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I think that the experience of having been female (and in some ways, still being) is so intrinsically intertwined with my experience of being male that they can’t be separated into “true” and “fake”. I don’t think my transmasculinity is anywhere close to cis masculinity. More than anything: I don’t actually feel that I’ve always been male.
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And even though girlhood and womanhood never felt like home, even though there was always that persistent discomfort, there were parts of it that I really enjoyed! Yes, I chose to present as high femme in part as a reaction to feeling undesirable because I was a big, fat kid who never felt like one of the girls, but it was also really fucking fun, and I have real grief in not being able to feel comfortable embodying that anymore. I do think I was female-socialized in a way that continues to affect my behavior, whether through adoption or rejection. I say “When I was a girl” and “when I was ” and use “she” pronouns to talk about my past self when I thought I was cis, because in a very real social and personal way, that’s who and what I was. I approach sexuality and relationships with people of any gender through the perspective of having been a queer woman. I loathe the term “deadname”, because I didn’t fucking die, I changed.