Personal Identity and Quarantine

I remember reading a post in December of last year, it said something along the lines of 'if you even consider that you might be trans, you probably are' to which my naive cis-illusioned brain said 'Ha! Ridiculous! I am just considering the possibility!" I am here to tell you...I was wrong. And this isn't me pushing a trans agenda upon the population, not yet, it's simply that I think we all are so caught up in gender presentation that for many of us it is something disconnected from ourselves. We aren't actually in tune with our own feelings, just what we expect ourselves to be. I understand this is not the case for every person, many people will know from a young age, or find it obvious that they are trans, but for me it was something far off and just didn't coincide with what I believed 'gender' was.

Funnily enough, I've always been very 'anti-gender' in my own way. I've believed for a long time that gender is essentially useless. My own theory of gender, how I view it, is you are born as simply you. It's like, you have genitals (which literally means nothing for gender, unfortunately cisgendered people) as like the ground, and then above in the sky you have gender, as planes flying above. These planes can be at any height, they can travel in any direction, they can be any type of plane- the sky's the limit! I used to mistakenly see this, through internalized transphobia, as meaning that my own view of gender being ridiculous somehow meant ...that the cisgender binary is reasonable ??? I know, it confuses me too. I was telling myself 'lol I don't identify with gender' and then like 'oh i'm not non-binary!' in the same breath. It's messed up, but the reason was simply that I saw myself within the status-quo, as someone who could conform and live easier. Hell! To an extent, I still do. I'm not out as non-binary yet because I live in the UK, a country which did not have good attitudes and laws towards LGBTQIA people in the first place, and yet is somehow regressing. Raise a glass to Boris!

In lock-down, it all stopped. except for interacting with my family, I did not have to keep up different pretenses. I stopped caring about the clothing I was wearing, the makeup I was wearing, my mannerisms. I spoke to people online more, people who I could relate to and people who understood me and accepted me. Suddenly, I wasn't thinking about gender only in terms of presentation, it was an inner feeling, something that transcended expectations. That was when I though more about that seed that had been planted in my head: "if you think you're not cis, you probably aren't". It wasn't a sudden realization, it was a gradual acceptance. I didn't really have to change myself to become it, because I already was it. The world would have to change for me, or nothing at all. 

 I'm am not the only one, there are many people, young and old, who came out of lock down with a different view of gender. Suddenly the world felt more open, less restricting. A weight off my shoulders. Who knew 'pronouns in bio' could give you a rush of adrenaline? Hell, if cis people are allowed to set a forest on fire for gender I sure as hell am going to take the win where I can. 

This has been a bit of a rambling post, but I realize now more than ever that it's not easy to put gender into words. It has never been, it's simply too complex to not afford it, and trans people, the dignity of confusion. You don't have to know it all now, you just have to trust yourself.