My gender presentation is often ambiguous.  Part of this is just the way I look and part of it is how I like to make myself look.  For a period of time, I identified strongly and consistently as a transguy. I’ve also identified as a butch dyke, a bisexual (as a girl and as a guy after I spent some time wondering if I might be a little bit of a fag, and now as something like a bisexual without the binary part, including the “being” a girl or a boy part), a genderqueer, and even as straight (by default). 

I am still read as all of these (and many others) at different times.  I still identify as all of these (and many others).  All of these identities still describe some part of me.  All of these identities still describe some group that I feel a connection to.  I can’t/won’t deny the part of me that is a butch or the part of me that is a bi-tranny or any of the other parts.     

When I identified exclusively as a transman, I enforced the use of certain pronouns.  Now I am okay with people using whatever pronoun they want, as long as they are not being purposefully disrespectful.  I would be lying if I said it still did not occasionally give me a little shiver of pleasure when someone calls me “he” or “sir,” however, now it is dependent on the context.  I can feel just as good about being called “she” now, if the context is right.  If an older butch dyke calls me that pronoun because she uses it for herself and sees in me something that she perceives as similar to her, I can relish the word. 

There are groups of people I know who consistently use one pronoun when referring to me but often it is because I preferred that pronoun when I met them, which is fine.  However, I don’t like it when, in meeting a new group of people, I am called a particular pronoun and, if I don’t object that first time, they all call me that pronoun from then on. I think what I like best is when people use different pronouns.  I like it when the same person uses different pronouns at different times.  Not in a planned out way, just whatever comes out of their mouth.  I like it when individuals in a group call me different pronouns and don’t change it or feel freaked out because someone else is using a different one.  I guess, if I had my way, I’d never be called the same pronoun twice in a row, not even a gender-neutral one.  Sometimes, when I’m in a group of people who are calling me different pronouns, it seems like these really weighted words become meaningless for brief snatches of time. 

This preference is about what I want but it is also about trying to take whatever people throw at me and trying to find a way to make it work for me, to be okay in that space.  For example, it feels weird to me to be upset if someone calls me a lesbian.  Sure it means that they read me as female, but I refuse to choose to be ashamed of being included in that group of people.  And, if someone calls me a faggot, I can wear the word with pride. 

If someone reads me as a straight man, well, that takes a little more work.  When this happens, I often feel a little erased, but I also feel really safe; and subversive or something close to it.  I feel the guilty thrill of passing as someone who people will not hurt just for being.  In certain situations, when this happens, I feel myself relax.  Sometimes I can access that part of me that can be “regular guy” and briefly let difference fade into a form of invisibility that feels like relief.
 
I think I used to confuse that sense of relief when passing as “regular guy” with wanting to be that guy all the time.  I thought the relief resulted from being read as a certain type of person, not from being read as a type of person who also happens to not have to worry about being targeted for their gender presentation.  (I am speaking about my own personal experience here, and in no way mean to give the impression that I am speaking for any one else.  I know many other transpeople adhere to a consistent set of pronouns and identification.  I respect that decision and am not making claims about why any other transperson identifies as such, or that any one way of being trans is better than any other.  Actually, that is exactly what I do not want to do.) 

The thing about passing as someone who can be comfortably invisible is that sometimes being invisible becomes uncomfortable.  Sometimes being read as “regular guy” can make me feel more anxious about a particular situation.  Sometimes I do not want to be “regular guy” and be expected to agree with things I think are complete crap or, instead of feeling safer, being read this way just makes me feel resentful. 

But the good news is that “regular guy” still has potential.  If I am with a group of straight guys who have read me as one of them, I still have options.  If someone says something that is, for example, patriarchal or homophobic I sometimes fear that if I speak up, I will draw more scrutiny than I can or want to deal with.  Honestly, sometimes this fear stops me from speaking up.  I might replay the scene in my head for days, weeks, or years; but I don’t speak up.  Other times I am too exhausted…or I’m having one of those moments when I just feel like I haven’t got anything left in me with which to pick this fight or it won’t even matter if I do.  But, sometimes I do say something and maybe I even find that elusive little part of me that allows me to say it with humor or grace or some other way that people are receptive to it.  In these moments, I feel like I can identify with “regular guy” and I am proud of him. 

This is what I am trying to do now.  I try to let go of how people see me a little and accept how they read me whenever possible.  When I am lucky, I can find some way to inhabit the category people assign me that challenges what they think.  Sometimes this involves challenging my own ideas about certain groups. 

I am not suggesting that I have everything figured out or that this is the way for everyone.  I fail spectacularly at times.  I sometimes still run out of energy or ideas or any good feelings about humanity at all. Being able to identify as part of these different groups involves a never ending balancing act of trying to seek out my own similarity to each of them without starting to depend on it or use it to be exclusive.

When I was first trying to figure out how to be a transman, I emulated other men, both of the trans and non-trans variety, when I felt at a loss.  But, at some point, I realized I had picked the wrong men (for me) to emulate.  As a transperson, I was not created in some magical cultural vacuum where I could remain unaffected by gender norms.  I had picked up ideas my whole life about what it means to be a man, to be a “real” man.  I could even catch myself essentializing some of my own “masculine” behaviors in ways that made them seem “authentic”.  In some quest for a horribly mistaken, and mythological, idea of masculine “authenticity” I had picked up some ways of being in the world that didn’t sit well with my whole experience or what I believed.  For a while, I thought it was subversive for me to display some of these behaviors; that it decentralized certain aspects of masculinity or something - and maybe this idea works for other transmen…or maybe more accurately, they can get it to work for them. 

I started thinking about some of the types of masculinity I had come to overlook: butches and certain types of gay men who are not gender conforming but still identify as masculine and little goofy, nerdy straight guys (there are many more examples).  I started wondering: if I met myself, would I like myself…really?  If I read myself as a guy, would I like the guy I was being?  I started thinking more about the possibilities in failing to meet expectations instead of living up to them all the time.  And I started realizing that instead of worrying about what kind of man I was going to be, I needed to be thinking about what kind of person I want be.