Today is transgender visibility day! So I'm going to share about my gender identity journey for anyone who is interested.

To be honest, I don't like talking about this. I really just want to live my life and not explain my gender to anyone. But I feel that it's important for me to speak up and advocate for trans rights, especially considering the multitude of anti-transgender laws being enacted in the USA right now.

I hope speaking openly about my experience will do some small good to help, whether by making another trans or nonbinary person feel less alone, or helping a cis person to understand and empathize with transgender struggles.

Also a disclaimer: every trans and nonbinary person has their own unique experiences, and I'm just explaining how it feels for me.

So, please read on if you are interested.

I'm nonbinary, which is a gender identity that falls under the trans umbrella. I use they/them pronouns and gender neutral words to describe myself because that's what makes me feel comfortable.

I view myself as neither a woman nor a man, I guess just identify as a person. I don't feel connected to woman-ness or man-ness, and for the most part it feels painful to be referred to with gendered words. When someone calls me "she," "her," "woman," "girl," etc., it feels wrong in a way that's difficult to describe. It's sort of like someone calling you the wrong name, because you "look like" a Josephine to them. Except that *every* person you meet calls you by this same wrong name. And when you correct them, they seem so surprised, and it happens so frequently that you start to wonder if maybe you're wrong, and your name is supposed to be Josephine after all.

Coming to terms with my identity has not been easy. It's been painful and difficult and anxiety inducing. I struggle with a lot of internalized transphobia, and I often feel that I'm being an inconvenience by asking people to use my pronouns. Every time I come out to someone, I worry about what they'll think of me, I wonder if it will ruin my friendships, or strain my relationships with family.

When I first figured out I was more comfortable with they/them pronouns, I was deeply ashamed and I didn't want to tell anyone about it. And for a long time, I didn't. But staying quiet made me depressed. I felt disconnected from my loved ones, because they didn't know the whole truth about me. It hurt when they unknowingly misgendered me, and it made me begin to isolate myself from the people I cared about. It pretty much sucked.

Again, everyone's experience will be different, but for me, being misgendered feels like the emotional equivalent of someone stepping on my toe. The first few times it happens, it's not a big deal, I can laugh it off. But when people are stepping on my toe dozens of times a day, every day, it starts to really hurt. Even if they don't realize they're doing it, it still hurts. And if I don't speak up about it, I start to feel like maybe I deserve to get my toes stepped on.

In other words, if I treat myself like my feelings don't matter, I start to believe it. And that's why it was so important to me to come out as nonbinary, despite the stress and anxiety of it all, because I needed to treat myself with respect, to show myself that I deserve to be happy.

And whoever you are reading this, you deserve to be happy too. Whatever that means for you.

—

If you want to do more to support the trans people in your community, you can contact your elected representatives and tell them how you feel about anti-trans bills.

For US folks, this website shows the anti-trans and anti-LGBTQ bills that are currently being worked on in each state https://freedomforallamericans.org/.../anti-transgender.../ and this site shows you how to find and contact your reps https://app.leg.wa.gov/memberemail/.