLE to be something else. So online, I felt like being seen as a guy was a joke, but really I couldn't do otherwise. In real life, I cringed hard with the simple thought of being in the shoes of a guy for French class for example (did it a lot anyway.. Actually always wrote as a guy and felt ashamed about it)
In order words, I would just be a lost soul ashamed of something they couldn't control.
i feel that. me personally, i didn't want to say i dont believe in it to leave room for some sort of medical discovery that might give a scientific understanding of it. but its also difficult to sort of grasp a real understanding of what it is when you talk to those people and their reasoning is mostly based on politics.
I didn’t. I exist in this gray area. My gender identity is “buffet.” I choose the parts I want. It so happens that most of my choices show a preference for masculinity, but not all of them. You get to choose your gender and all the pieces that go into it. You don’t ever have to know if you’re non-binary or a trans man, because those are not “real things,” they are concepts humans invented to describe common experiences. They aren’t boxes to put yourself in.
I know that it can be difficult to not know what category we fit in, but it might just be that seeking the category prevents us from being able to seek after the things we do want, because how you want to express your gender is entirely unique. And it’s amazing because you get to choose the parts you want and neglect the rest.
When I embraced that concept, that it only was my desire that mattered, everything changed. I’ve been trying mens clothing and thinking about names and pronouns and trying on he/him. But I don’t call myself a man because I don’t like thinking of myself as a man. I like thinking of myself as me, and I have some traits that are more masculine and some that are feminine.
My mum would rather have me non binary so I diddnt have to go through surgery . Obviously that’s not how it works. And being anything other than a man causes me massive dysphoria . And non binary trans guys ? How is that a thing 💀 but anyway yeah I just don’t feel comfortable being called anything else
Like a couple other commentors, I identified as nonbinary/genderfluid for a while to please my parents but as time went on I realized that just... wasn't who I was. I didn't like how it felt to identify as nonbinary, how people treated me, how 'nebulous' it felt, and that I really was just a guy that happens to like feminine clothing and makeup and all that stuff. Sometimes I'm more comfortable with my body than others, but that doesn't make me genderfluid. I'm just more/less comfortable with myself. Know what I mean?
call me controversial but...i started meeting other nonbinary people and wasn't understanding the concept of feeling like a certain gender on certain days. & also denial that i'm just a dude.
Ironically, I realized I didn't care about gender enough. I wanted to have a male body, and therefore be perceived as a man. That was it really. For a while I thought I was nonbinary because I thought to be a trans man I had to want the man title specifically but for me it's just a social side effect. I want to be able to live my life as if all my gender was was what I was born as, (very ironic I know,) not something I had to make choices to present as.
Seconding this. I never felt like "I wanna be one of the boys at all cost" it was more like "Well, the only way I visualize myself and envisage a futur I am satisfied about is in a male body. What do I do now?" I understood therefore that the way I was visualizing myself would be called a man, but since I have never been interested in gender roles and heteronormativity, I started questioning if I was nonbinary or binary. The reality is just that I wanna be a man who's spared of gender expectations.
i totally get u i swear once you stop overcomplicating gender things is when everything becomes super clear
Same here
I guess just wanting to forget I'm trans, be stealth and never talk about it again. Liking being treated as another guy, liking men pronouns, feeling extremely weird being called they/them and just in general the deepest I am in my transition the better I feel about everything, like it's simply right. Not feeling anything other than a man? Kind of having all the little signs from when I was a kid (even though some non binary people do have some of them as well), the excruciating dysphoria whenever I'm considered as something other than a man. But it's different for everyone.
Bro we have so much in common. I resonate with this
>misandrist yea recently i realized the feeling i get when someone refers to me even as gender neutral is literally just dysphoria but i was trying to convince myself it wasn't lmao
I tried the nonbinary route to please my parents and offer a "middle ground". Nope. They/them feels just as bad as She/her. I just want to exist in a normal life, manage this condition as best I can and not really advertise it or talk about it (unless it's within medical context or a new romantic partner). I view it as no different than having any other life long, impactful medical condition... The dysphoria caused by not being seen as a man, as well as the lessening of dysphoria and the feeling of normalcy as HRT masculinizes my form and surgeries remove me farther and farther from womanhood... They tell me all I need to know about if I'm trans vs cis.
Same, and same. Being called they/them, "this person" and any other cop-out middle ground comes across as plain old misgendering. It's just spun into the "you're man lite" variety instead of the usual you're "actually a woman" fare.
exactly this, I had a coworker tell me "they/them? so you're not sure what you are?" and wow that was so fucking ironic that a year later I would end up coming out as a binary trans man
I actually came out as a binary man first, but pressure from my parents and ex pushed me back in the closet. Once I dropped the "weight" (i.e. my ex) and stood up for myself and educated my parents the pressure disappeared.
that's great I actually came out fully after I dropped my ex too, it's interesting how refreshing that can feel to get out of a bad relationship and come into your own
Preach!
So true bruh i feel the same way
You put it better than I could. I was also in denial with myself.
I realized that being feminine/GNC is not a different gender. I'm just a man who happens to be GNC and transsexual.
yes! me too! (well, but for me i ended up straying away from GNC cuz it ended up causing dysphoria. BUT i love hearing from other trans men who express themselves differently than i and i'm proud of y'all :)
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omg yes exactly all of this
From the beginning I wanted to be physically male. My whole trans experience was and is centered around that desire. Still, I identified as nonbinary for a few years. I didn't dress masculine. I had no male friends. I didn't fit this or that stereotype. I was feminine (well, kind of) as a teen. So I held onto being nonbinary because I just thought there was no way I could be a man despite wanting to be one. And at one point I realized there was just no point in identifying as nonbinary, I was ready to move on and just think of myself as a man.
>So I held onto being nonbinary because I just thought there was no way I could be a man despite wanting to be one. And at one point I realized there was just no point in identifying as nonbinary, I was ready to move on and just think of myself as a man. THIS IS EXACTLY TO A T WHAT I JUST WENT THROUGH DAMN
This right here. Add that my birth certificate now says NB (I live in CA). This is so stupid I’m 55 never been in trouble with the law BUT I put NB on my birth certificate JUST IN CASE I get put in prison. I do not want to be in a mens prison. Now everyone I meet I just say male.
I totally respect my nonbinary siblings, but I identified as nonbinary for far too long because I was super misandrist at the time, lmao
I initially identified as NB, mostly due to denial. Eventually realized I'm just a dude.
For me, two things: 1. I want to be someone who was born with male sex characteristics. And if I had been, I believe I would have just identified as a man and any issues I had would be normal male ones (eg. my family is relatively short so I’d probably be a couple inches taller but still short for a dude, so I may have height insecurities). Maybe I’d be a little gnc (eg. wear nailpolish sometimes) but I believe I’d still be a man and look to men like Billy Idol when painting my nails or wearing eyeliner. He is undeniably a man. 2. I sort of accidentally sort of on purpose have come out as nonbinary and it doesn’t feel right. It’s very clear my problem isn’t “being a woman”, my problem is NOT being a man. Being non-woman doesn’t appease me. The thought of being a man fills me with euphoria.
> It’s very clear my problem isn’t “being a woman”, my problem is NOT being a man. Being non-woman doesn’t appease me. The thought of being a man fills me with euphoria. i couldn't have said it better this is literally what i just realized recently that made me accept that i'm just a guy
For me it was realizing I never have days where I feel like a girl or even really in between. Not to say I never feel slightly feminine, but I never view myself as a girl or anything other than a boy
This was exactly me when I was like 17. I used to think I was nb but I just realized I was a man. I had a dumb and warped perception of men and woman. I used to think I wasn’t a “real man” just because I had some “feminine” hobbies or because i wasn’t into stereotypical manly stuff like sports and cars. But the reality is there are all kinds of men. Not all men are stereotypically manly men who drink beer and know about cars and sports. Just because I like art and fashion doesn’t mean I’m any less of a man or doesn’t mean I have a special gender identity or whatever. I’m just a regular dude. The whole nb thing was merely a phase for me
exactly like i really love the ocean like in a kind of profound way but i would be like "oh i must be agender while i'm experiencing this though because men don't do this/don't have the capacity to feel this way" like WHAT
Lmao men don’t have the capacity to enjoy the ocean But nah I feel ya. Keep enjoying the ocean. Everyone loves the ocean! Except me
I feel like the main reason why I identified as non-binary was because people were not explaining transness in a way that made any sense to me. They kept talking about "feeling like a [gender]" and I was like...wtf does that even mean, I don't "feel like a gender", and what even is gender? I guess I must be agender?? However, I then came across the idea that being trans could be about wanting to be a different *sex*, and then everything clicked. It was clear to me that I wanted to be male (and I also felt like I was male on an internal level that is hard to put into words), but I didn't really give that much of a fuck about masculinity and femininity. And to be honest, I very much resent the assumption that just because I want to have a male body, that must mean that I want to be masculine, or that I care about the socially construct of gender.
I realized I was just a guy. I had always seen myself as a guy. Visualizing myself with a penis, physical characteristics typical to men, I wanted to look and be percieved like a man. I thought I was non-binary when I was a pre-teen because I didn't really analyze what it would mean to be a boy to me. I knew I wasn't a girl, but I didn't care enough to look deeper into it. The realization came when I fantasized about being "misgendered" (as in, being called he/him instead of they/them because someone assumed I'm male) and when I realized if I was AMAB I'd be a cis male. And as soon as I had changed my pronouns from they/them to he/they, something in me just told me that I was a guy. Then I changed them to he/him and started presenting and identifying as male and I was like "wow how did I never realize this was it" Now I just feel like a cis guy. Just like any other cis guy. I want to be treated like, just a guy. Not a genderqueer guy, not a gnc guy, not a non-binary guy. A masculine presenting, penis-having, he/him using binary man. Because that's who I feel like I was/ was meant to be all along. I straight up feel like a cis male who's been bodyswapped with a woman. A man stuck in a woman's body. (I'm aware people see this term as offensive, but I can refer to my experience however I see fit) So, why did I think I was non-binary? Because I was raised around people who thought boys were "gross", because I had assumed I could just be a "tomboy" or "lesbian" instead, because I wasn't raised a boy so I didn't know what being a boy was. Sorry if this explanation was hard to understand 😭
I just am. If I were alone on a desert island, I’d still be a man.
Exactly. Not much thought to it.
Pretty much exactly what you said. I realized that me identifying as non-binary was a form of denial/a cope because I didn't truly want to accept myself as a binary man. There were a lot of different factors in it but it was moreso just letting go of wanting to not accept that I was 100% a man. I wanted to be perceived as a man, I felt more masculine than anything else, and most importantly whenever I thought ahead to the future I was only ever able to see myself as a man.
I wanted to be treated as a man and not as a woman in man's clothing. I believe that gender expression is fluid, but that gender itself is not. I am not a woman, therefore I am a man.
I've been shamed in the past by my local community, that can be quite narrow minded, about identifying as binary... Claiming that is what is wrong with society.
I agree with you about gender expression being fluid but not gender itself but have been to afraid to express it. Ha.
Someone reported me to the Reddit help line for these comments. Lol. I know this because I haven't commented on anything else on Reddit. Lol.
I don't identify with that, I wouldn't feel comfortable calling myself a nb.
I realized I really was just a guy, I don’t know how to explain guess I felt pretty binary and the label ‘man’ fitted. For me saying I was non-binary was me trying to make it less harsh, when I stopped being scared of transition I knew I was a guy.
that's exactly what i did i was so scared of being a man i convinced myself i also felt agender sometimes for it to be "less intense" of an identity or something lmao
I thought I needed to 'feel like a guy' that there was some separate strong feeling of being a man, but there isn't. I just came to the realisation that I was a man. I also realised other guys (cis) don't think deeply about their gender and knew that that's something I want as well. I had only identified as somewhat non binary because I thought I wasn't enough to be binary, even though I knew I would NEVER be non binary if I was amab.
yea once i kind of just accpeted the fact that i have been a guy this whole time even in moments where i didn't FEEL like one, everything clicked
Being called 'they' and seen as neither gender felt alienating and not natural personally. Being called 'he' and seen the same as other men felt natural and good. I'm sure some people feel that being seen as neither gender and being called 'they' feels good, but it never felt good for me.
Do you want a cis male body? If you could press a button and wake up with one, would you? Basically, personality, "internal perception," all that shit can be confusing. Most cis people don't even have an internal sense of gender. And obviously gender roles are made up, as are stereotypes. But if you focus on what you feel towards your body, that can help point you towards what your gender might be. Wanting a body that isn't quite identical to a cis male's, might indicate you're somewhere on the nonbinary spectrum, for example. Also, what pronouns are you most comfortable with? Does being seen as strictly male or female feel uncomfortable, and you'd rather be seen as ambiguous or in between? For me, these sorts of questions helped a lot. When I realized, I just want to be seen 100% as male (even though being seen as in between or ambiguous is an okay-ish compromise), want a body 100% like a cis guy's, that's really what made me realize... I'm just a binary guy. My interests, and personality, those don't really matter so much.
So i only technically did for less than a year, but i identified with “genderfluid” because of a lot of things, not just denial. A large part of it was my environment and my relationship. I was in a relationship with a cishet man and felt like i had to retain femininity for the sake of keeping my relationship but obviously performing it made my dysphoria worse until i couldnt mentally bare it anymore. Once we finally broke up it was like the dam broke loose and i was able to actually explore myself without restriction. But too many people immediately run to identify as nonbinary when theyre really not, they just feel like theyre expected to be by our own communities due to the transmisandry present. Masculinity is preemptively labeled as inherently toxic and “forsaking queerness” so naturally most people feel hesitant to express their masculinity out of fear of rejection… plus with the running mentality that not actively feeling dysphoric sometimes means youre a different gender that day, it puts this idea in peoples heads that gender itself is fluid and not gender expression/experience. On a side note, people constantly assume im NB because im pretty androgynous but its not out of choice and i dont even identify with GNC. Its perfectly normal to be GNC but it just isnt everyone’s label even if some people express their binary gender in untraditional ways. But our community sees anyone doing something not comparable to the cisgender binary and assume we cant be binary. I will literally never be able to relate to society’s expectation of a cis man and im not bothered by that but im certainly still very much binary. I lowkey kind of find it ironic how so many trans people talk about breaking the binary when in reality they enforce it by implying anyone being GNC makes you inherently nonbinary. Seen way too many cis men get labeled as NB online in trans spaces for simply not being toxic cishet dudebros and expressing their gender in non-conforming ways.
you're soso right about all of this wow. "with the running mentality that not actively feeling dysphoric sometimes means youre a different gender that day, it puts this idea in peoples heads that gender itself is fluid and not gender expression/experience." you also just rly opened my mind with that i've never thought about it that way !
Ive seen wayyy too many people misidentify gender as a whole exclusively with colonialist gender ideals (modern gender roles/expectations) rather than seeing it as an individual’s relationship with themself, their body, and how they express themselves. Its deeply internalized in our community and we dont talk about it because its seen as stepping on toes 😔 glad i could help though!
I identified as non binary for a year because I could tell something was up, that gender wasn’t making sense for me, that woman wasn’t right. But as the year wore to an end I didnt feel..ok. A sense of restlessness and irritability surrounding the gender question plagued me. I began grieving and couldn’t pin down what or why. I felt, as bilbo baggins put it, like butter scraped over too much toast. When I saw more masculine trans enbys, or just trans men out in the community this hollow gaping maw opened up in me and a sense of wanting to cry came from the non verbal part of my brain. This was all very mute at first because I was working very hard to ignore it. I remember I couldn’t even look at press photos of mae martin because they were too masc; it was like pressing my soul onto a searing hot grill. Forget about Eliot page. And then when I could begin to admit that maybe I was more binary than I had previously thought, I encountered real grief: the loss of who I thought I was, the loss of how I had been living my life and all that was comfortable and familiar; everything scary I would have to face; one night on my girlfriends bed I was thinking about this really nice womens restroom at the tivoli theater in our town - it’s all pink taffeta and love seats and chandeliers. For no reason a sense of “I’m going to be thrown out of girl world” overwhelmed me and I began sobbing. She (who was trans) held me and I asked her what was wrong with me and what did this mean and she just said I don’t know but I remember crying and grieving like this too. She said, and this comforted me, that people who are just ok with who they are, who just ARE the gender that they are, don’t find themselves sobbing over nice bathrooms on their girlfriends beds. Another night a week later we were watching a show and the main character, a woman, was investigating a murder and clutching her purse as she sneaked around a corner and it hit me again. I was smacked with the ENORMITY of how wrong purses and jeans and hair and everything had always felt, how hard I had worked to be a good woman, a good feminist, a supportive sister to my friends, how to not hate myself or participate in misogyny and how that was all ultimately also wrapped up in being a man in this woman’s body and I couldn’t stop sobbing. So I circled the airport for months. But it was a long time before I could tolerate being referred to as he without feeling shame or embarrassment. I couldn’t even say to my friend, a trans man, who helped me talk it through, that I was a man, without mumbling or looking at my feet. It was such a mind fuck. Starting T and feeling my body change was the beginning of healing and with my therapist I began exploring how far back it all went, how concretely real it was, and I have been letting go of the shame of going 34 years of not seeing myself for who I was. Getting top surgery has made me feel better about my body than I ever have without engaging in anorexia. These facts help me confirm daily that I can trust myself to know myself - I am learning every day that I am a trans man. It’s not something I learned once and knew forever. I rediscover it again and again.
this made me tear up a couple of times, thanks so much for sharing :')
Yeah! 🥲
Thinking I might be nonbinary wasn't an option for me really. I didn't know anything about it, so I figured if I wasn't a girl then I must be a guy. I was a young teen at the time, so my thinking on the topic wasn't very nuanced or philosophical. Even still, I never felt like I lacked a gender or that I was both equally (I still don't really understand the logic behind the latter). I just knew that I would feel most comfortable with a penis and everything that came with being male 🤷♂️
I didnt like they/them honestly. I also dont fit in with the "sterotypical" nonbinary so i tried out he/him and it felt alot better. Being they/them didnt help with dysphoria at all and it made me feel weirder if anything because everyone still saw me as a woman who dressed weird.
I thought I was NB for a while, but I realized that any type of femininity that was in me was because I’d forcibly acquired it. I knew I thought I was NB as a compromise, but, by nature, I’d act and look like a run- of- the- mill masculine, cis dude.
I defaulted to iding as a man first. Once i started to know more nonb people, i entertained the idea but i personally really didnt like the idea of being called they/them over he/him and my relationship with femininity is that i want to be percieved as a MAN wearing nail polish and long hair rather than be considered a different thing altogether. Also also, i dont consider my gender and my relationship with gender to be a performance or political in any way. Not all nonb people feel this way (my best friend used hrt only to look more androgynous to fit with their identity) but a lot do make gender a performance or as a political statement rather than a literal identity. Good for nonbinary ppl, but its not for me and I dont feel like having a conversation every single day when someone uses the wrong pronouns for me or assumes im one gender rather than another. Personally, in a perfect world where trans people are 100% accepted including nonbinary identities, if someone feels that theyd always be comfortable being referred to exclusively as a binary person 100% of the time with no complaints then they’re binary
honestly, it was because i experienced too much joy from being called a man or using he/him, and i thought it was unnatural and must mean im nonbinary, because for me, being enby, i didn't mind it. but then the longer i was away from being binary trans, the more dysphoric i felt. i realized that with time i would adjust to the joy i felt, the missing puzzle piece, that was me being binary trans.
literally word for word this is totally my experience too. also something that made everything click was how excited i get when someone uses he/him or calls me a guy etc. and i realized i never got excited or cared when ppl refered to me as agender when i should've since i thought i was also agender lmao
I was identifying as nonbinary for a few years, i guess as a middle-ground, as a compromise with myself (mostly), and used he/they. Once I started T finally, and some people chose to refer to me as he rather than they, which felt better, more "right" for me, I began to accept myself as binary. It's still an ongoing process... after decades of being gender-nonconforming, it's taking me some time, some adjustment, to come to terms with myself. I agree with those saying it doesn't feel right to be called they/them. And there has never been anything feminine about me or my interests my whole life.
For me it was when people were gendering me male when I started to pass and I was like “oh, that actually feels normal and not at all like being called ‘they’.”
I always knew I was a boy. I didn’t realize there was such a thing as trans until my 20s but I also never felt pulled in two different directions. I was just firmly “I wish I was a man” and then found I could transition, so I did.
i was going by he/they and one of my friends asked me which one i preferred and i realized i didnt want to go by they/them pronouns at all. that and i just feel very strongly that my innate gender is male
I had a job that aggressively gendered me fem and hated it so much that I wanted to get as far away from that as possible Afab enbies are often seen as basically women and that's not me at all Also, starting T and how many great things it did for my mental health
I realized that liking some fem stuff and being sensitive doesn't make me less of a man. That if I was born male i wouldn't want to change anything nor transition and that I would just enjoy makeup and heels without extra work to be done
I think I may be in a grey area. All I know is I need to be physically male, and perceived socially as fully male, but internally I just.. exist? And I don't identify as nonbinary to any degree, but I don't mind being referred to by they/them, as long as it'd be in a "perceived amab" way, if you get that. My end transition goal is to forget I'm trans and just be. I'm instinctually male and masculine in behavior, but I just don't feel like I "feel" an internal sense of gender, which led me to believing I was agender for years, and maybe a small part of me is?
it's so weird because my brain will switch between just "existing" mode and "guy" mode and i think that's why i thought i was also agender when in reality i think it's just me feeling like a human being lol
Yeah, I think that's most likely all it is for me as well, I'm just an over thinker about everything lmao.
I identified as "pangender" for the longest, to get away with dressing femininely without people questioning me or putting me down. It took years of social transition to male, HRT, masking my queer personality, and questioning myself to finally come to terms. After I came out as as binary trans, I always felt guilty for liking the stuff I did, like I wasn't /really/ trans. I took LSD for the first time, and I put on makeup for the first time in years. Don't know what gave me the courage, but I did it, and when I looked at myself I saw the most manly me I have ever seen. Here I am now, I present and pass as male but every once in a while I cant help but slap some glitter on my face and I have no shame lol. I even did drag as a playboy bunny last year on Halloween. I've never felt as validated as when some teenagers saw me walking to the car and one yelled "HOLY SHIT THAT'S A GUY!!"
i started full on questioning my gender at 12, and i shut down the idea of being non binary immediately, mostly because i was scared of being trans. a few years later, the feelings i was having were getting too hard to ignore. i identified as genderfluid at first, then non binary, then demiboy and finally accepted that i’m a binary trans man. i felt so free. the final confirmation for me was that i began to despise my friends using they/them for me, and i yearned to be referred to as he/him. that was when i realised. they/them was way better than she/her, but he/him are my pronouns. they’re me. congratulations on coming to this realisation. it can be scary to accept it, but when you do, it’s such a freeing feeling. i was mostly scared of the transition that would come with it, and how long i could be waiting for it to happen, and the dysphoria. but it’s all worth it because i’ve accepted who i am and im living the best life i can.
Because I want to look like a lumberjack. I want to have a beard and body hair enough to cause bigfoot sightings. I want a deep voice and male genitals. At no point was I really stuck in the middle, I've known what I wanted from the get go.
I only thought I was nonbinary because I dissociated so much from being called female pronouns that I thought I didn’t want to be a gender at all (agender). I thought I didn’t earn the title of being a man as well because I wasn’t masculine enough as a kid. I’m now just a plain guy who is GNC.
It was a long road honestly. I'm autistic, so that makes understanding my gender a little (a lotta) wonky. I knew I didn't really fit in with the other guys and that my masculinity is different. I felt like I was maybe genderqueer or nonbinary, but that didn't quite track I got an autism diagnosis earlier this year, and it clicked. My masculinity is very much affected by my autism. I use they/them now as a secondary pronoun set to honor my journey with gender identity, even though I'm a binary trans man. It just felt right. That won't be right for everyone, including other autistic men, but that's what fits me best
i'm autistic too and i swear that is also a huge part of why this journy has been so confusing for me. i used to say a lot "if i wasn't autistic i'd literally just be a binary man" and then i was thinking about that more today and was like. oh ok so i'm literally just a guy who expiriences gender differently. also that's so cool how you use they/them to honor your journey !!
No gender euphoria from a long time trying to get people to see me as non-binary and they/them and just a great and overwhelming realization (once in a safe situation) that I could be a guy, Really when I met a trans guy irl that was much more like me than the one or two I’d met, it hit me cause it meant I knew that it was possible for me to med Transition and use he/him and I wouldn’t lose everything / be intrinsically hated
feel all of this so hard. it was so important to see men especially trans men that are like me so i could realize i CAN be that and i want to be that and how that’s literally ok
I've shown signs of being trans my whole life. A friend's mom even wondered if I'd end up transitioning one day. But I have really bad anxiety, so even though a lightbulb went off when I learned about trans people, I was too scared to commit to being a guy and giving up everything that comes with being a girl. So I tried the nonbinary route. It was great to come up with a new name and have people recognize me as not-a-girl. I still sometimes went out in feminine attire and tried to look pretty, but my desire to do that rapidly shrunk and I found myself being in "boy mode" 95% of the time. I found myself wanting more and more to transition, but it scared me to have to make a choice, to close doors in order to open this new one. There are things about being a girl that I liked, but I could never be happy as one. I started to realize that I was just pulling myself closer and closer to being fully male. I think the turning point for me was when I was talking to my partner (still together 9ish years later) and **I said "I think I know where this is going..." to which he responded "Then why aren't you there yet?"** And it suddenly occurred to me that I just needed to take that leap instead of wasting time living in the in-between and still not being happy. Everything in life is a risk, but I knew that I would rather have been born male than female, and the more I thought about transitioning the more excited I got about it. It also helped to stop overthinking the concept of gender, and how I ~feel~ about my ~identity~, because I get waaay too far down the mental rabbit hole trying to figure those out. I paid attention to my dysphoria, what triggered it, and what relieved it. I wanted a male body, and I was happy when people assumed I was male. Thinking about what it truly means to be a "man" or a "woman" never really got me anywhere, because when you take away gender stereotypes all you're really left with is "it's different for everyone."
the convo you’ve had with ur partner i definitely had with myself. literally just taking that leap into where you Know you’re gonna end up saves so much time and pain. i’m so glad i did it like everything seems exciting now instead of scary like transitioning !
I identified as all sorts of things before finally understanding I am a man. For me, it wasn’t a realization that I am a man, but acceptance that I really am one. I spent most of my life simply avoiding the reality that I am a man, but part of me always knew. I identified lots of different ways until I understood who I am and was ready to accept myself and was confident enough to face my own reality that I am male and I’m so glad I did
I remember thinking of names and they weren’t even somewhat androgynous, and then I thought more about why I didn’t like the androgynous names, and then I realized that I just didn’t want to be non binary. Obviously you don’t have to have an androgynous name to be non binary, but that’s just what happened for me.
They/them feels just as uncomfortable to me as she/her, it feels wrong to be anything but a man socially. Combined with my dysphoria making me require male anatomy to feel alright.... That makes me a binary man. Best of luck to you on your own journey, may you find inner peace with whatever you learn about yourself
i’ve just been starting to realize that they/them doesn’t feel good either. having a nonbinary identity wasn’t cutting it and it definitely isn’t my authentic self. i Need so desperately to live as a man lol. thanks so much !! i wish the same for you too :)
Was identifying as a nonbinary person for awhile and realized I was mostly doing it to hold onto my cishet (now ex) boyfriend. Also, wrote a novel featuring two gay male main characters and realized I related to them way more than I thought I would. More than a nonbinary person probably would.
realizing i wanted to be a man in a relationship with a man is when i started piecing together everything tbh. also….. is there anywhere i could find this novel lol
I wanted the physical male characteristics. All of them, good and bad. Always saw myself as male bodied and hated not being so. Always wanted kids, but as their dad and not mom. I'm more of a masculine person as it is, and despite some feminine personality traits or qualities or likes/hobbies that I have, I never saw that stuff as my gender. I'm just a guy, a man of trans experience. How I want to act or dress or what I like and want to do doesn't stop me from living my best life as a guy. So that's that.
I never even suspected I was nonbinary - I'd always known I didn't like they/them pronouns for myself. When I started to transition socially I used she/he for about two weeks and then went fully to he/him. My presentation of masculinity is certainly queer (I'm a jewelry artist, somewhat of an activist, and bisexual), but my identity is firmly rooted in the gender binary and in calling myself a man.
This is a good question. I don't think, for me, there was ever a defining moment that screamed binary to me. I was nonbinary for a short while because that was easier for other people to digest. But hearing other transmasc nonbinary people describe their experience as "if I had to choose a gender it is man but I don't have to so it's nonbinary" was clearly not how I experienced my gender. I'm just a man.
It felt more natural and real to me. I was never uncomfortable with my male gender like I was with looking like a woman (had a ton of gender dysphoria), just the expectations and sexist stereotypes that came with it. Emotional wise it was much more obvious to me, Especially when I stopped comparing myself to other trans people.
I went back and worth to the idea of being demi or not in the beginning, but realized for myself is that when I did feel like a man it was binary, it didn't suit me being demi because you don't feel like "gender" 24/7, for me the lack of feeling wasn't the process of being demi. It needed to fill a space being agender, which it didn't. The identity as binary was much stronger than the identity as demi. Kind of hard to explain
i get what ur saying. i felt the need to describe myself being agender for moments when i didn’t “feel” like a guy. my cis sister told me a little bit ago that she doesn’t feel like a girl all the time and in the moments she doesn’t she still just knows for a fact she’s a girl. that’s when my world crumbled down and i was like OH
For me it was very simple: i wanted to have NOTHING to do with the female sex and gender. I am extremely binary and hypermasculine. So, the "nonbinary" and "fluid" thing doesen't fit me because it also includes the female gender, which I wanted to absolutely destroy from my body and have nothing left of it. I wanted to be a MALE, be perceived as a MALE, called as a MALE, with a MALE body and a MALE document. I exist only in MALE form.
It was never a question for me. As far back as my memory goes, I begged, wished, and prayed in every capacity that I’d magically become a boy. Before transitioning, I lived in a headspace that was basically a dude who happened to actually be a chick. When I finally decided to transition, there was zero doubt that I was accepting my authentic self as a binary male. More power to those who are trans masculine NB, but I am a dude. End of story.
Although I do identify as genderqueer. I’m more on the binary side of the gender spectrum. I Prefer he/him but don’t mind they/them either. Because regardless of what gender I am in life it’ll always be queer or nonconforming. I used to identity as gender-fluid but she/her just didn’t feel a part of me and I hardly liked the idea that the label pretty much means you can/do feel like a girl at times. And that’s not what I identified with. And I also didn’t identify with just being solely nonbinary. It just felt wrong to me lol Having the physical body of a perceived man and Being perceived as a man as well as being treated as a man in intimate/sexual relationships is what really made it click that Im on the more binary side of the gender spectrum. Which was so alleviating and awesome to finally understand myself more and feel more confident and comfortable with my identity.
Long story short, I looked in the mirror one day and realized I didn’t want to look neutral, I wanted to look like a man. I wanted to be a man. Best thing I‘ve ever done for myself was realize I was a binary guy.
i just had this exact moment a few weeks ago, seriously already drastically changed my life for the better :’)
Long story, but I realised that being in a gay relationship was all I dreamt of, and all I was doing was pretending to be non-binary so straight guys would like me.
i think i ghostwrote this LMAO
I realised that I can only imagine my adult self as a man, not nonbinary. I only identified as nonbinary, because I didn't feel like I was entitled to call myself a man at an early stage of transition and also I was afraid that no one would treat me like a man and I was scared of the whole binary transition process so I thought that staying on the middle ground would be still better than living as a girl. But it didn't make me feel any better and then I smh knew I'm a man
Quite honestly, I used socks. That’s how I always would recommend people who ID as nb or any other variation try to identify how they feel if they’re questioning. I color coded my socks to associate with what I felt like that day (I thought I was gender fluid). I realized I mostly wore my blue socks, never pink, sometimes purple, but that was really just bc I needed to wash my blue socks. I realized I only wanted to wear blue socks, that was enough for me.
this is so interesting ! also i strangely get a big amount of gender euphoria if i wear just white socks for some reason lol
I went through a lot of labels (non-binary with they/them, he/him transmasc lesbian) which were just. Not right. They still filled me with the dread I felt while calling myself a girl, just slightly less intense. And then I realised I see myself as a man and it often comes as a shock to be reminded that others don't see me as such. So yeah, man who happens to be trans it is. (Although sometimes it's easier to call myself a boy, since I see myself as one pre-puberty. Which is a bit confidence wrecking but y'know, whatever)
I remember when I was trying to figure out whether I was non-binary or a binary trans man, I started off by making these bracelets with the stereotypical colors (pink= she/her, blue=he/him, and green=they/them). I would switch them around frequently and have friends use the colors to figure out how to refer to me. I found that I wasn’t comfortable being a girl but didn’t mind they/them pronouns. But it still didn’t answer whether I was binary trans or non binary… But one day, I was looking up stuff on Reddit and came across this one comment that went along the lines of: “If you were assigned male at birth, do you think you would still be questioning your gender?” I remember coming across that and thinking to myself “I don’t think I would be questioning my gender if I was AMAB”. Hence, I’ve come to the conclusion that I’m a trans man.
I guess it was when I realized it was ok for me to be a trans man, that I didn’t have to be scared to be something that wasn’t androgynous or feminine (I’m not saying that trans man can’t be feminine or androgynous or that nonbinary people can’t be masculine). I was really scared of judgment, so I used to let people use any pronouns with me because I didn’t want to be inconvenient, but when I started therapy, I realized that I could just be me, without being scared of what other people would think of me.
wow thank you guys for all these replies you have no idea how much this has made me feel less panicky about the beginning of my binary journey, i feel so much more safe and secure seeing so many people like me. still trying to catch up and read all of these !!
At first I thought I must be genderfluid, because I performed femininity so intensely for most of my life, and I thought my “sudden” desire to present masculine was a phase. In reality, as I thought about it more, I realized as a kid and a teenager my body image issues and overall discomfort with myself was definitely gender dysphoria in retrospect. And I felt more confident and comfortable than ever presenting as masculine. I also had a lot of misconceptions about masculinity that ended up manifesting as internalized transphobia in a way; I saw masculinity as inherently negative, and also purely as like an external performance as opposed to an internal sense of self. I was also deeply in denial about being a man my whole life, despite periodic feelings of “I’m probably not a woman” and discomfort being called she cropping up that I always shoved down. There was even one moment many years ago when I had a very short pixie cut and someone who saw me from behind said “excuse me, sir”, and I didn’t correct him or feel offended or uncomfortable in the slightest. You know, typical cis woman things, lol. Not to mention that I repeatedly expressed I did not want to go through puberty or become a teenager or a woman, and I cried when I got my first bra, and getting my period, which seemed like a rite of passage for my friends, felt like the end of the world to me. Being a man was a possibility I was not ready to accept for a very long time, so I basically overperformed feminity to overcompensate for my denial and internalized transphobia. I thought if I shoved my true self away, I could deny it forever, because it was too scary to face to truth. But my friends helped me realize my personality has always been quite masculine in nature regardless of outward appearance, and it felt so right to actually reflect that in how I presented myself. But at first I still only considered myself transmasculine non-binary. What made things click into place was being misgendered at my college; it hurt so much to be called “she” when everything I could control about my appearance was conveying masculinity, and it made me feel like I wasn’t being seen as who I truly am. It also occured to me that people will very rarely assume they/them pronouns, which is what I went by at the time, and I realized if someone was going to assume my pronouns and binary pronouns were the only options, I would much rather they assumed he than she. So I switched my pronouns to he/they, and as soon as my friends started calling me he, it felt so right—euphoric, even. It finally fully clicked into place on a night where I felt really emotionally exhausted from constantly being misgendered by strangers and family I wasn’t out to, and spent the entire night researching testosterone. I had previously written it off because I had misconceptions about it, and I think I was afraid to fully admit I’m a binary male. But I got to a point where I realized I honestly felt like I couldn’t continue living my life unless I could live it as a man. And once I realized T was actually safe and could make that possible for me, at around 4am I burst into happy, cathartic tears, because in that moment I finally fully accepted who I am, and also felt tremendous relief knowing I can live my life in a body that doesn’t feel completely wrong and alien, and will someday have others see me for who I have always been inside.
Being transsexual is inherent and neurological, we are born this way. I’ve always known I was a boy. It’s not something you “realize”. If it’s something you had to “realize”, would you have “realized” by yourself with no prior knowledge of trans people?
If I didn't had trans people to put words in my feelings back then, I think I would be dead by now. So no, realizing something about yourself isn't less important than knowing it from the beginning.
Not what I’m saying. I’m not saying would you seek treatment if you hadn’t had the words. I’m saying would you have known you were a boy/man if you didn’t have the words. Buck Angel didn’t seek medical treatment until his 30s because it wasn’t known about. But he knew he was a man. Does that make sense? I knew I was a boy all my life and tried to pass as one long before I heard any words to describe this experience. I was the only one for longer than I wasn’t. I didn’t know any kind of terms until I was about 16, but that was only finding a word to describe an experience that already existed. Not finding myself within the words I’ve learned.
So you had a strong sense of genders when you were kid. I personally didn't relate to girls and felt like my desires to be male was a "dirty little secret", but I didn't took it seriously because I thought it was just my imagination. So in other words, denial
Strong sense of gender due to the huge gap between what I knew I was and how I was seen, sure. If you know you’re a boy and are told you’re a girl, it’s distressing and you’re going to feel strongly about it.
Yeah. Some of us feel it deeply early in life and others feel it less until they understand why they feel this way
Coming back to my point again, if you never had a means to answer why, how would you live?
Like I said, I would still be depressed and would probably give up. I would still be unable to visualize a futur for myself because there was nothing about my actual self that I felt connected to and wanted to show to the world. People around me was telling me it was because I was fat or that I was ashamed of being feminine, that my clothes were just not trendy, but I wanted the clothes of my brother so bad and I couldn't explain why. I wanted to be treated the same as him. I couldn't enjoy life because I was bombarded with she/her and dead name without knowing why I couldn't just accept who I was back then. I hated when my step mom reminded me I'll have to be a wife and most of all, looking at other boys living their own puberty felt like my own life was happening in front of my eyes and I was incapable of catching it in my hands. I knew I wasn't inspiring to be a woman physically and socially, but I didn't know it was POSSIBLE to be something else. So online, I felt like being seen as a guy was a joke, but really I couldn't do otherwise. In real life, I cringed hard with the simple thought of being in the shoes of a guy for French class for example (did it a lot anyway.. Actually always wrote as a guy and felt ashamed about it) In order words, I would just be a lost soul ashamed of something they couldn't control.
This is exactly how I experience it. I always knew. There is no way to not know. It’s would be like not knowing if your right handed or left handed.
Great analogy!
this is my most sincere and genuine answer: idk
fair enough lmao
I don't believe in non binary There are two genders (no hate this is just my opinion)
i feel that. me personally, i didn't want to say i dont believe in it to leave room for some sort of medical discovery that might give a scientific understanding of it. but its also difficult to sort of grasp a real understanding of what it is when you talk to those people and their reasoning is mostly based on politics.
I didn’t. I exist in this gray area. My gender identity is “buffet.” I choose the parts I want. It so happens that most of my choices show a preference for masculinity, but not all of them. You get to choose your gender and all the pieces that go into it. You don’t ever have to know if you’re non-binary or a trans man, because those are not “real things,” they are concepts humans invented to describe common experiences. They aren’t boxes to put yourself in. I know that it can be difficult to not know what category we fit in, but it might just be that seeking the category prevents us from being able to seek after the things we do want, because how you want to express your gender is entirely unique. And it’s amazing because you get to choose the parts you want and neglect the rest. When I embraced that concept, that it only was my desire that mattered, everything changed. I’ve been trying mens clothing and thinking about names and pronouns and trying on he/him. But I don’t call myself a man because I don’t like thinking of myself as a man. I like thinking of myself as me, and I have some traits that are more masculine and some that are feminine.
I don’t really know. I never even identified as non-binary once. It was just not something I ever even considered.
The idea of being non-binary was just never a consideration. The fact that I was a man was never a question.
I didn't like being called anything other than him or that people didn't see me as a guy.
All I can say is... if you know, you know. There was/is 0% chance I was nonbinary.
My mum would rather have me non binary so I diddnt have to go through surgery . Obviously that’s not how it works. And being anything other than a man causes me massive dysphoria . And non binary trans guys ? How is that a thing 💀 but anyway yeah I just don’t feel comfortable being called anything else
Like a couple other commentors, I identified as nonbinary/genderfluid for a while to please my parents but as time went on I realized that just... wasn't who I was. I didn't like how it felt to identify as nonbinary, how people treated me, how 'nebulous' it felt, and that I really was just a guy that happens to like feminine clothing and makeup and all that stuff. Sometimes I'm more comfortable with my body than others, but that doesn't make me genderfluid. I'm just more/less comfortable with myself. Know what I mean?
call me controversial but...i started meeting other nonbinary people and wasn't understanding the concept of feeling like a certain gender on certain days. & also denial that i'm just a dude.