Merlin Star's Website

So, I try to find joy in being genderfluid. Here is how I do it:

First, I let myself experiment with my gender nonconformity. I never was gender conforming to begin with, but letting myself feel free to try out stuff is nice. For the longest of time, I avoided dressing femininely because I would be misgendered and pressured to conform. However, I have to thank trans women for helping me to break out of that and standing my own ground.

It turns out that even though my genderfluid nature leans heavily masculine that sometimes I like femininity. Trans women helped me do this in a way that I wouldn’t be misgendering my own self and avoiding dysphoria in doing so. It’s nice to experiment and feel free to dress as whatever. Trans women have shown me that I can like femininity and not immediately be told that I am cisgender and faking being trans. It’s nice to see that people can accept that about me without being misgendered. This is why I allow she/her pronouns.

Second, I let myself experiment with different pronouns. On some severe dysphoria days, I ask my friends to not call me she/her, but that most days it’s fine to do so. Usually, she/her pronouns do not cause me distress. Some days, certain pronouns give me more gender euphoria than others. I do not demand my friends use pronouns that give more euphoria, but I do make them aware of it and that it would be nice. Most of them willfully switch until I tell them to go back to the default.

Third, I let myself experiment with how my gender feels on different days. Sometimes, I am bigender and feel 2 genders. Sometimes, I feel like a man or a woman. Sometimes, I feel a gender that is neither man or woman, but in some own category. Today, I feel no gender. This specific way is more that I am completely apathetic to gender more than anything else. Weirdly, I have experience genderless in 4 distinct ways. One is a void feeling, one is more of a “gender is not applicable”, one is a I hate gender forever, and one is like now where it’s just “I could not care less about gender”.

I bring up genderlessness specifically because ironically it tends to be one of the most diverse experiences I have. There’s more than one way and sometimes the different presentations can cause dysphoria in different ways. This makes me more experimental than usual when this occurs. And I find joy that there’s so many ways people consider a “lack”. To me, it’s anything but a lack, it’s an awesome experience.

Lastly, I just remind myself that someone out there needs to see me rocking being genderfluid. There’s not that many Black genderfluid people out there and the more of them like me that are visible, the more someone can look and see someone like them. They can feel accepted and welcomed. For me, that’s the ultimate joy.

In case this blog acts funky with the attribution for the photograph, you can find Carlos de Toro by clicking the word here.