I have been struggling with my gender lately, even though I still find myself defaulting to masculine presentations. I have previously mentioned that I experienced dysphoria in response to trauma and to being treated as a grown man since I was young. That dysphoria felt more like a resentment of girls, who are in these specific instances, treated better than young boys of color, to my own sisters who were protected by my parents in ways that I hadn’t been. I discussed this type of dysphoria recently with my sisters, acknowledging that they felt resentment toward our parents for being overprotective of them, but pointing out that they down right neglected me at best, or unintentionally put me in harm’s way. This feels different, maybe just as reactionary though.

Earlier in the week I was listening to the Savage Love podcast. I was listening to the host, Dan Savage, respond to what sounded like a joke call from someone who claimed to be a “half-breed” with “Aryan preferences.” It absolutely sounded like a prank and if it isn’t, I feel bad for the caller who is not able to find pride in her non-white background. He pointed out that even if calls are fake, they sometimes pose interesting hypotheticals and after all, every call is just a hypothetical scenario for everyone but the one caller. The way he frames the rest of his response, while logically sound, is perhaps not as forceful as I’d like to hear from him. He reassured the caller that while ultimately, no one can make you sleep with someone you don’t want to, that you should interrogate your desires and really acknowledge the difference between your own desires and what society has handed to you. It felt like he answered with a bit more hem and haw than this, but I had a flash of desire, I pictured my naked body, a little leaner but without a penis, instead some sort of pubic mound.

I wasn’t sure what to make of this mound and listened to another caller describe the dysphoria they have been feeling. As they said those words, described their discomfort in their own body, a sense of unease came upon me. I recalled how I had selected something like non-binary on a new dating app I had downloaded, well new to me, and how that somehow felt more appropriate than selecting man. But as I was jotting down these feelings, noting them down on my phone, an old friend came up to me at the gym and we lifted together for a while. I pushed the feelings aside and let something new in, this sense of comradery to be lifting together. I let him talk and wondered what to make of this, how I had been feeling disconnected from my male body until someone I had known, intimately, came up to me and suddenly I was partially back into my maleness.

This feelings have been ebbing and flowing but I still default to maleness.  At this point it feels like the default for me because I was born male and have “masculine” features. Case in point, I am worrying about a circuit party I’m going to later with friends, well… somewhat friends and the first one I’m going to. I stay active, but I’m not fit enough to feel totally prepared for the event. I know, I know, I’m perpetuating unrealistic expectations of what our bodies should look like in the gay community, but this feels like the one place where I’ll have to prepare myself for stares and looks of “You don’t belong here.” If I’m lucky, it’ll be just that. If we’re both lucky I’ll stay quiet if it raises to remarks…

Returning to my male body though, the hairiness of it may be enough to help me “fit in.” I’m trying to convince myself that I’ve never really cared enough to fit in, which is true and not. I never cared enough about fitting in because I just kept my head down and assimilated, even though in my heart and soul I didn’t care for it. It’s just what was easy. So too in this moment, I’m hoping that my body is enough that I can just enjoy the evening. I’m not going in with expectations that I’ll get laid or that everyone will want to be with me, no, what I want is to roam and enjoy myself but not have to justify my presence there. That’s where I’m trying to convince myself that I present in such a way that I’ll be left alone.

And that feeling… that feeling that I can relax and just allow my “natural” masculinity to protect me, is conflicting with prior feelings I had had of dysphoria. I am wondering of course, if in the same way that I wrestled with my sexuality when I was younger, if the same will hold true now as an adult. When I was younger, I felt very off put by the labels gay and straight, as I didn’t fit into either well. I know there are times now that I’ll default to gay when I don’t feel comfortable around people (gay or straight), if I even feel comfortable enough to acknowledge sexuality. Even as I explore gender expressions, will I still default to “he/him/his” just to make it easy on the general public? Will I end up then, in the same way, only able to acknowledge myself as a whole person in queer spaces… In time those queer spaces may grow, but that isn’t the present I live in yet.

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I didn’t want to make this a separate post because it is so inconsequential in the long run. The people at the circuit party looked exactly as I expected: muscular, hairless, white bodies. A handful of people of color were around, but not enough brown skin for my tastes. I’m sure the people were lovely, but it was so loud that I couldn’t hear anyone talking and didn’t try to raise my voice above the steady thump of music. The bass in the beat shook my body delightfully and I stayed near the speakers, letting the vibrations pass through my body. I went back and forth on whether to stay or not, on leaving before my friend and his friends got there. Eventually, they did show up but the place kept getting more and more crowded and that made me uncomfortable, the casual ways that other’s near naked bodies touched mine. I understand that other people might enjoy that, might find a sense of community in that, but I couldn’t bear it. I have been to plenty of nude beaches now and have gotten more comfortable with my own body in that way, but I still can’t handle people brushing up on me. None of it was mean-spirited by the way, I do want to make clear that everyone seemed lovely, on drugs and alcohol, but lovely. It just felt overstimulating to have so much casual contact on my bare skin. My friend showed up with many other friends and that was ok… One of his other friends took it upon himself to move the group around and that was fine, there was just lots of checking in which I knew would annoy me if I stayed, because I was not having a good time and was trying to hide it. My friend didn’t pick up on it and he even invited me to the next one. Recently, out at dinner, I told him how I actually felt and why I had tried to hide it more that night, didn’t want to bring the mood down but I wasn’t comfortable. His friends were nice enough and with them I felt included, but the recurring thought was, “Do I actually want to fit into this?”

I knew I was too high for the event. Too in my head and too critical and too observant and too anxious. No one was distasteful in any way, there were no disgruntled looks as I had been worried about, but I couldn’t stop the question repeating over and over. For me, the answer is no although I’m glad I went and have reaffirmed lessons I’ve learned about myself, time well spent, but wouldn’t go to another. Similarly, I’m posting this update to move on and let my mind drift to other topics at hand.