My gender identity

I was asked recently about a statement I made where I indicated that I viewed myself as both male and female, and asked to expand on that further.  Thanks to my wonderful girlfriend who was happy to be the other half of my brain so I could put it all together in writing, I came up with the following:

I do see myself as parts of both.  I don’t think I fit neatly into society’s expectations of female, despite my female body.

On the gender continuum, I believe I sit in the middle… not fully female and not fully male.  I don’t tend to express this in appearance, but I think I express it in behavior.  I dress to look good, but I don’t dress “girly”… I don’t do makeup (unless absolutely called for), false nails, pink or bling… Though I do wear corsets, skirts, jewellery, lingerie etc.

I tend to relate easier to men than to women, I tend to bristle when someone refers to me as feminine, and that might be more political than identity, because I bristle the same way when someone calls me a “lady”.

As my girlfriend so succinctly put it, I am a human who happens to be female. I can choose to act feminine one day and masculine the next and nothing at all the third. That has no real bearing on anything I inherently am.

Is it problematic?  Rarely.  I don’t deal with much sexism because I am quite good at being deaf to it, or being sufficiently intimidating for it not to happen in the first place – that and surrounding myself with non-sexist people.  If someone attempts to impose their gender assumptions on me I tend to ignore them or tell them off – this happens more online than in person (the telling off).  Generally I don’t care what people think of me, unless they are quite close to me.  If some stranger wants to think X, then its not worth my energy educating and/or correcting them.

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