Woman, not by choice
I sometimes daydream about waking up with a male body, but that is the same kind of daydream I have about waking up and being taller, waking up and having a slimmer waist, waking up and having long hair - or so it used to be. Last night, I really did dream I had a male body, and I felt a horrible sense of loss when I woke up and it was no longer there. It was not even much different from the body I have now, just... male. I looked a lot like my brother's, who does look like me, just male. I did not feel a whole lot different, everything just clicked into place and was good.
I know that a lot of FAAB bigendered people pack and bind to express their male part, but because of my chest size, I ruled out the first option. The thought of packing causes a feeling as though I walked down the stairs and inadvertently skipped a step, a sensation of falling, of slipping out of control.
It scares me.
It's a step further than I dare to go. I have never looked much like a girl is supposed to look where I come from, and I was always the odd one out for some reason or another, so I had to fight to keep people acknowledging my humanhood by dressing up as a woman.
The thought of my gender being ambiguous or called into question scares me deeply. I know the sense of unease I sometimes can't avoid when I talk to someone who has characteristics that are strange to me - very deviant gender expression or extremely masculine men or feminine women belong to that category - I become careful, I feel weirded-out, I lack scripts based on the gender of the person I am talking to to guide my moves; again, it is like falling. I am not very good company in that mood, so I would not wish to bring it upon anyone else.
It is much easier to do what I have always done, to stick to my gender role, to avoid that sensation of falling. It saves me from having to struggle to have other people accept me as valid, see me as a human being and not as a strange aberration. I know that not all people do, but I am scared that someone might. It has happened to me - I was not always the kind of person who knows how to behave like a girl, or, later, like a woman - I was odd, and the backlash that had still scares me.
It made people invade my personal space, touch me without my consent, shove me around, make jokes about me, at best, abuse me, emotionally and physically, at worst. I would not want to repeat that experience, even if that means pretending to be a woman for the rest of my life, even though that's only fifty percent accurate.
It was not even that my gender was that strange, it's that my surroundings were so bigoted. As an overweight girl with short hair, slightly off behaviour, and no apparent interest in boys or girls during my teenage years, a loner, a dreamer I learned quickly that I, as I was, was wrong, and that to be like that, strange, weirder than the others, a non-girl with breasts, meant painting a giant "kick-me" sign on myself, that it invites abuse, and I learned to become an actor.
I also learned that it is fairly easy to convince people that you are a tragic, not entirely convincing woman - as long as you wear nail polish and make-up you can get away with short hair, and as long as you stick to the outskirts of fashion that accommodate fat bodies you can get away with being seen as an odd kind of dyke instead of a weird, non-human thing.
I know that a lot of FAAB bigendered people pack and bind to express their male part, but because of my chest size, I ruled out the first option. The thought of packing causes a feeling as though I walked down the stairs and inadvertently skipped a step, a sensation of falling, of slipping out of control.
It scares me.
It's a step further than I dare to go. I have never looked much like a girl is supposed to look where I come from, and I was always the odd one out for some reason or another, so I had to fight to keep people acknowledging my humanhood by dressing up as a woman.
The thought of my gender being ambiguous or called into question scares me deeply. I know the sense of unease I sometimes can't avoid when I talk to someone who has characteristics that are strange to me - very deviant gender expression or extremely masculine men or feminine women belong to that category - I become careful, I feel weirded-out, I lack scripts based on the gender of the person I am talking to to guide my moves; again, it is like falling. I am not very good company in that mood, so I would not wish to bring it upon anyone else.
It is much easier to do what I have always done, to stick to my gender role, to avoid that sensation of falling. It saves me from having to struggle to have other people accept me as valid, see me as a human being and not as a strange aberration. I know that not all people do, but I am scared that someone might. It has happened to me - I was not always the kind of person who knows how to behave like a girl, or, later, like a woman - I was odd, and the backlash that had still scares me.
It made people invade my personal space, touch me without my consent, shove me around, make jokes about me, at best, abuse me, emotionally and physically, at worst. I would not want to repeat that experience, even if that means pretending to be a woman for the rest of my life, even though that's only fifty percent accurate.
It was not even that my gender was that strange, it's that my surroundings were so bigoted. As an overweight girl with short hair, slightly off behaviour, and no apparent interest in boys or girls during my teenage years, a loner, a dreamer I learned quickly that I, as I was, was wrong, and that to be like that, strange, weirder than the others, a non-girl with breasts, meant painting a giant "kick-me" sign on myself, that it invites abuse, and I learned to become an actor.
I also learned that it is fairly easy to convince people that you are a tragic, not entirely convincing woman - as long as you wear nail polish and make-up you can get away with short hair, and as long as you stick to the outskirts of fashion that accommodate fat bodies you can get away with being seen as an odd kind of dyke instead of a weird, non-human thing.