User blog:Madi60517/Growing Up: Gender and Sexuality

Gender and sexuality often go hand in hand. Sometimes people take it the wrong way. Sometimes a transgender person will come out and the other person will just look at them in confusion and say, "Are you gay?" Regardless, they do go hand in hand. I am pansexual. This means that I am attracted to ALL genders and don't take gender at all into account when deciding if I like someone. I have no preference, I literally cannot care less. (This is different from bisexuality because bisexuals, typically, are attracted to two genders, which is usually male and female, and often but not always have a preference). I am also nonbinary. I am not a boy or a girl.

There are many more genders than just boy and girl and many more sexualities than just gay, straight, and bi. You may be androgynous, or right between male and female. You might be genderfluid, or fluctuating gender. You might be asexual/romantic, or not experiencing sexual/romantic attraction. You might be demisexual/romantic, or only experiencing sexual/romantic attraction after getting to know someone. Some people don't believe this, but why wouldn't you? These are all fairly common.

I myself, in addition to pansexual, am bigender. This is almost like genderfluid. It basically means you have two genders. Mine are male and agender, or genderless.

I am going to explain.

When I was extremely young, about five, I loved wearing fancy clothes and dresses and skirts and typically "girly" things. Obviously everyone took this as normal because as everyone on the Wiki knows, I am afab, or "assigned female at birth." Just because I have a vagina and boobs does not make me a female, let me make that clear right now. Anyways, by the time I was about seven, I could not STAND any of that stuff; it all felt so gross and wrong. I only wore jeans and t-shirts, even to formal events I wore dress pants and dress shirts instead of actual dresses. I played sports with boys at recess because it felt like the masculine thing to do. If anyone questioned my masculinity, I was angry. If anyone at all associated me with femininity, I was angry. Everyone told me it was just a phase most girls go through so I tried to suppress it by around sixth grade. Really I started pushing it down by seventh grade. But sixth grade was when I started wondering if I wasn't a girl at all. I really did not feel like one and I did not feel comfortable being one. But I knew I wasn't a boy either. When I discovered that non-binary existed, I was so relieved.

So I was eleven and terrified and confused but felt like I had a better grip on myself than before. I didn't know exactly what I was under the nonbinary umbrella but it didn't matter to me then. In seventh grade I met who is now my best and pretty much only friend. His name is Cameron and he too is trans. He first mentioned thinking he was a few months after we met. Soon he was heavily questioning what under the nonbinary umbrella HE was. He now has it figured out, he is a demiboy, which basically means being mostly a boy. He was also afab. Throughout most of his journey of self-exploration, I did not tell him I was trans too. I did not tell him that by now I knew I was pansexual (he is demisexual panromantic). I sat in fear. Towards the end of seventh grade I finally told him but I don't remember telling him, weirdly. I do remember easing into pansexuality for some reason. First I said I was biromantic heterosexual (as a girl, that meant I would date a guy or a girl but not have sex with a girl, which was untrue), then told him bisexual before finally telling him what I knew all along: I'm pan too!

Around the time I came out to him I was contemplating what I was. I was starting to think maybe I actually was a girl because I did feel comfortable being one, just not the most comfortable I could be, if that makes sense. But sometimes I just felt like nothing. Every time I was about to declare myself agender, I felt like a girl. Every time I was about to declare myself a girl, I felt agender. Then I discovered bigender. I realized, yes, a way for me to be both a girl AND agender! I lived like this from the later end of the summer to a few months ago (I'm in eighth grade now).

In this time, I changed my pronouns. I told the Internet and Cam, "don't call me she, call me they." They is probably the most popular neutral pronoun. I wanted to be completely androgynous seeming, I wanted nobody to be able to tell what gender I was. It took a long time but I changed my birth name, Madison (I never used Madi except online) to the most neutral name I could find, Alex. But I quickly realized this androgyny wasn't me. I pushed it off; I said I was just more masculine when I was agender "because I was so used to being called a girl." That was my excuse for everything, from dressing masculinely to being more comfortable being perceived as a boy than a girl.

A few months ago during a hit of dysphoria that was especially hard on me, I admitted it: I had at least some boy in me, and in fact probably very little girl. I then said to myself that I wasn't bigender; I was either genderfluid or a demiboy. I only a few days ago really figured it out; I'm still bigender, but agender and MALE instead.

Being trans is hard because, well, c'mon, 53% of the people believe being trans is wrong. I constantly have to hear "tr*nny" and "shem*le" and other awful transphobic comments. Only a slightly smaller percent think not being straight is wrong. I have to get through the homophobes, then the biphobes, then the panphobes. It's awful. I've been called such awful things to my face too. If I recorded all the homo/transphobia I experienced, you would be amazed.

What I'm saying is, gender and sexuality are not a choice. This is me, I am not the person you knew for so long. This is the me I knew the whole time. I am pansexual. I am bigender. I use they or he pronouns. I am transgender. I am a proud part of the LGBT community.

I am Alex.