Thread by @guessimafab

trans identification presented the perfect opportunity for me to push myself further back in the closet & deny my truth. i was able to stew on my internalized homophobia & misogyny & come up w absolutely asinine and totally unrealistic theories as to how i actually wasnt female.

when i identified as a gay man i used to frequently say: “as a kid i couldn’t picture myself as a woman married to a man. but i also couldn’t picture myself as a woman married to a woman. i CAN picture myself as a man married to a man.” this to me was proof that i wasn’t a woman.

but why couldn’t i picture myself as a woman, even one w a wife, even when i knew i liked girls?
though i “Knew” lesbians existed, i didn’t consider it a real thing or a genuine option for me. i pictured 2 beautiful feminine women in dresses and i couldn’t see myself like that.

i also couldn’t imagine myself as a wife w a husband. the thought was incomprehensible to me. but i didn’t believe a future for me existed w/o a man in it. so how could i be w a man & not feel like i was dying?
i romanticized gay male relationships. men are whole ppl after all.

i wanted to be treated as an equal & didn’t want to have to pretend that i cared abt being feminine. i wanted to be loved in spite of my desire to “not be a girl” (my desire to be GNC). i felt deep inside that i was not straight, but the idea of being w a woman was impossible.

and after all, the men i’d been interested in previously were all effeminate and many even later came out as gay or bi. to me this was the final “proof”— i must have just always been a gay man. this explained how i felt like not a “real man” but also not a “real woman” either.

as a teenager, my fantasy world and the romantic world i lived in inside of my head was solely homosexual. i was huge into harry potter, teen wolf, supernatural. i was a big tumblr fandom kid. i used to read gay fanfiction of my favorite male characters. i felt connected to them.

i didn’t want to read any romance that had women in it. the f/f fanfiction i‘d find was all highly sexualized & the women were always feminine (as women in media are). i didn’t feel like i saw myself represented in love stories that women were a part of. i clung to m/m stories.

i also (obviously) didn’t care about straight stories, even tho i was always a teenage girl who was, on the surface, obsessed with boys & dating & getting them to like me. thinking about girls was Real and made me nervous and i didn’t know what to do. there was a script with men.

my ADHD, female socialization, & personality make me a great actor. not only good at it objectively, but i enjoyed it. i’ve been a theater kid my whole life and i am talented. i can fool anyone. hell, i fooled myself. which was the scariest part to face when i snapped out of it.

as a child/adolescent, i had 0 sense of self. i had INTERESTS yes. but who i was? i had no clue & didn’t want to know either. i wanted to blend in. i wanted to be what everyone wanted from me all the time. i was On constantly. eventually, even to myself. running, hiding my truth.

what pretty, polite, smart, well-rounded, talented, likable little girl wants to be a dyke?

girls are trained to be passive receptive vessels of attention & sex from men. who i am is the opposite. i tried so very hard to not be who i am. & i did a really convincing job of it- even totally flipped the script at one point. but the dyke was there & she was tired of hiding.