Hi friends, it’s been a few months since my uncloseted and out post. From posting on Facebook, a primary school friend also came out as genderfluid, and a friend from college came out as trans. And several others I’ve known in squishyspace and on Twitter¹.

Everyone I’ve told has been supportive if not outright celebrating for me. I’ve come to know the experiences of others in the lgbtq.technology Slack, and knowing the experiences of others helps me understand my own. If I could, I’d get you all together for a CelebrateBernardFriendsCon where I make you all tea and tasty foods. Y’all are good, wonderful, people.

Gender is really fucking weird, y’all.

As far as bodies go, mine isn’t that bad. I like being a small human, my facial hair is annoying but grows slowly enough that I can forget about it for a few days at a time (also, stubble is perfect for scratching the back if my hand). My Adam’s apple, which I suddenly realize I’ve disliked since before puberty, is almost nonexistant. Even when I’m dressed in men’s suits, strangers gender me as a woman almost all the time.

When I started thinking about my own gender, it felt like a sine wave in varying degrees of femme. I’d never felt particularly masculine or manly, so that wasn’t much of a change. Piercing my ears was my first visible way of embracing my genderqueerness, but buying more androgynous/femme perfume was the first thing I did for myself. My nose and ears have always had the shortest path to my soul.

But something shifted when I started painting my toes and wearing skirts about a month ago. In my mind, the sine wave changed to a sawtooth wave: deeper into the territory of femme, with sudden spikes back out several times a day. A week into wearing skirts (not every day…my warddrobe budget isn’t that big), I had most intense feeling of dysphoria. I was on the metro going into work, saw a pregnant woman happily reading a parenting book on her way into work, and suddenly felt a deep longing to be pregnant and sadness that I couldn’t be. In retrospect, this wasn’t the first time I’ve had that sense, but it was the strongest. The “Okay, I’m really thinking about this now” feels multiplier is real. I don’t experience daily overwhelming gender dysphoria others do. I’ve always felt like myself, and while I’ve always had bouts of self-consciousness, I’ve never wanted to be anyone else.

I am deeply privileged in my friendships and relationships: I went to a liberal liberal arts college. I work on K Street a few blocks from the White House. I do so at a super liberal organization. I live in a quiet Northern Virginia suburb. My coworkers have not treated me any differently (though a few of the doubletakes were rather amusing). A fellow non-binary coworker gave me a Queer At Work badge for starting to present more femme at work.

Right now if you asked my gender, you would get a stare of confusion. My men’s clothes still feel like mine, and my women’s clothes now also feel like mine (blouses with low neck lines still feel weird, though that’s largely because I’ve always felt pretty self-conscious about showing skin). Gender no longer feels like a point on a spectrum, it feels like a constantly shifting range with one edge distinctly trending femme. I don’t know if “trans” as a label is one I feel right assigning to myself, but that’s okay. Maybe I’ll have some of the genders, maybe I’ll have all the genders (I definitely feel pretty genderful). I don’t know if my feelings about my gender will settle or whether they’ll constantly be in flux. That’s okay, too. I am as confident in the core of who I am as ever. I am surrounded by fantastic people who let me be me (yes, I mean you).

I can explore being myself in what is possibly the safest environment possible and with the confidence of maturity. I exist in a lucky confluence of circumstances I try to not take for granted. I still have not told any in my family, nor do I know what their reaction may be. For now, I will continue to explore and experiment and I will continue writing about my experiences with the hope that one day I can be in the open to help make it easier for others on this path.

(Friends, if you don’t follow my secret twitter, feel free to message my public account.)

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