- Pronoun
- she/her
Phantom, you sound pretty much like me a year or two ago. I had the waffly "but I don't really think of myself as anything!" thing and the acting 'like a guy' but not feeling like that made me one thing, too.
Then I started reading this trans woman's blog, and at some point as I was reading one of her posts (possibly the one about the distinction between gender identity and gender expression), it suddenly hit me that yes, I actually do think of myself as a woman. I'm way off feminine stereotypes and scoff at most supposedly "girly" things and hate high heels and find dresses mostly annoying and never played with dolls - but, ultimately, like you, if somebody thinks I'm a guy, I correct them. I want people to think of me as a woman. It doesn't have to be a big important ~I am a woman~ thing in your head - I doubt it is for most cis people, who don't need to think much about gender identity. But if you consider telling people on the internet who think you're a guy that you're a girl to just be a matter of "getting facts right", I would strongly suspect that, like me, you do consider yourself a woman even if it doesn't feel very important to you because it hasn't been threatened or challenged or had to be reevaluated.
Of course, you could be some form of genderqueer and just tell people you're a girl when they call you 'him' because you've internalized the idea that that's what you're supposed to do - but I don't think the "I'm just me" feeling is actually a sign of genderqueerness in itself, because at least I felt the same way and that was just because I didn't have a proper sense of what gender really meant.
Are you perfectly happy to be regarded as a stereotype-breaking woman? Then that's probably what you are. Feeling like you "should" be one gender or another because of cultural stereotypes is just trying to squeeze yourself into yet another box.
Then I started reading this trans woman's blog, and at some point as I was reading one of her posts (possibly the one about the distinction between gender identity and gender expression), it suddenly hit me that yes, I actually do think of myself as a woman. I'm way off feminine stereotypes and scoff at most supposedly "girly" things and hate high heels and find dresses mostly annoying and never played with dolls - but, ultimately, like you, if somebody thinks I'm a guy, I correct them. I want people to think of me as a woman. It doesn't have to be a big important ~I am a woman~ thing in your head - I doubt it is for most cis people, who don't need to think much about gender identity. But if you consider telling people on the internet who think you're a guy that you're a girl to just be a matter of "getting facts right", I would strongly suspect that, like me, you do consider yourself a woman even if it doesn't feel very important to you because it hasn't been threatened or challenged or had to be reevaluated.
Of course, you could be some form of genderqueer and just tell people you're a girl when they call you 'him' because you've internalized the idea that that's what you're supposed to do - but I don't think the "I'm just me" feeling is actually a sign of genderqueerness in itself, because at least I felt the same way and that was just because I didn't have a proper sense of what gender really meant.
Are you perfectly happy to be regarded as a stereotype-breaking woman? Then that's probably what you are. Feeling like you "should" be one gender or another because of cultural stereotypes is just trying to squeeze yourself into yet another box.
