On the masculine side, I recognize a lot of the words in the cloud as being part of common distress phrases I wrote ALOT:

“I don’t want to do/deal with this anymore”

“I hate this”

“I want to be normal”

“Why is this happening?”

Stupid/Handle – You’ve probably gathered I’m not innately the most self-compassionate, so the above phrases would typically be accompanied by a lovely dose of shame: “I should be able to handle this” or “I hate being so stupid and dramatic about this”. Helpful stuff.

Fight/Control – I would talk about trying to fight either the feelings that would come with masculine swings or the masculine swing itself. Control was/is very important to me especially at the beginning, and feeling the intense emotions on either end of the spectrum made me feel very much not in control.

Depressed/Unhappy/Dysphoric – Pretty self-explanatory, I feel like my masculine swings bring up the same feelings as many transgender narratives I’ve heard. When I am feeling strongly masculine, everything feels off, wrong. But since my experience is temporary, there is nothing I can do about it. Trans men can consider transitioning – taking hormones, having surgery, etc to make their bodies more in line with their gender and ease their dysphoria. There are some non-binary transition things I’ve thought about, but the fluid and temporary nature of my gender hasn’t made it worth the risks and unknowns yet. Therefore, when I have masculine swings and am feeling dysphoric, things seem especially hopeless, like I’m just stuck feeling shitty until it passes.

Numb/Distracted/Disconnected – Related to the depression and dysphoria, I often feel very disconnected (from my body, from my surroundings, from my social network), I just feel very not present. Sometimes distractions are necessary just to get by, if I can focus on work or something else I can sometimes forget about everything going on. Numb was used in a couple different ways; physically feeling numb – probably related to feeling disconnected, meaning that sometimes either my entire body or the parts I am the most dysphoric about can physically feel numb (like it’s not mine). There is also emotionally numb, just not being able feel things anymore cause it is too difficult.

[Self-]conscious/Uncomfortable – These words would usually be used in the context of social situations during masculine swings. Feeling self-conscious or uncomfortable in my clothes, about my voice, or in social interactions. I don’t think I can truly explain just how hard it is to navigate our gendered society when you don’t feel connected to the body you are in and the gender everyone reads you as.

As a sidenote, I’ve gotten and there is a lot of “advice” out there for genderfluid people to just “dress how you feel”, like that is some magical cure for dysphoria some of us feel. Not my experience at all, and this misperception feels like such a belittlement of the entire concept to me. It’s not about the clothes, it’s so much deeper than that. “Gender confirming” clothes often make my dysphoria worse – when your body already feels wrong, seeing it not fill out a men’s shirt or stretch at the hips of a men’s pair of jeans can be extra devastating. Often when I’m masculine, even if I might feel more comfortable in men’s clothes, the social burden of dressing that way is often just too much to handle on top of everything else. Dressing more feminine or gender neutral can be easier in order to just get through the day. I’m already putting on an act to hide how depressed and disconnected I feel (since mental health discussions are also not “socially acceptable”), playing dress up is just part of the performance.

Hair/Binding/Hurt – These words are more referring to my physical appearance and alterations. I usually keep my hair short, which helps with dysphoria. However if I had neglected haircuts or during periods where I was growing out my hair (to be more “socially acceptable” for an event) I would likely have much to say about it. Binding (“safely” with a binder, not wraps/tape) is also something that can help dysphoria around my chest. If you are unfamiliar though, binding fucking hurts. It’s tight and uncomfortable, you can’t breathe, it’s hot, people have literally cracked ribs. Kind of shows how desperate of a place someone is in if this option is better than the alternative.

I have conflicting feelings about binding. It does help me mentally, but I also see it as a kind of self-harm mechanism – which makes me feel like I should try and not do it. I also have noticed when I am masculine for an extended period of time I will drop weight (probably from depression) and pick more at my skin. It’s easier to hurt a body that doesn’t feel like yours, or you are just so numb to everything that even feeling pain is an upgrade.

*bonus* Sucks – I was more just surprised and amused to see this in here. I’ve made efforts to completely remove this word from my vocabulary in recent years as it is sexist/homophobic. But apparently I used to say it quite a lot to describe my indeed “bad” masculine experience.