Either way it ends up being, I appreciate your contribution, thank you

Thanks for the opportunity to contribute and for your responses.

But yeah, in a way you are lucky to be able to just have gender be a non-issue and also not need tons of support from this comm or its people, so I suppose congrats lol.

Yeah, I’m super lucky because I have only ever experienced very mild gender dysphoria mostly when I was younger and I was trying hard to be the man that I was expected to be. It wasn’t like crawling-out-of-my-skin dysphoria or like crushing dissociative dysphoria but more just “this isn’t a good fit for me, I’d prefer to be something else”. I also haven’t really had to face the prospect of losing friends or family over transitioning since I pass as a man and I’m just very indifferent about how my gender is perceived or represented - you can see me as a man and I’d be like “Yeah, I have a beard. That makes sense.” but if you see me as a they or a she I am equally fine with it since… meh. Which means I’m immune to misgendering and people who try to consciously inflict gender dysphoria in me.

(Actually, at one point I was a spectre haunting R*ddit’s far right and because I occasionally dipped my toe in trans meme spaces to better understand the experience and discourse of trans men and trans women [not implying as an enby I’m not under the trans umbrella but I think there’s a qualitative difference for trans women and men who transition compared to my enby transition, which was more like detatching from socialisation and norms than it was crossing from one side of the gender aisle to the other], there was this narrative that the far right goofs started forming that I was a trans woman. They started doing their best to insult me and to push me to ending things because they had this false concept of me and trans-ness in their minds. At first it was a little bit irritating because it wasn’t nice to be exposed to all that transphobia but then when I realised that every insult they slung at me and every attempt to goad me into SH was a completely wasted effort on their behalf, that each time they tried to harass me represented one less opportunity for a trans woman or man to be harassed by them, I actively embraced this and leaned into it. It was kinda neat to soak up that negativity knowing that it was going to make life a little bit easier for some trans folk who might be having a really difficult time and who would otherwise be targeted by them because I was effectively immune to that harm they were trying to inflict. At the risk of being indulgent and self-aggrandizing here, I’ve never felt like a superhero in my life but when I realised that all this stuff was bouncing off of me and it was shielding someone else who could genuinely be wounded by it, I felt a little taste of what it must feel like to be one.)

The upshot of all this is that I’ve never experienced gender euphoria and I don’t think I ever will but, then again, those who do not climb the mountain do not get to experience the exhilarating view from the peak - personally I don’t feel any urge to hike but I have nothing but admiration for the people who do.

The point you bring up about (cisnormative-ass) women’s expectations of anyone who presents “male” fascinates me too…

It’s really interesting because most women are genuinely cool with me being a queer oddball but there’s a particular type of cisnormative women who are really judgy and averse to me being me. I’m not bothered; I’m the type of person who is better suited to a refined palate and I get that I’m more of an acquired taste (lol) so I’m not gonna lose any sleep over it.

But yeah, I’m just doing my thing and a fair few men find it off putting but occasionally some women do too. I don’t need their approval though.

I think in some respects I must feel “more” transgressive to people with traditional gender norms because I pass as a man pretty well, especially if you don’t know me, because I’m not really out there and camp or loud or performative about being enby so I think it lulls some people into a false sense of complacency but then I will effortlessly transgress gender norms as it suits me and I think more conservative-minded people get a bit of whiplash from it because I’m “supposed” to be a man or because they put me in the box labeled Man but sometimes I do things outside of that because I don’t have any regard for that stuff, whereas for example if I was a really camp gay dude then people would sorta anticipate more transgressive behaviour with regards to gender and stuff so those transgressions are seen as less of an affront comparatively (if that makes sense).

Hopefully someday the pressing concerns will be less pressing and you can get down to your own experience

Thanks, I really appreciate it!

I’m not sure if it’s just such a non-issue for me that it’s never going to be a priority at all because I’m actually agender deep down or whether making sense of my gender will make it to the top of my to-do list some day. Either way, it doesn’t feel like a burning issue for me and that is its own privilege so I tend to keep quiet about contributing to spaces like these since I’m not even really an expert in my own gender so I don’t have much to contribute and I also don’t really need anything from this space on a personal level (e.g. support or guidance). That probably sounds a bit weird but it’s not internalised queerphobia afaik - I am definitely part of the community, I identify with it, and I’m fine with that, but I don’t need much and I don’t have much to provide either so I mostly stick to the sidelines.

I’m nonbinary AMAB leaning masc but I’m very much gender-agnostic on a personal level, which I think is quite common for autistic people.

I tend to prefer spending time with women and enbies but I think that’s because I live in a pretty patriarchal society and there’s a lot of weird proscriptive masculinity that’s applied to people who present as men here and I’m not interested in all that and I don’t vibe with it, so a lot of men don’t take kindly to me being a weird little guy who doesn’t care for whatever gendered rules I’m supposed to be adhering to. Some women here are also rigid in their expectations of people who present as men but generally they exist in circles I don’t move within so it’s much less of a thing in my experience.

I haven’t really had a chance to sit down and hash out my gender identity seriously because of other more pressing concerns so I just settle on being on the enby spectrum somewhere. I think that also speaks to my attitude of gender agnosticism - for other people gender is a very important or pressing issue and I 100% respect and support this but for me, I have never addressed the higher priority stuff to get down to my own experience of gender.

It’s a very cool thing to aim for and I hope you find permanent housing soon so you can do this for yourself comrade.

Idk your circumstances so excuse me if I’m being presumptuous here but you might be able to practice for this in the future by settings up a little terrarium or aquarium now - you can even just have a little bit of dirt in a jar with some springtails, a few rocks and twigs and maybe a bit of moss. Obviously an aquarium doesn’t need to have animals in it either but a snail or two can survive pretty adverse conditions if you wanted something besides a plant or two in an aquarium jar.

Something reasonably small and with a lid is ideal if you move often but you have a roof over your head because it would be pretty portable.

At it’s simplest you could even just have a ball or two of marimo moss hanging out in a jar of water with some dirt at the bottom, covered by a few cm of sand, to provide CO2 and nutrients.

https://youtu.be/3k4QzXVsmZE

This guy knows what’s up!

I’m going for a dirted shrimp tank similar to his setup but I won’t have the space for rasboras or khuli loaches, as much as I’d love to have some. (You can tell that the tank is happy because his smaller shrimp don’t seem to be bothered by the loaches.) I think that will be what I aim for to upgrade to when I’m ready. But at that stage I’d have to choose between getting some smaller gourami and getting pea puffers, which would be a very difficult decision to make.

I think my realistic dream aquarium would be a decent sized tank with some hardscape driftwood emerging from one corner with variegated Pothos vining up across my wall from that point and having that juxtaposed with a small, dark coloured waterfall in the opposite corner - just a small one that only sits a few inches above the water line and made of sculpted black expanding foam (I promise that there are ways to make it look far nicer than that sounds) - maybe with a mist fogger too if I’m going wild. It would be really neat to have a little atmospheric water feature like that and it would add a whole lot of interest. I’d be more inclined to sit and watch that than watching TV tbh.