i haven't posted about myself to the broader trans community or tried to find other transfems who feel like me, but the more i keep my thoughts private the more alienated and alone i feel. i'm sure other people can relate to how my identity manifests for me. i'd like to share.
my physical body does not match the mental image i have of myself nor does it align with my gender identity. when i went through male puberty my dysphoria only got worse. i have the expected body of a man and this causes me significant anguish on a daily basis. staring at my reflection and not seeing a femininizing image looking back is so debilitating.
however, i was socialized and raised the way i was, and that was "as a boy." i have an attachment to my male youth and i find comfort and affirmation revisiting those periods and seeing myself as a boy in some corner of my headspace. i developed as a boy, i made friends in "boyish" ways, i had some typically male oriented interests, and i genuinely became attached to gay romance and sex that i began seeing myself as male-but-in-a-girl-way.
if i "feel male" to some degree then why can't i just be content being a man? who am i to say that i'm trans-anything? it's something i have struggled with my whole life, but i simply detest the label of "man" being applied to me. the idea of being seen as one feels like erasure of my own identity to satisfy the morality of someone who isn't me. i don't embody masculinity, i don't relate to it. more importantly, it causes me stress and physical reactions to be placed in the category of "man;" to be seen as broad shouldered, wide, bulky; a prominent forehead and thick arms and legs; to be assigned roles based on my perceived manliness
however, i do not see myself as a woman either. it doesn't cause me significant distress to be seen as one, merely i can recognize womanhood isn't what i'm channeling. whatever space i am occupying feels rather close, though. it is 10x easier to talk to women and i've noticed several traits of mine are regularly assigned to those same women and would be described as "feminine." it's clear to me that regardless of my varied interests that any gender could take part in, i run feminine as a default setting lol.
so, as someone who has a positive connection to certain aspects of masculinity and refers to themselves with he/they pronouns i think i'm at odds with the majority of transfems, but i genuinely feel like the label best represents me. if anyone is curious i can go in-depth or answer questions, i don't mind. hopefully one of ya'll can relate as well.
I like the pronoun hän, or hen. Hän applies to everyone, so it's not awkward, and doesn't specify gender. Hen is an addition to han for he and hon for she, but is still relatively widely understood, and does not conflict with de for they. English is just annoying like that. Maybe we should adopt hen.
This is one of my favorite things I've experienced about being in Japan so far. Everyone is just "name-honorific" and it's made me really happy to not deal people gendering me at all in most cases.
"They" can be applied as a singular, gender-neutral pronoun - but it can be awkward, esp. if you know someone. Using singular "they" usually implies not knowing them closely, like "oh, the garbage worker took out the trash? Yeah, they came this morning" - it implies we don't know them well or their gender, or something.
I never liked "they" even though when I was still in denial, I hated gender and wanted to not be gendered through pronouns. Asking to be called "they" was like the ultimate way to bring attention to my gender, and I didn't want that - I wanted to not think about it, I wanted other people to stop thinking about my gender.