Choosing A Gender

I was first aware of gender when my voice changed. 

Because of Health class, I had been under the impression that only boys’ voice changed. I also started growing hairs out my chin. Then there was the ever present attraction to girls that I had. So I was a boy then, right?

But I didn’t feel like a boy. I was assigned female at birth, and I didn’t want to participate in the stereotypical activities I saw boys indulge in. I thought maybe I was supposed to be a boy because of those other things happening to me. But I just didn’t feel like a boy. Then I quickly developed LARGE breasts and started my menses. 

I’ve always hated my breasts for the physical pain they caused me, the social expectations of having them, and the challenges they present when trying to buy bras and tops and dresses. However, I never once thought that they were the wrong body parts for me. I hated the physical pain of having a menstrual cycle and the clothes it ruined. But I chalked it down to ‘I’m a girl. Periods are what happens to us.’ I definitely wished to never have periods again, but not because I felt they weren’t supposed to be happening to me. 

So okay. I definitely wasn’t really a boy.

Yet the hair on my chin grew longer and my attraction to other girls grew stronger. How can I be a girl and like girls? How can I be a girl but have chin hair? 

I have the added pressure of needing to adhere to Black girl gender standards. I didn’t see myself on Ebony or Jet. I didn’t see myself as one of the girls in rap and hip-hop videos. I didn’t have the sassiness to be like Destiny’s Child, TLC, or SWV. I lacked soul to be like Erykah Badu, Brownstone, and Jill Scott. I did have admiring soft spots for Black women who didn’t fit any of these molds like Monique, Oprah, Whoopi Goldberg, and Queen Latifah; however, I lacked the masculine “go-get-her” attitudes these women displayed to fully commit to aspiring to be like them.

I didn’t have their looks, but there were three Black girls I followed while growing up that came close to how I identified. I saw Brandy, Monica, and Aaliyah as girls. The kind of girls I wanted to be. They were just coming into their own and discovering what it was to be a girl; from their hairstyles to their clothes to first loves. They spoke to me in a way no others had. I didn’t have to be a Black woman. I was okay exploring and celebrating being a Black girl. But was girl where I stopped? Or could there be more to graduate to? Since they eventually grew up, didn’t I have to essentially grow up too?

It was always hard for me to pinpoint my gender. I have multigender physical traits and romantic feelings for multigenders. So how am I to know what gender I am when gender itself is split within me? It would be great to not claim anything and have no gender whatsoever. And I definitely feel like just a genderless body sometimes. But these damn boobs and period pains put me squarely in the female category. 

I never felt like I fit in with becoming the kinds of women I had examples of growing up. I’m not beautiful, so I can’t be a traditional woman. I’m ugly and fat, but I lack the strong masculine personality to compliment that. And all the variations of women that have sense gained visibility, I don’t fit in with. That’s when I realized not only that I wasn’t a woman, but I could never be a woman. But I don’t feel like a guy. I have reproductive body parts so I feel I have a gender, but those parts don’t completely make me feel like I identify. So if I identify as the female gender, but I’m not a woman; nor do I feel like a guy, what am I?

Then I discovered a gender that finally fit me perfectly. A person who feels their gender identity partially identifies with a feminine identity, but is not wholly binary, regardless of their assigned gender; is Demigirl.