blackbearmagic:

captainoftheseaqueen:

sapphicmemestuff:

Guys, what’s the line between tomboy and actually being bigender?

In my case, being bigender/genderfluid, it’s that I experience dysphoria. Gender isn’t your presentation. A cis butch lesbian or tomboy is still a woman even though they might wear masculine clothing. Just like a cis man in a skirt is still a man. 

Like, here’s where I see it being a bit confusing for some people. My best friend likes to wear exclusively sports bras because she wore them a lot in the past and now seeing her chest in a more normal bra just looks odd to her. She is still cis, her presentation is just nonconforming of social expectations of her gender. Outside of that quirk, she has no issues with people seeing her as female and has no issues with her anatomy.

I am bigender. When I have top dysphoria, wearing clothing that hides my chest only does so much. It’s the fact I have breasts that makes me uncomfortable at those times. Being upset about people seeing me with boobs is then a side effect caused by the fact that my brain is telling me they shouldn’t be there, but the problem is not actually my presentation.

And, I mean, one issue tumblr overlooks is body dysmorphia, I’ve noticed.

You can be dysphoric about physical traits and still be cis. Muscle Dysmorphia is a thing, which is primarily in (cis) males where they view their body as too small/lean/etc and try to increase muscle mass. Think of it in a similar vein as anorexia. 

Gender dysphoria is related to gender physical/sexual traits and often secondary sex characteristics. It’s more the fact characteristics exist when they shouldn’t, or are lacking when they should be there. The other primary thing is that when this are done to combat the dysphoria, like wearing a binder or particularly flattening sports bra for top dysphoria, are done, the symptoms go away.

Now, this is a generalized statement, as people can experience gender dysphoria differently. I’m of the school of thought that you need some form of dysphoria to be trans, because otherwise what is bringing about the idea that you’re not cis?  It’s also fair to note that dysphoria is not constant and can be very mild for some people. Everyone experiences it differently.

One method is to read the perspectives of other people who are trans, how they figured that out, and see if it sounds familiar.

The question I’d ask first is: is there anything outside of your clothing/hair that makes you feel like you are not cis? If so, what is it? Does having/lacking breasts bother you beyond how it pertains to clothes? What about the stuff downstairs?

Note: Some people experience top or bottom dysphoria and do not experience the other until after the first type has been treated. Just like having issues with your chest size or presentation doesn’t mean your trans, lacking one and having the other doesn’t necessarily mean you’re not trans. 

Gender is weird and ultimately it’s something you figure out with self-reflection.

Additionally, speaking as the friend who wears sports bras all the time, wearing a regular bra actually causes me a fair amount of dysmorphia. I become actually, viscerally distressed at the sight of myself with a “normal” chest. My skin crawls and I want to cry and run away so that no one has to see me with actual, noticeable breasts. Like, even just thinking about how it feels and writing this post is making me so, so, so uncomfortable. I’m typing parts of this one-handed because I keep covering my chest with one arm even though I’m wearing a sports bra and no one is even looking at me anyway.

(And yes, this definitely started because I wore sports bras a lot. I mean, hell, I used to wear padded push-ups. But as time has gone on and my desired presentation has changed, what started as a mere preference has turned into something much more psychological.)

My dysmorphia is different from the dysphoria experienced by trans and nonbinary folks because it’s not that I want my breasts gone, or that I feel like they aren’t an actual part of my body. Quite the opposite: I love my built-in stress balls and would be really, really uncomfortable with my body if I woke up one morning and they were suddenly gone. 

I just feel like, in some cases, they look Bad and Wrong, and that people are judging me for them and laughing about them. Yup. When I wear a regular bra, I feel like people are looking at my chest and laughing about it like it’s a bad haircut or a monobrow or some other totally superficial thing that makes a person look “ugly” by most standards. And it does more than chafe my pride; it makes me deeply distressed and want to hide.

However, I am, as was previously stated, cis. I have no issues with being seen as and addressed as a “she”; it’s what’s right for me. I mean, my “ideal” presentation is people doing a double-take and then going “oh, that’s a girl”. But what that just means is that–even though I like a little ambiguity–I ultimately identify as female and prefer to be seen as such. 

Dysmorphia is very real, and the distress it causes can be just as upsetting as that caused by dysphoria. (Take it from someone who experiences the former, and has listened to the experiences of friends who have the latter.) But the two are separate phenomena with different implications, and should be treated as such. So like, that’s another thing to consider in your self-exploration.

Now if you’ll all excuse me, I’m going to spend the next hour screaming internally and hiding my chest behind things even though, again, no one is actually looking at me.

To add to this, dysphoria isn’t a prerequisite for being trans. Im nonbinary, and for me im not usually dysphoric. It’s more that sometimes when people call me a girl/woman it’s… Gross? Like it just feels wrong and don’t want. (I say sometimes, cuz my gender/comfort tends to shift around) and when I first found out that being nonbinary was possible I was like “Oh! I have a word now/im not broken”