Credit for Photo – Alexander Grey, Unsplash
Ever since I was 13 years old I’ve questioned my gender. I’ve always described these questions as my “ weird gender feelings” or “gender soup”, if you will. I remember the first time the weird gender feelings came into play. I was staring into a mirror and couldn’t shake this overall unhappiness with what I saw staring back at me.
I found myself envious of the boys in the schoolyard. I’d stare at their flat chests as if they were diamonds. I gawked greenly as these same boys continued to grow into men. It was nauseating, and confusing, to say the least.
I grew up in a conservative household, where gender roles were quite rigid. There didn’t seem to be any wiggle room between myself and the gender expectations assigned to me at birth. I was constantly reminded of my position in life with phrases like; “That’s for boys.”, “You don’t want to look like a boy, do you?, “You’re too pretty to be playing with boys.”, “Leave your boy cousins alone, go find a girl to play with.” All these phrases made the feelings I was experiencing worse. I felt guilty for not feeling content with my role, and this only fueled the confusion I had at the time. “Why do I feel this way?” was a question burning in the back of my mind. Unfortunately, there was nobody to help me navigate these feelings at the time, I had to figure everything out on my own.
After almost a year of having my weird gender feelings, I came out as transgender to my family. I was 14, and I started going by Ethan. My mother wasn’t receptive at first, one of the first things she said to me was “you’ll have a period every month reminding you that you’re a girl.” Which I remember word for word to this day. It wasn’t easy to hear, but those were the circumstances I found myself in.
My distant relatives, like my aunts and uncles, pretended to tolerate my existence, despite them always “forgetting” to respect my pronouns. They’d always plug in little passive-aggressive comments, usually revolving around God and how “he doesn’t make mistakes”, but follow it up with a smile. It was aggravating.
At this time, I was on hormone therapy and continued to be until I was 17. At this point, I was already passing. Everyone called me Ethan, used he/him pronouns, and my family finally stopped bickering about my gender. It was supposed to be a dream come true, but it came with complications. To be able to obtain this, I had to adhere to their rigid gender norms of what a man is supposed to be. It took a certain level of acting, as if I was putting on a show to prove the validity of my own identity. The people I considered “friends” would only accept the idea of me being trans if I was straight. So I tried to pretend to only like girls, which was agonizing.
While most people believe gender and sexuality are interconnected, that was not the case for me. I’ve always been pansexual. For those who aren’t familiar, Pansexuality refers to a sexual, romantic, and/or emotional attraction towards people regardless of their sex or gender identity. Meaning I don’t really regard gender and/or sex as a deciding factor for what I consider to be attractive. This is why pretending to be straight came with it’s challenges. While I didn’t totally hate the idea of having a girlfriend, I didn’t totally hate the idea of a boyfriend either, or even someone who would liked to be referred to as my partner. Though, with what everyone was telling me, I had to be straight. I just had to be.
My family, my friends, and everyone I held dear, would only accept me if I was masculine, tall, and dominant. I tried expressing that way to satisfy their expectations. I bought risers to put into my shoes to appear taller, and I had to train myself to not cross my legs “like a girl”. I felt like a failure for not being able to meet their expectations of a girl, and now I was struggling to maintain their expectations of a boy. It was a tough pickle to be in.
By the time I got to college, I understood that gender is way more fluid than my family portrayed. I’ve learned not everything has to be so black and white. I had to figure out how to give myself permission to exist as a genderqueer person. While I’m not big, tall, or masculine, I really enjoy having the name, Ethan. I was able to legalize it at age 17, and it’s given me more joy than I could imagine. I really enjoy using he/they pronouns, it makes me feel more comfortable and like myself. It took me over 19 years to get to this level of understanding, and if I weren’t under the influence of my conservative family, I probably would have figured it out sooner. What I identify as may not be seen as “traditional”, but I’m happier. I laugh a little louder and smile a little more, so, respectfully, to hell with tradition.
