I was coercively assigned female at birth and I get a lot of dysphoria from that fact. I've always experienced strong social dysphoria, I hate getting perceived/gendered as a girl or woman. I want to take testosterone to fix this, as well as to solve some physical dysphoria problems that I experience (a lot of feelings of incongruence up in this body!) This took me a while to work out, though; for a while I thought that maybe I would be comfortable as a nonbinary person who did not physically transition, until the contradictions sharpened within me or something and I was pushed to the realization that yes, I do in fact want some fat redistribution and a lower voice. Top surgery took me even longer, because I thought for a while that I liked my boobs, but I realized rather recently that I only like them from an aesthetic point of view, and that actually living with them is kind of a huge pain that I would rather not deal with.

However, while I think I would prefer if (irl) I was perceived as a man, to some level that still makes me uncomfortable. I would only prefer it insomuch as I would prefer it to being perceived as a woman; no more than that. I do not feel like a man, I do not want to be a man. I do not even feel or identify as a masculine person. This is why I do not like using the label "transmasc" for myself even if it technically fits me as a person CAFAB who wants T. This does create some awkward situations sometimes, especially online. I do not fit neatly into transmasc spaces because I really don't find myself identifying with transmasculinity; hexbear is my main online trans community rn. I try my best to delineate that I am not transfem and cannot speak to that experience, while also not incorrectly gendering myself as transmasc. (I hope I'm doing an okay job of that? Sometimes I wonder if I'm doing that poorly.)

Another aspect to this is HRT, and the fact that I'm not on it yet. I want it, it's been about two years now since I confirmed I wanted it; but in that time I've been living in a very unstable household. I'm going to be temporarily moving out later this year and that's when I plan to get it. I feel like my experience of gender is very subject to change once I inject the funnyman hormones for the first time. Maybe I'll start identifying with transmasculinity then? Who knows.

Unironically I view my gender through the lens of the things I care about the most. It's like a personal xenogender. My gender is swarming cicadas, it's brutalist architecture, it's the sci-fi megastructure, it's abandoned buildings and rusting metal, it's insect exoskeletons, it's industrial and cyberpunk. It's the art I like best — surrealism, illustration, abstraction, pen and ink, explosions of violent color. It's being a communist and a vegan. It's masking in all public spaces because I still take covid seriously. It's my music taste and fashion sense — I'm a gestures vaguely gothy punky something-or-other, I DIY my clothes and I listen to tunes, I visibly stick out in public because of my fashion and I don't care.

These are gender markers, to me, the way "skirts" have been constructed as a gender marker for women and "suits" have been constructed as a gender marker for men. I mean, while both of these markers are real phenomena neither of them are innate or immutable, they're all products of the dialectical process of history; so ultimately my personal gender markers are just as real as they are, in a way, even if I'm the only person who sees and accepts them. I'm currently like, theory-crafting an idea that subcultures and aesthetics constitute their own forms of gender in the modern age. There is a performance and a set of interests associated with being goth or punk — almost like there is a performance and set of interests associated with being a "man" or "woman". Of course, they are not yet the same (and within subcultures there are still divisions of gender and a lot of misogyny), but with how the concept of gender is currently shifting in front of our very eyes, I think it's very possible that in the future, gender will be more of a subcultural experience than a superstructural one. Maybe I'm wrong on that one, who knows.

I'm not a fan of the idea that being nonbinary makes you inherently more "queer" or "transgressive" than being a binary trans person (whatever these categories even mean — I think they're a bunch of fluid, noodly nonsense anyways.) There's a good Lily Alexandre video that sums up my thoughts on that whole discourse. Ultimately, we're all smashing the cissexist notions of gender. Capitalism revolutionized the understanding of gender for millions of people. Should communism win, which I believe it will, I believe a second revolution will come — and this time a better one.