All the problems, mistakes tips, tricks and anecdotes I've collected over my long journey with gender identity.
(I don't own any rights to the cover art, and will gladly remove it if the original artist has an issue with it's use)
I call myself nonbinary, but it's not really true. See I have a complicated relationship with my gender, I can't even tell when I'm freezing cold, so how should I be able to tell something like gender. I barely understand what I'm feeling when it's simple things like angry or sad.
My relationship with gender is, it's like that one friend you actually really like but hardly ever talk to.
I guess because gender's a social construct made out of arbitrary rules, I wouldn't understand it even if I could feel it. I understand the tangible things, I know I feel dysphoria and I feel better when my chest is flat. But names and pronouns? They're words, I don't understand how they have meaning. I don't understand how I like one set of words more than the others. I just do, because one word feels better.
The best way I can describe it is; my gender is a mushroom. Fascinating, beautiful and it would take an expert to even begin to understand it. It exists and it's real, but I can't classify it into any of the usual categories. It could be deadly or nourishing or hallucinagenic. It could be any one of 26 000 genders. It's not fully human, but it's close (mushroom's share more DNA with humans than with any plants). It could look like anything.
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My gender is a mushroom, but I can't just say that, so instead I say it's nonbinary, because that's the next closest thing. Nonbinary is almost correct. (Edit: After a research rabbit hole, I have discovered there is a name for this Xenogender. https://lgbta.wikia.org/wiki/Xenogender)
