My Gender Is None Of Your Business. But Also I Need You To Know About It Or I'll Lose My Goddamn Mind

08.17.25 // 7:51pm

(Upon rereading this monstrosity, I find that it makes little sense and reads as a stream-of-consciousness ramble to rival Ulysses. Sorry about that. But that’s what journaling is all about, right?)

I have been on the internet for a long, long time. I’ve been on this planet for a long, long time, and I’ve changed who I am more times than I can count. When people ask me for my name, I tell them Cereus. When people ask me for my age, I struggle to remember. When people ask me for my gender or sexuality, I usually tell them to fuck off.

It’s not out of malice. I just don’t think it’s anybody’s business, really. I admit that it’s a weird stance to take: I’ve been in GSAs, I’ve gone to Pride, and I would, of course, consider myself a member of the larger LGBT+ community. The issue is that, despite that, I’ve struggled to give myself a label. It feels like every other month I try on something new, and it doesn’t seem to stick. That being said, I would be remiss not to admit that I do, indeed, feel comfortable in my skin: I know who I am, I just don’t know what I am. For someone who enjoys writing as much as I do, I’ve always grappled with finding the words to describe myself. Maybe that’s just the problem—I can ramble about my identity for paragraphs upon paragraphs (as I plan on doing today), but if asked to summarize it in one word, one label, I can’t. I’m too verbose for my own good, I guess.

As of writing this blog, I identify as genderfluid. Of course, it’s genderfluid in the “I have a job, so I can't really worry about that right now” kind of way. I haven't really announced it to anyone in my family, just my close friends. I’m still fine with my given name—I consider it a “business sona” name, and it doesn't cause me active dysphoria... or does it? Dysphoria is something I’ve never quite understood.

Why genderfluid and not nonbinary? I think the flag is prettier. That's literally it. Same reason I choose bisexual over pansexual.

I’ve been exposed to intensive queer ideology since I was at least 14 years old, and as such, I’ve had the words to identify as a lot of things over the years. I was straight, I was bi, I was a lesbian... then I was a nonbinary lesbian, then I'm where I'm at now with genderfluid bi. I was a teenager during the height of Tumblr sexuality posturing, back when the general consensus was that sexuality and romantic attraction should be split—i.e., you could be a heteromantic bisexual, sexually attracted to different sexes but only romantically interested in the one. I'm not sure if teens these days still go through this phase... I'm sure they have something similar. But man, did that fuck me up—I frequently laid in bed, biting my nails and wondering: could I be romantically attracted to a gay genderqueer demiboy? How should I know? It would depend on the demiboy, wouldn't it? Romance seemed too turbulent a thing to shackle with a label. Even now, "bisexual" doesn't entirely cover it for me: I would almost be willing to say that I'm some version of demi ace.

That’s just the thing. I know about dysphoria—I’ve read countless articles and experiences, taken college classes, listened to people realize that they have it and grow happier when it’s been minimized. It’s not something I’ve ever been able to really relate to. I’ve never really felt comfortable in my own skin. Even now, when I look in the mirror, I find myself oddly repulsed: do I really have eyebrows? Lips? Ears? It doesn’t feel like I do. Sometimes I stare at myself and feel a swell of anxiety: I notice an odd wrinkle, and I frantically Google: “Does everybody have a crinkle between their cheeks when they smile?” And when the internet assures me that yes, they do, I frown. When I envision myself in my mind’s eye, I don’t think of a person. I think of words, of colors. I think of my passions and my heart. When I make eye contact with myself—when I spy a flash of skin or curly hair in my peripheral vision—I feel disgust. That’s not me. I don’t exist. I’m a feral animal, a sack of blood. I am stardust and love. I am many things, but I am not human: and therefore, I am not a woman. I am not a man.

This Fairly Odd Parents episode lives in my head rent free.

I’ve thought long and hard about if this is dysphoria, and I’ve reached the conclusion that I don’t think it is. I’ve had lots of different gender identities, after all, and none of them seem to have solved the problem. When I was a child, I despised “girly” things: I played with bugs, cars, and video games. I hated wearing dresses, despite my mother thrusting them upon me. I suppose, in retrospect, I liked some “cute” properties—Neopets, My Little Pony, and Pokemon come to mind—but they weren’t as girly as they were nerdy, and they did nothing to endear me to my fellow peers. I wore baggy jeans and a t-shirt every day of my life until I was 24. I think this came from not wanting to be perceived: if I faded into the background, then maybe people would see me as the featureless blob I exist as in my mind’s eye. I was frequently mistaken for a boy (perhaps because “boy” is the default and better than “thing”), and I would often lament the fact that I hadn’t been born as one. It seemed so much easier to be a man: that’s why I surrounded myself with them.

Being young, even with having been exposed to gender ideology, I rejected the idea of transness. I was just a tomboy. Before Tumblr, I went through an edgy 4chan phase—one that is cringey to look back on, for sure, but one I don’t necessarily feel the need to repent for. I think a lot of growing children will go through some sort of counter-cultural phase like that. I was lucky that I was raised in a liberal household, one that provided me with the skills to recognize injustice and when “edgy jokes” veered from irony and became true, degenerate sincerity. I was dangerously close to becoming a “pick me”—a woman who was “one of the guys”, who hated everything feminine, including feminism and “social justice”. (I guess we call it wokeness, now. Kill me.)

Then I fell into Tumblr culture and became a different kind of insufferable. There was that sexuality split I mentioned earlier, for sure, but I found myself bumping up against other factual “givens”. For example, even though I identified as a woman, I still very much enjoyed fictional content with male characters. And I enjoyed seeing them make out. While I think we’re currently in a pro-fujoshi renaissance (thanks, SAWTOWNE), back in the days of 2013 yore, “fetishizing” gay male characters was one of the greatest sins an AFAB woman could commit.

Now being a fujo is cool! Maybe. I'm sure there's TikTok discourse about it, I'm just willfully unaware.

It frustrated me. I saw more of myself in characters like Apollo Justice than I did Trucy Wright. I wasn’t interested in reading fanfiction of Trucy, of shipping her, of exploring her hidden depths like I was with Apollo or Klavier. “Internalized misogyny,” people would call it, and maybe they were and are right in some regard… but it still deeply frustrated me. I wasn’t trans, but I did think it would be so much better if I were a man. I was more compelled by men. I wanted to be a man who fell in love with other men. I wanted a penis, certainly, and I wanted to look in the mirror and see someone handsome, someone beautiful. And those characters I always found beautiful were slender, long-haired men wearing beautiful jewels and elaborate gowns. Feminine men. Or—women, at a certain point…?

I mean, sometimes women. There were, indeed, female characters in media I was equally infatuated with, and even sexually attracted to. AA4’s Ema Skye, if we’re continuing with Ace Attorney—Mia Fey. Anime was its own realm of rampant sexuality, and while I would say I was more compelled by male characters and yaoi, I also enjoyed a great deal of “cute girls doing cute things” shows. And hentai, of course. I’d see a cute anime girl in a maid outfit and want to romance her, but also be her. After all, Haruhi Suzumiya wasn’t human: she was a god. It was different. Could she even, really, be considered a girl…?

Maybe the moral of this story is: don't let undiagnosed autistic children play Ace Attorney. It'll trans 'em.

Along with the common adage that lesbians always favored male characters (never get between a lesbian and her Leon Kennedy), I got it into my head that that’s what I was. I wasn’t attracted to real men, I said to myself: only fictional ones. I must be a lesbian. Of course, I didn’t really recognize that I wasn’t attracted to real women, either—but it just felt… more right, than bisexuality. Because, of course, I wasn’t trans. I couldn’t fathom the idea of being trans. There was something off about me, but I was a woman: I was born a woman. Rejecting womanhood would be misogynistic. I would embrace it instead… and “lesbian” felt like the only way to do that in a still-countercultural, still-masculine sort of way.

Then something changed.

I don’t know what. My dad dying, I suppose, and suddenly being thrust into an unfeeling adulthood I wasn’t actually prepared for. I struggled with finding any meaning in life those next couple of years, compounded by the pandemic and jobless abuse that I’ve still yet to escape from. I didn’t like myself very much. I pursued relationships because I felt like I had to. I had sex, but it didn’t really feel like anything. I lusted after women, I wrote porn of men. I longed for community, but I felt out-of-place. I viewed the people who liked me sexually as freaks, and I hated them: why would they be attracted to a half-human thing like me?

I can recall the exact moment I feel like my eyes were opened—and, as with most things in my life, it came when consuming a piece of media. I was watching Our Flag Means Death (a fantastic show I highly recommend, provided you only watch the first season). There’s a character in OFMD named Jim: they are AFAB, but they join the pirate crew as a man. When it’s revealed that Jim is AFAB, the crew questions them: “This whole time, you were a woman?” Jim says, “Yeah, I guess. I don’t know.” They implore the crew to keep calling them Jim, and that nothing’s changed.

We don't talk about S2.

The thing that really got me was Jim’s interaction with two different characters: Spanish Jackie, a straight woman, and Lucius, a gay man—both of whom admitted their attraction to Jim even after discovering they were AFAB. Because Jim isn’t a woman: Jim is Jim.

I was boggled. Could you do that? Could you be AFAB and not be a woman, and yet not be a man? Or maybe sometimes you were a man, if people saw you that way—and maybe you could even be a woman still, too, but not always? Not only that, you could still be queer—you could be part of the community, while not belonging to any one specific facet or label of it? People could still love you?

It was like a switch had been flipped. What was I doing? I wasn’t a lesbian. What I sought in lesbianism was the ability to play with my gender presentation. I wanted an excuse for my masculinity, my weirdness, my fundamental queerness, and I had thought that being a lesbian was the only way to be perceived as queer, as good. But that one scene, one character, opened my eyes. I didn’t have to be a woman, and I didn’t have to be a man. I could be either, both. Something in-between.

Ever since then, I’ve been identifying as genderfluid. Not only has that moniker allowed me to feel more comfortable dressed in my sloppy, formless clothes, it’s also had the bizarre effect of inspiring me to dress even more flamboyantly. I dress more femininely now than I ever did when I identified as a woman or a lesbian: I wear dresses, short skirts, cute barrettes and big earrings. I don’t exactly view that fashion as womanly, though. Sometimes it is, but I more often than not wear my poofy skirts while internally feeling like a man that day, or like something that’s not quite any gender. The fashion simply allows me to feel more confident. I dress in ways I think are intriguing and appealing regardless of the assigned gender of the clothes, because I don’t care what people perceive me as—and that’s made me feel so incredibly free.

…For the most part. I still have some residual anxiety about my perceived gender. Perhaps it could even be called dysphoria. I worry that my preferred fashion choices are too feminine, and I recognize that any average person seeing me on the street would clock me as AFAB. I don’t even think I really give queer anymore. I worry that queer people look at me in confusion: if I’m comfortable dressing femininely, using she/her pronouns, and dating a guy, am I even queer?

I guess this whole blog post has been structured as a defense of why I am. I am queer. I’m gay. I’m trans. I’m a woman, I’m a man. I’m nothing, I’m everything. I’m a beast, a star, a void. But I am, first and foremost—and even regrettably—human.

But expecting anybody to listen to my years-long gender journey or read a monstrously long blog post is ridiculous, I know. Besides, I don’t really feel the need to “defend” myself to people I don’t know. They might look at me and think I’m posing, I’m fake, but I don’t care. That’s why I tell people to fuck off: my sexuality is none of their business. My gender is none of their business. I’m Cereus, full stop. I am who I am, I’m comfortable with who I am, and I’m queer. That’s all anybody needs to know. I accept myself—finally, after all of these years—and their approval is the only one I really need.