April 11,2017 3:24pm

I transcend gender. My gender is too complicated to fit into a box- the binary is just too small for me. I am finding that I go beyond what it means to be male or female, I am neither and I am both all at the same time. I can’t remember the last time I was this confused, yet liberated. Probably since the first time I came out as transgender, when I idneitifed as ftm— female to male. When I first stared questioning my gender, I quietly identified as genderfluid. I thought that since I still liked wearing makeup that must mean I was still “partly” a girl. I am learning now, after being out as genderfluid for 2 months now, that just because I like wearing makeup still is not what in essence makes me “feel” like a girl still.It’s more how I think, act and feel that makes me still identify partly as female. Men can wear makeup and dresses too. I am who I am and I feel comfortable wearing different clothes based on how I feel any given day or situation. I am finding that if I am going out to a party, I like to get dressed up, put on a cute dress and do my makeup, where as sometimes during the day, that seems far from my mind and does not sound appealing to me at all.

I think the clear indicator to me that my gender is fluid is that I can feel male or female given different circumstances. Sometimes when I am with all females I feel like one of the girls again, I feel a sense of kin ship and understanding that I don’t get when I am surrounded by cis men. I always felt like an outsider among my cis male classmates and peers. Something about me didn’t quite click and I always felt like an outsider. I thought I was too feminine and came off flamboyant and “gay” to people if I was compared to cis men. I am now realizing, maybe I’m not flamboyant at all, because I think that is a very gendered term for a male that is flashy and exuberant, but maybe I am just me. Maybe I am just a loud, glitzy, extra person regardless of my gender identity du jour. I think I need to stop putting myself into catergories and say that my gender is what it is in the moment! Maybe I don’t have a “resting” gender identity and I don’t normally sit on the male or female side of things and it literally is different all the time. Does transmasucline even fit me anyone? This can be confusing and exhausting when it comes to picking out what to wear for the day, but over all I feel more free than I have in awhile.

There is a different sense of relief with my second coming out. When I first came out as ftm I felt like I wan’t lying to myself anymore and I was able to just be me. I didn’t have the gender expectations to be dainty and pretty anymore, now I could be rugged, rough and tough (and anyone that knows me, knows that is a far cry from who I am). Now that I am fully living as me, in all my various identities I feel that no part of me is hiding any longer. For the past 2 years that I have been out, I stifled the feminine parts of me, saying to myself that was wrong, and I was “too gay.” But now I see the fact that I enjoy wearing makeup and dresses is just as another facet of my gender expression and who Rilen is as a human being. I am no longer pushing any part of me away in order to conform to societies expectations of what it is to be a male OR a female. I am swimming around, wading in the water, getting wet and having fun. Gender is a performance, and I have taken the stage. It’s all a big lie in my book, and now that I am unthethered to what the world expects of me, I am living my best life, and damn it feels good!