Content Warning: Gender dysphoria, euphoria, mental anguish, self-hatred, and all the fun stuff that tends to go with being transgender in our contemporary society

November 12th, 2018, 10pm

...But whatever, you're in 11th grade. You're not in college yet, and heck even when you are that doesn't mean anything changes that drastically. You're still a kid, nothing wrong with that... You'll figure yourself out eventually. Just don't give up. Keep going, keep trying.

Success isn't measured purely by the points in some gradebook. Honestly all that matters for is to see whether or not you can get out of High School. None of this means anything beyond just learning the material. It doesn't matter if you do some special project or not and the teacher doesn't like your work.

The real world is complicated, stop being stressed out over things that don't matter in the long run. Get them done, and move on.

And have fun while you're at it.

Don't forget to be happy.

October 31st, 2019

I guess I'll talk a bit more about my sexual stuff here. I'm gay, duh. Nothing new there, just a bit more confident with it and okay with sharing it to whoever. Also, I think it's valid to throw a "little bit" of a non-binary label on myself. I mean, I'm pretty confident and perfectly alright with identifying with the sex I was born as, making my cis. But, I also know for a fact that I don't perfectly fit the mold and there's aspects to me that a bit more nuanced than that. Nothing that changes anything about how I act or even something that I care to share publicly in any way, just a way to phrase something I already know about myself in a bit more of a nuanced way.

A lot of the pain and anguish I had earlier in the year about this stuff is gone. I've got pretty much no issues with my sexuality. I haven't really talked about it at all with my parents in any more nuanced of a way, but I expect that to come around more when I go to college next year. SO.... I know that I'm definitely going to be ranting and raving about how terrible my life is and "woe is me" by next year, so woo hoo.

First time in this that I managed to get out to myself that there was something off between my gender presentation and identity. I had barely even begun to unpack it all, but this was the first time I managed to get out to myself that something was wrong.

Also, in retrospect, the comment about "nothing that changes anything about how I act" in regards to my gender identity is utterly hysterical

January 6th, 2021, 10pm

...Also, the reason I'm focusing on this suddenly is because I'm personally going by they/them now moreso than he/him in regards to gender, lol. I'm nonbinary. So that's the reason I brought up the point in the first place. I wanted to slap a role on myself, and there wasn't one, but I thought that the nickname seemed too aggressive. So that's why I mentioned adding roles for it, lol

Despite taking on the non-binary label back in 2019, it wasn't until 2021 that I really started pushing a bit harder to be seen as non-binary over being seen as male. I didn't try very hard, I felt like people wouldn't take it seriously. But I did start making a note to make it known to people. I was starting to get more comfortable with the fact I wasn't male, even if I didn't quite allow myself to acknowledge why that was the case

September 28th, 2022, 9:50am

To remain the gender you despise is to cripple yourself, it is better to transition away from it than to stay in a body you hate

I still stand by this fully. I'm always happy whenever I poke around at old chatlogs and see this message pop up of mine, heh

June 1st, 2023, 12:30pm-12:40pm

The glorification of "straight" identities is a modern invention and the labels that define these things are made up. They're all human inventions, it's just that the straight identity is currently naturalized by our society, which makes it seem like it's an intrinsic part of existence and has always existed

Being solely attracted to specific representations of human identity that are associated with some variants of the male/female sex's sexual development isn't a universal constant throughout human society, it's just part of many current cultures

The LGBT community's goal is to naturalize more complex and open ideas of gender identity in order to allow people to better and more accurately express themselves within a wider variety of now acceptable identites. People can be more themselves when they're allowed to exist within an identity that's actually descriptive of who they are

Alternatively you can also just de-emphasize the importance of the labels in the first place, which is also a large part of the LGBT community. Straight, gay, bi, male, female, it's all a spectrum

Also for the point of male and female being a spectrum, that applies to both gender identity, the way you identify, and biological sex. Sex isn't binary, and there are deviations that exist throughout it among many people where they'll have aspects and parts of their genes which signal the bodies to develop and act in ways that aren't 100% human male or 100% human female, and these deviations are relatively common. A lot of people have them without knowing. Unless you've had a DNA test, anyone reading this might have one or more and just not know it

Around this time, I really started to pull apart my gender in earnest within my own head. Started to take steps towards acknowleding more of myself. The things I state here were said in earnest about others, and at this point it just took one extra little push to fully break me away from the idea that I had to live as male

June 25th, 2023, 12am

I know for a fact I ain't a man. Not sure if I'm a full-on woman, genderfluid, or non-binary, but I'm not a fucking man and I will bite you if you call me one on purpose

But I'm gonna start going by She/Her now

They/Them is obviously still fine, but if you refer to me as a he I will eat your entire short

And that's a promise

Note: This was the day that I admitted to myself, at least in part, that I enjoyed being perceived as a woman. I had known this for years, it'd be stewing in my head since I was a kid. But this was the first step I took to start stepping into this more feminine identity. However, there was still a long way to go

July 15th, 2023

Gender update: Not really feeling transfem in honesty, leaning too far into presenting as female feels as wrong as presenting male. I still am liking the Sandra name though and some of the female pronouns, but I think that may be more because it's a nice change of pace from being seen as male by default, not because it's really how I feel inside. I'm gonna lean back towards being non-binary.

Honestly, if you wanna make me happy with how you refer to me, just call me some variation of bird, lol

Detransitioning.

It's a nasty concept, one filled with a lot of misinformation. I'd be lying if I didn't admit that during the process of trying to discover myself as a trans woman, I detransitioned several times into this more ambiguous "non-binary" state. Always in this desperate attempt to claw back that safety of the old self.

It's happened several times over the course of the last few years. The most recent of which was on this blog

The core thought that always underlied my dysphoria, and still frequently causes me a lot of mental anguish, is this idea that I can't be a woman. That it's not something that I'm allowed to do. That I will always be stuck as the gender I was assigned. And this isn't surprising, our collective world society tries as hard as possible to pressure that into people. It's bullshit, but it's a very hard ideology to break away from when you've internalized it all your life

Anytime I've ever broken away from the idea of being a transgender woman, it's never been because I don't feel this push towards the feminine identity and presentation. It's because I thought I nobody would ever actually see me as a woman. Nobody would take me seriously. Nobody would allow me to do this

And still... many won't ever take me seriously. They won't ever see me as a woman. Or if they do, it'll be in this state where I'm both a woman for the purposes of dismissing me, while a man for the purposes of hurting me.

It's why it's so hard to continue forging ahead. I have to disregard the voices of those who don't care about what I have to say. Those who don't know or care about the complexities of human identity, that never wish to have discussions regarding these things.