Gender is really hard.

Like...I have lived 44 years of my life as a women. It feels dishonest to call myself one, but it also feels dishonest to not, because socially my body is still gendered that way. The language isn't there to describe things. https://twitter.com/RileyGryc/status/1265061043409051649

And there's this narrative out there that once you come out as trans, you were never your assigned gender at birth, and that also feels wrong. Because see above - I have lived 44 years as a woman. That will always be my history, whatever transition I pursue.

Looking back some things make a little more sense, like the part where depression set in at puberty when my secondary sex characteristics started developing.

It took me 44 years to realize that I was dysphoric, and that was because the dysphoria centered around my chest got much, much worse.

But I've been doing a lot of reading lately and don't really resonate with any of the trans narratives I've found. And I haven't found the language for this liminal place in which I find myself in middle age after a lifetime of...just not caring a lot.

I refuse, however, to adopt the narrative that I have never been a woman when for four and a half decades I have suffered the social slings and arrows of being embodied as one and performing femininity poorly.

Ultimately I guess I feel about my gender like I do about my disability - it is simultaneously one of the least interesting things about me which has caused me the most trouble because of socially constructed consequences.

Part of my identity, sure, but not even the biggest part. Because you could change it entirely and I'd still be *me*. I'd still love my sheep and spinning their wool and healing the land with their poop and I'd still be excited about my yurt and hate Nazis.