Coming Out

The short version, I am coming out as non-binary demigender, I use they/them pronouns, but as I will explain in the longer statement, I don't mind he/him. I currently still go by my given name, which is Patrick, but I have considered changing my name. As my thoughts develop, I have chosen to announce this for the community I feel safe to share this with, as the thought of sharing it elsewhere feels too uncertain right now.

Below I will explain my thoughts, I don't expect many to read it, but I think it should answer some questions, but feel free to ask about my gender identity, it certainly open up questions I had not considered before.

Over the last few years, my understanding of gender and sexuality has changed a lot. I have known about LGBT+ at least since I was a teenager, it was always there, but it was always in the background, I didn't know anyone who identified this way, nor did I put question to my own identity, I thought I was a cis man, straight, and it wasn't until the last few years I began thinking about it more and more.

I thought more about gender than sexuality, I held a strong belief that I was attracted to women and not men, regardless of my gender, and I guess that reaffirmed my belief that I couldn't be trans, though I learned about non-binary later, which put more questions in my mind.

I knew about trans people, even knew some people out there who were trans, but I didn't know what non-binary meant, not fully anyway, I had heard the term at times, but there was not anyone out there who I could put the picture to, so finding more celebrity trans and non-binary people in the recent few years, playing games and watching TV show etc. which featured trans and non-binary people, not only showed me different perspectives and struggles they can go through, but it sparked more thoughts about my own gender identity, so I began to watch videos, read online about it, figure out if there was some kind of spark there, and well, here we are.

So the term I used before, demigender or demimale, is one I didn't know about before I started researching more about non-binary people, and it was exactly the thoughts I have had. I have only experienced being male, but everything I knew about being a man, what I should conform to, what it meant to be male, that was something that even as a child I questioned. I never believed it mattered how you presented yourself, your clothes, your hair, how you talked or acted, to me, gender didn't mean anything, it was a label, a term that divided up bathrooms and toy aisles by meaningless distinctions. There were boys at my school that didn't act masculine in their appearance, girls who enjoyed "boy things" like playing football and video games, and at the time, I didn't know that these things didn't play into typical gender roles, a person was a person, gender was not significant.

I didn't see myself different from other people, but knew I was, but the reason I always came to wasn't related to gender, rather it was related to my ASD (autism spectrum disorder). To me, I viewed the world in a way where I wasn't like others and couldn't communicate that way with others in the way I was suppose to because I am autistic, not because of my gender, fitting in was never because I felt any sense of gender dysphoria, rather it's a sense of neither feeling male nor female.

What gender I am when I look in the mirror feels like it should be obvious, I present myself as male, the clothing I wear could not be described as feminine, I currently have a beard, I have had both short and long hair at various points in my life, currently having hair that goes to my shoulders and my voice is deep and masculine, but if I were to call myself a man because of this, it feels wrong.

I don't feel like I can identify with the way others identify as a man, though there are still these things I feel like I can't deny, I don't feel uncomfortable this way, I have always felt myself, so in a way, I didn't think I really was non-binary, at least until I discovered what demigender meant, and that was important to me, because it described what I felt much better than trans or anything else. The way I have best seen it described, it's the feeling of having a partial connection to a gender identity, whether it be male, female, a third gender or no gender at all.

To me, I feel a connection to the male gender, yet also to no gender at all. This is why I don't mind anyone who uses he/him rather than they/them, though my thoughts about all of this are still evolving, and during my research, I read posts stating that you don't have to stick to one identity forever, and maybe I was begin to feel differently, which is a major reason why I feel somewhat comfortable sharing this, as I may not feel like this in a year or two, it's still new to me.

I still feel rather ignorant of the whole thing really, still feel like an outsider, and reading how non-binary people are discriminated against, how our feelings don't exist, that we are either transgender or confused cis people, saying I am myself non-binary, and even more so demigender, it's something that many people don't understand, and I don't know if I have the full understanding of it yet either.