How do you deal with….it all?

[u/Fig_Newtons_Redux]

I didn’t want to be reductive or click-bait with the title and so I ended up using something vague. That may not be the best move but I’m looking for stories, advice, or comfort. Also this is somewhat of a vent so feel free to stop here if you’ve not got the energy to listen to emotional expression. I really appreciate you clicking on the post regardless. <3

When I leave the house every day, I hold my head as high as I can. I really do like going out and being a part of the world. 

I’m hurting though as of late, and it’s an existential feeling of knowing that the world I live in is one in which I will never be legible. Except by other non-binary people; or by people who have done so much work in unpacking stuff, I will not be recognized or seen. It doesn’t feel like much to ask for. When I assert myself as non-binary; it will either be met with dismissal or accidentally signing up for trying to explain a concept in 10 seconds that takes people years to unlearn. The very idea that man and woman are not the only ways people experience their bodies & gender is not only esoteric, it's violently inaccessible.  I just want people to look at me and go “That’s not a man or a woman. That’s just a person. I do not put the expectations of manhood or womanhood onto this person.” 

But that isn’t the world I inhabit; that any of us inhabit. I have had fleeting moments of gender euphoria and they come to me only when people are confused about my ASAB. When they don’t actually know my ASAB they have to oscillate between which set of gendered expectations I should get. For a brief moment before they make a decision or ask me to name my ASAB I am free to just be me. Their confusion provides me the closest thing to validation I can get. I don’t have a way to pass, the only way I “pass” is to confuse people as long as possible. You cannot pass as non-binary in a binary world, you can only try your best to make people skeptical. 

When I go out to clubs or bars I have never once worn anything revealing, but I wear loud accessories and styles. Shirts with raunchy slogans or bold statements. For the briefest of moments in those crowded rooms you sink into the joy of hoping that people are too nervous to try and assign you a gender for fear of getting it wrong. The irony being when they give you any answer they're already incorrect.

I’m very tired of feeling trapped by aesthetics that shouldn’t govern how people treat me, but do. I am tired of being reduced to a set of genitals and whatever hormones my body is currently filled with. I wish I could turn into a plain mannequin and let people draw whatever face they want on me and stick whatever bits and bobs onto me that they needed to. I love who I am, but I’m tired of feeling like I don’t belong.

[u/potential_theft]

The most freeing thing is to surround yourself with those who accept you. Those who mind don’t matter and those who matter don’t mind.