23 year old AMAB. All my life, I’ve considered myself cisgender, but recently, I’ve begun questioning that. I’ll sometimes see posts like “if a potion/pill/button existed that could turn you into the opposite sex, would you use it?” and think to myself “Yeah, I’d be down to at least try that.” I know that doesn’t automatically make me trans, but it does make me question.
At the same time, however, I get a lot of euphoria from presenting as a man. When I start questioning my gender, I’ll look in the mirror, or at pictures of myself, and think “I look good with this masculine hairstyle”, “I like getting dressed up in a suit and tie”, or “I want to try growing a beard”. And the idea of being a father someday does bring me a lot of joy.
I’ve done a bit of research already, and based on my experience, I think I’ve narrowed my possible identities down to two options.
- Cisgender male who is just curious about the female experience
- Demiboy with a secondary identity of female
The thing is that I’m not sure where to go from here. This isn’t exactly a problem, since I feel no dysphoria when presenting as a male, so am comfortable living as cis in the meantime. But I would like to figure this out at some point, ideally sooner than later. Do any of you have any suggestions?
Side note: I’m currently living with my parents, and while they’re generally nice people, they hold some pretty transphobic views. I do expect to move out sooner than later, but anything that would require a totally safe physical space might have to wait.
“if a potion/pill/button existed that could turn you into the opposite sex, would you use it?” and think to myself “Yeah, I’d be down to at least try that.” I know that doesn’t automatically make me trans, but it does make me question.
There is no minimal requirement to call yourself trans. I think it would be perfectly acceptable to call yourself trans even if you decide to do nothing about it. Also there is a pill to turn yourself into the opposite sex. It’s generally called HRT. It took me years to realize that.
As far as labels, for me at least, their use is mainly to communicate with others and explore yourself. They do not actually define who you are. You can even use multiple labels that seem mutually exclusive with each other. There are no hard and fast rules.
For where to go from here, explore how you want to present yourself. Do you want a more feminine or androgynous haircut? Get one and see how it feels. Different clothes? I can tell you there are androgynous clothes in the women’s section of stores that fit well on male bodies. The real point to to liberate yourself from others expectations and present yourself how you want to. That takes times, self-reflection on why you don’t do things you want to do, pushing your own boundaries and discovering yourself.
Thanks so much for the advice. I’m thinking I’ll hold off on exploring my presentations until I’ve found a better space for that, but I definitely will give it a try. In the meantime, I’ll try not to sweat over labels, and I guess kind of go with the flow.
I’ll confess, I knew about hormone replacement pills when I wrote this post, but they weren’t what I was thinking of when I mentioned pills. I was imagining some kind of fantasy pill where you take one, and you wake up the next morning in an entirely new body, complete with different organs. That’s kind of on me, though lol.
I audibly laughed, because yes, there is indeed a pill that does that. :)
Gender identity and expression are different things, but they can be hard to differentiate if you don’t have a strong sense of gender identity. It sounds like that’s the case for you. If you find it useful to call yourself a demiboy, like if you want to signal that you’re not super attached to man, go for it.
In language, the rules are made up and people don’t really care about the fine details anyway, so don’t get too stuck on technicalities of definitions. Demiboy or not, good luck on self discovery!
