Hi! Currently I’m experiencing a lot of gender dysphoria. It was triggered after talking with a friend, a former partner of mine who is cis female and who I trusted to handle my request sensible. They were an important catalyst for daring to express myself more queer and tackling that gender issue in my adult life.
So after being more happy in the queer spectrum, being at least bi, and feeling more fine as enby with some fluidity and ideation of different body or gender recognitions - brought on by talk with fellow trans, queer and enby friends - I wanted to visit a Flinta party and help out a bit if everything works out.
Though my former partner was mentioning how since I am looking very male and don’t present female she wouldn’t like me helping out, as she would like to see women who are looking like women and perform the part to feel safe in a non patriarchal space. Which one part of course has valid points (the longing for safe spaces), but feels exclusionary and while I accept multiple truths at the same time I am feeling for the last two days bad and dysphoric. Since I was happy with not being cis male and was so welcomed in INTA* that the exclusionary talking point (went from being expression of feeling to it being reiterated) really hit me, especially since I wanted to share part of my identity with her as it is still an important part of me.
So now I’m feeling really bad and while I don’t label myself trans (to not take away from the struggle), both enby and gender fluid really fit my identity. Sure sometimes I thought about transitioning and did perform like a binary other gender, but that was when I lacked words, concepts and such. At least I know that the masculinity and assigned gender I grew up with isn’t mine. Even though I was happy with it being part of me (or parts of it being part of me), it just doesn’t quite fit me and the other self identification just felt so much nicer and more fitting.
If you feel that you’re gender fluid, then you’re part of the trans umbrella. Trans simply means not aligning with your assigned gender at birth.
Your former partner def comes off as TERF-adjacent at the very least. “looking very male therefore it wouldnt be safe” is an anti-trans dogwhistle. I suggest talking to her about it and confronting her on why a non-binary person “owes” someone feminity and why that means they need to be excluded from fem spaces.
Yeah, this is horrible. I’ve seen absolutely beautiful women with strong builds and a beard, and while I understand that someone might have an initial internal reaction to it, not harming other with that reaction is probably the first part of being accepting to trans people. I am unsure if a conversation would fix this. Sounds like one of those people who will call you “male socialized”.
Yess 100% to your last point. Op doesn’t need to perform femininity to be a safe perspn…
Hey just wanna say that you can use the trans label for yourself I’d you want. You were not assigned NB at birth so that makes you trans… if you want to use the label. You aren’t taking away from any struggle comrade.
Honestly I don’t know what a flinta party is though… so idk if I can provide help with that… that sucks that you are being excluded though :(
I can see why she’s a former partner.