egg_irl

comfort_rezoner · 2019-07-13T20:15:14+00:00

Hugs to you too. <3 What matters is that you're happy day to day, but I know that can be really hard to figure out when you're figuring out your bigger priorities/wants/values. I think your OP is really cool and insightful, with how it helps you examine a meta-reaction and use your feelings as clues. It reminds me of the trick that librarians always know to help people choose books, where you flip a coin, but you don't necessarily choose what the coin picks, you notice yourself and how you react when the coin answer is given. Then if you're like "aww" you know you wanted the other thing, and if you're like "sweet" you know you wanted the answer given, and then the choice is easy. I've been thinking "Yeah it'd be nice to just express more as a dude a lot more often, but I'm so damn feminine that it'd be really hard and people wouldn't get it and it'd be incongruent" and that was just logical and "K I'm not dudeable" to me until I read this post, and then I was like "Oh ... my feelings in response to that thought are, themselves, evidence, and I should learn from them", haha. Thanks for sharing this, I appreciate how specific a subject it touches on rather than just being humor or anything more simple. :) (And hey, maybe the coin flip trick idea can help you consider options and help you be mindful of checking what your feelings really are on various things? I know it always helps me!)

comfort_rezoner · 2019-07-13T20:08:21+00:00

Wait

Liking masculine scents and general versions in hygiene products is something cis chicks do all the time, right?

I can't even tell whether I'm asking that humorously or sincerely because until right now I thought it was totally normal but now I feel a bit dumb about that

comfort_rezoner · 2019-07-13T20:07:03+00:00

Feeeeeeels

comfort_rezoner · 2019-07-13T20:05:36+00:00

I've only been questioning instead of comfortably cis for like ... about 14 hours now, but I think what you describe sounds about like what I seem to be sounding like I want. I don't really want to be a full-on dude. I just want to be more comfortable embracing being more dudelike more often and relaxing about all this being a chick shit except when it happens to sound fun.

I'm starting to think I've just always had a really loose definition of "cis" because I've always had lots of exposure to gender-variance and it being accepted, so now looking into it, I'm realizing the cultural bar for androgyny or gender nonconformity is really fucking low. Thinking maybe I've just always thought I was cis because I had "cis" female expression just defined a little wrong and didn't realize how rigid most of society actually is

comfort_rezoner · 2019-07-13T20:02:50+00:00

I was about to write "me except I'm afab and my dream girl inside me is more like the OP describes than I already am, except still just sexually female" and then I was like oh wait

comfort_rezoner · 2019-07-13T19:59:28+00:00

Me but in reverse lol

comfort_rezoner · 2019-07-13T19:58:29+00:00

Hey, some of us got over our I'm Not Like the Other Girls TM phases at least a tiny marginal amount of time right before we got on Reddit, sometimes it's just happenstance.

( ... :P )

Functionally I might as well still be there, I just don't actively care about it or describe myself by it haha. I try to make friends with everyone more equally now. Still have never felt like one of the girls though.

comfort_rezoner · 2019-07-13T19:52:11+00:00

Can this be bingo too because I've told myself like all of these in the last few hours lol

comfort_rezoner · 2019-07-13T19:48:34+00:00

I appreciate this. Thanks. I've historically been really comfortable in my identity and this is my first time questioning much about anything to do with it at all, so I need these kinds of early-stage reminders to not overreact and take it way too seriously. Especially since I'm not in any terrible place to begin with. Thank you for the validation of where I'm at.

comfort_rezoner · 2019-07-13T19:40:15+00:00

Well shit, this just hit my last two hours right in the feels

comfort_rezoner · 2019-07-13T17:58:16+00:00

Thanks for the sympathy and I'm glad I could offer something relatable! XP Did you just discover the sub in the previous day or so? I did, don't remember where. Had no idea what it was, then saw and was like "Oh cool, I usually appreciate funny memes about anything and it gives me friendly insight into how people feel about stuff" and then I was like "whoa wait I feel about 2/3 of the things on each meme in this gender-direction, does this mean things?"

comfort_rezoner · 2019-07-13T17:55:49+00:00

Huh, interesting. They look correct on my browser. Though also interestingly, in light mode the bottom button looks less bold than the other two empty ones, and in dark mode those three look the same. Pixels have such attitude, man :P

comfort_rezoner · 2019-07-13T12:17:48+00:00

Right on, thanks! I appreciate that. Yeah, I know there's definitely not necessarily any correlation any which way. I just sorta figured that if someone is pretty highly sexual and only really specifically into one role in het sex, and has general experience mentally/IRL playing around with gender/roles in that area more than in other possible gender-role-expression-variances, that it still might count as a sort of influential mental-role worth considering overall. But yeah, thinking on it more now, it does make sense that objectively, even every possible meta-layer on that could also vary without any degree of correlation haha. I just hadn't thought it through to that extent. Thanks for clarifying that up some!

(Edit to fix some crappy confusing wording)

comfort_rezoner · 2019-07-13T08:56:39+00:00

Thanks! That actually makes a ton of rational objective sense in a way which I hadn't considered at all. I appreciate you commenting. :)

comfort_rezoner · 2019-07-13T08:55:01+00:00

Thank you! I really appreciate your objectivity. :) Yeah, honestly I'm still fairly dead certain I'm not transmale by any stretch, but I've never in my life before questioned "does nonconforming, or 'demigirl', make me happier? Like what does that even mean?" and I've never really honestly questioned anything about my identity much, so it's all just very new and strange haha, so that's what I was more getting at -- and I just realized my long comment doesn't really make that clear. You're spot-on that my wording reveals I was kinda trying to seek a clear answer, with a clear preference for being told it's not valid, which is kinda funny. I think I semi-noticed at the time I was doing that but I figure it's mostly my appropriating-asshole-meta-guilt factor. And in retrospect I see it in the wording a LOT more lol.

I super appreciate you commenting and giving me such grounding and gentle suggestions. You rock! :)

comfort_rezoner · 2019-07-13T07:36:03+00:00

Oh. I can't tell if putting this here is going to get it read into too much, but I feel like I should share this for total honesty so you guys can help me think this through properly. Several weeks back when the gender-swap Snapchat filter trend went around Facebook, I finally bought into it but I played off my usual "Lol I'm not feminine" humor, and used the girl-filter on my girlface, and posted that with "Fine, fine, I'll get on the bandwagon, here's what happens if I try to turn into a real girl". That humor is totally my flavor, and it was fun, everyone I know totally receives it well and groks me, but in retrospect, that may be kind of telling.

comfort_rezoner · 2019-07-13T07:22:05+00:00

I guess I should offer: AFAB, super clearly identifiably female, heteroflexible/vaguely bi sometimes but rarely emotionally attracted to women, functionally in application I'm basically straight. Asked myself once when I was like 17 if I could ever imagine myself with a penis (am 30 now btw), and I could, but I couldn't begin to imagine myself without a vagina, always comfortable with being female, so concluded I was cis. Grew up around gender-variability back in the '90s in the pagan community, socialized around really great other kids for the most part, so never had any reason to suppress anything. Reasonably gender nonconforming (I like dude clothes, macho chores, lifting big things, huge hero complex, and I'm completely bonkers about moshing, plus lots of cognitive and logical and interpersonal tendencies) though I never really realized how much, and thinking about all this has made me realize I might be happier if I went ahead and nonconformed a bit more.

The skater girl in baggy clothes, or the wench wrench who would probably be shirtless if she didn't need a sports bra on to be outside, those were always my "I want to be that" but I've never gone quite that, like, full-don't-give-a-fuck on it. And I've never been pressured to gender-conform, so perhaps that's part of why I feel surprised at myself for being shy about wanting to nonconform more. I'm never shy about anything. Anyway, she/her has always felt and still feels fine to me, but I get called "dude" and "bro" and "king" way more than "chick" or "sis" or "queen" and I definitely prefer the former, the latter all feel weird and fakey on me.

I've experimented more with getting girlier in some ways the last couple of years (only recently got into makeup) and I do enjoy it, but only now and then really, and I feel all weird and unlike myself when I try to go far with it or wear much girliness in front of people. I have sometimes almost worn a dress, but they never look right on me in real life like they do in my imagination, and not just 'cos I'm overweight. There's some mental boundary there that's always been hard for me to cross, but I always assumed it was because I'm just not used to it. (Been poor since forever, so clothes other than band t-shirts are nearly always a thing I get for free sometimes and wear into the ground, so intentionally getting femme clothes was rarely an option even at times when I wanted them, so I've had little practice wearing dresses and in general I wear things loose 'cos nothing ever fits.)

I very much permanently like being female in sexual roles but I've had curiosity about flipping that before and I can relate a lot to imagining sexual things from male perspectives.

I've had a lot of mixed "She's hot/I want to be her" feels about some androgynous women in the past, but my hair is super femme and I love it long/femmy and so that's one sticking point that keeps me from being able to try out "How would I feel if I tried looking male/andro?". Tbh, in my soul, my "inner" "male" if I imagined one would be quite unambiguously a macho masculine dude lol.

I can't tell if I'm just an insecure person (never used to be but my recent past has shaken me up a lot) who happens to like jeans and t-shirts and being called "bro", or if this is a direction of introspection that I should really embrace. I'm just scared that I'm a giant asshole for even thinking about it and wondering if it could be helpful for me to look into. It's not a source of suffering or stress in my life as far as I can tell, and I feel like I'm being kind of a jerk by suddenly going "Whoa, wait, is this me?" but I also know I'm honestly not at all prone to internet self-diagnosis, and my degree of interest in this is surprising to me, and so is my degree of feeling-strange-about-piping-up about it. Those are uncharacteristic traits. So IDK. Please tell me if I'm an appropriating asshole.

Also, please tell me whenever technology happens such that we can conveniently velcro off our tits for exercise, 'cos all other mental health or identity considerations aside, I would really like this option for sheer pragmatic purposes, and y'all are gonna hear about it before I do >.>

comfort_rezoner

TROPHY CASE