CW: I will discuss body dismorphia, or the (seeming) lack thereof I feel when thinking what it would be like to have been assigned the wrong gender. Also I describe sexual roles and thinking about having different anatomy.
Ok, so I’ve previously read Trans Liberation by Leslie Feinberg and I care about gender insofar as it takes to ensure all gender nonconforming people get healthcare, feel safe in public life, etc. I also will/have changed my language as much as it takes to make my trans comrades feel comfortable. With that out of the way:
I am a cis male, and I guess I am mostly okay with the body I’ve been given. I prefer to be called him, but I would only be a little annoyed if someone used she/her or they/them to describe me. If I try to imagine my body with a vagina and developing breasts in puberty with my current state of mind, I don’t feel very much discomfort. I don’t feel particularly attached to the role of penetrating another partner as a gay guy who enjoys bottoming more than topping. If I was forced to wear dresses to church growing up, I don’t imagine I would be very distressed.
I do value the relative ease of building muscle that comes with having a male hormonal profile, and I guess dealing with having a female hormonal profile could be alarming, but mostly because it’s not what I’m used to. But before puberty, I also wasn’t used to having a bunch of testosterone.
On some level, I understand that it can be traumatic to be the target of violence and hate speech, or to be denied medical care. I’m speaking from a position of relative privilege.
Does this mean I’m possibly non-binary? Or something else? I feel content to be assumed as male, but I don’t feel that strongly about it. And the title question again, does anybody else who is cisgender or otherwise just not have strong feelings about their own gender?
I’m not an expert on this by any means but I think it’s helpful to consider gender on a spectrum.
There are men who are hypermasculine whose gender identity is extremely important to them, there are men whose gender identity is largely incidental to them, and there are shades of grey between those two points of being a man.
Obviously beyond that point you have non-binary folks but I don’t think there’s one certain line that you can point to and say “Aha! They’ve crossed over the boundary into being non-binary!” and instead I think it’s more like as the importance of your gender identity decreases your nonbinary-ness increases.
You might be a man who is ambivalent about being a man or you might be a non-binary person who leans towards masculinity by virtue of your own biology or your upbringing or how you feel internally (or a combination of more than one of these factors). How you define it is completely up to you.
Thank you, this response is helpful!
There are definitely enby people who dislike “man” and “woman” and feel strongly they shouldn’t be referred to as either one, or that feel parts of each construct feel right. There might be a tendency in the direction you stated, but some defy that tendency as well.