Header art by Fabiola Lara

“Oh, I had no idea, you don’t seem queer.”

This is the response I have received time after time when I mention my queerness. It’s never uttered with malicious intent and it’s a sentence that’s usually followed by supportive, friendly questions, but it still stings a little bit to hear that an integral part of my identity is so quiet to everyone around me that it goes unnoticed.

My attraction to women became clear to me when I was in the third grade and developed a crush on a female friend. At 8 years old, this amounts to small doodles of us holding hands and reading “Harry Potter”, but hey, a crush is a crush.

I hooked up with girls on occasion throughout high school and college. Most, however, were straight women looking to experiment, which, as most queer people know, kind of sucks if it’s not disclosed upfront that you are not much more than the testing of a hypothesis. I have almost exclusively dated men due to, at least in part, my deep-rooted fear of being open about my sexuality in any setting that doesn’t involve alcohol.

The vast majority of my friends, particularly at college in Southern California and in my current city of New York, are straight women. Each of my friends is a warm, welcoming human being, but all the women have experienced unwanted sexual attention in some way and many, if not most, have become more cautious towards men as a result — a reasonable and inevitable response to the implicit and explicit sexualization they experience every day. As a rape survivor, I know this apprehension well. But at the same time, I am constantly afraid that my potential for attraction towards a woman will scare her out of being my friend.

Now, I have a strong revulsion towards any situation where I might face rejection, so I would never pursue romance with someone unless I was 95% certain they were interested. This is doubly true for my attraction to females — I would never hit on a woman until I not only knew she was queer, but also that she was attracted to me. Still, around straight women, I often avoid any topic or situation in which my queerness comes up unless it involves introducing them to a woman I’m seeing, thereby implying I am not going to hit on the friend. I don’t suggest we go to lesbian bars, I don’t ask them to go to queer art exhibits and I don’t discuss any of these frustrations. It gets exhausting to hold in, and I suspect it has resulted in a fair amount of internalized self-hatred towards my queerness (but that’s a topic for another day).

This self-censorship increased towards the end of my college career when I realized that I am not cisgender. (On a related note, this is the first time I’m really, openly acknowledging this about myself on the Internet. It speaks to how much of a safe space Femsplain is that I will not have to be afraid to read the comments about this acknowledgment once it’s published.) Right now, I identify as genderqueer, though this could change. I used to identify as bisexual, after all, but that evolved; my gender identity could, as well.

To be frank, this first occurred to me five years ago while watching porn. I realized that whenever I watch heterosexual videos, I always put myself in the man’s shoes. Up until then, I had assumed this was because I’m attracted to women, or because mainstream porn skews heavily towards male consumers, but no — it’s because I’m not a cisgender woman. As someone who has lived her entire life under a very specific, societally-ingrained certainty, this realization scared and disoriented the shit out of me.

The few friends I told and my then-boyfriend were supportive, albeit a little confused — an understandable reaction considering I myself was still navigating the waters. I began researching queer theory, wearing a binder when alone, buying clothing from the men’s section of H&M (very college of me, I know) and playing with makeup to make my face look more masculine.

Having been a freelance makeup artist at the time, that last aspect was actually the most frustrating — I have found that appearing more masculine is difficult for me, a person with an hourglass figure, a round face and conventionally feminine features. I felt ashamed of myself for not looking the way I believed others would deem acceptably androgynous. And with a friend group overwhelmingly made up of heterosexual, cisgender people who didn’t know how to respond to my dilemma, I simply stopped talking about it.

On the last day of college in 2012, I threw away my binder and men’s clothes, crying as I did it. It felt awful, and I never wanted to feel that I didn’t start acknowledging my gender identity again until late last year. But even now, I feel considerable reluctance towards being open about it.

I’m incredibly privileged to have experienced my adult life in environments where violent acts of homophobia and transphobia aren’t the norm. This does not, of course, mean that those prejudices do not exist in these settings — they’re just more under-the-radar. For example, I often hear the T-slur used by people who would tell you in the same breath how awful they think conservative Republicans are — people I respect and consider good human beings, but have no idea how hurtful it is when they outright ask a transperson extremely personal questions about their genitals. And because I do not fit in with people’s preconceived notions on what a genderqueer person looks like, because I am still exploring my gender identity and how I wish to present it, because I don’t look like Ruby Rose, I often feel hesitant to mention my queerness at all.

Even in generally progressive crowds, queer subjects can be uncomfortable and, perhaps more frequently, uninteresting. After all, if a topic is only relevant to the life of one person in the group, it is rare that it arouses the curiosity of the rest unless there is something newsy or outrageous about it. To me, there are few things more socially awkward than trying to have a discussion that nobody else feels compelled to have, so I just don’t bring them up at all unless I’m 1-on-1 with someone and they have acknowledged, outright, that they’re at ease with it.

People willing and excited to talk about gender do exist, thank goodness, which brings me to the part of this essay I am so excited to write: After years of merely peeking out from the proverbial peephole of my queerness, I’m starting to let people in.

An old friend of mine who began transitioning about a year ago recently visited New York. From the moment he walked through the door in my apartment, I felt empowered by his remarkable confidence and, at the same time, comforted by it to the point where I felt okay explaining my situation. Having him listen to my story, acknowledge my feelings and tell me that it’s okay to go at my own pace was invaluable — and allowed me to start sharing it with other people, too, both in discussion and in presentation.

Three months ago, I stopped shaving my legs. People often assume it’s a rejection of beauty standards or because, as 4Chan would have you believe, all feminists are patchouli-scented hippies with lots of leg hair, but in actuality, it is simply a small action, or lack thereof, that makes me feel a little more masculine-looking. I initially felt nervous about letting the people I’m seeing touch them because I thought they looked weird and unnatural despite being completely natural — internalized misogyny, hooray! — but every single one has said they look lovely. And they’re right, my hairy legs do look lovely because they are part of me, and I am lovely. Anyone, friend or romantic partner, who doesn’t accept that simply doesn’t need to be around me anymore.

As for being more “out” in front of everyone, it’s been a slow-paced climb filled with seemingly arbitrary markers that carry a surprising amount of weight. I have inserted, then removed, the word “queer” from my Twitter bio four times in the past month. And just now, I re-added it. I am pledging to myself to keep it there for at least a week before I let myself be afraid of confusing my friends or followers. These steps are tiny and sometimes infrequent, but they’re mine, and I think I am finally ready to take them.