At age 22, I had quite an interesting relationship with my gender since I was a kid. Back then, I didn’t have the words to describe how I felt and it’s still difficult sometimes, but I’m getting better. So, everybody take a seat and get ready to go back in time with me. Please, keep your hands and head inside the vehicle for the duration of the trip: gender discovery is a bumpy ride!
Disclaimer: Everybody’s story is different and your opinion on gender might not be the same as mine, but hey! Enjoy anyway!
My parents didn’t want to know the gender of my siblings and myself before our births to keep it a surprise. My mother told me that the first thing my dad and her did when the doctor put me in her arms, was to ask about my gender.
“Life had a bucket of pink sparkling paint and it dumped it on me big time the second I was born!”
My mom jokes about the first time we met by saying that they took a look at what was between my legs before they looked at my face (what a weird first impression story!). My dad started to jump around, crying, while shouting ‘It’s a girl! It’s a girl!’. My father told me that every nurse on the maternity floor called him the ‘dad who was so happy’ because of his reaction.
Life had a bucket of pink sparkling paint and it dumped it on me big time the second I was born!
As a kid, I hated things that were typically feminine like Barbies, the colour pink or dresses. On the other hand, I loved wearing my big brothers’ old clothes, playing with dinosaurs in the mud and practicing sports. In the dictionary, you could see my picture beside the word ‘tomboy’.
My parents were totally okay with it: my mom didn’t push me to wear dresses and my dad was proud of my skills in softball. Side note: it is so weird that it’s okay for little girls to be more boyish, but if one of my brothers started to act feminine, people would have freaked out!
“There was something else in this stressful melting-pot: I realised I was gay”
Then, one of the worst times of our human evolution arrived: puberty. I think the adolescence’s fairy was wasted or something because she hit me weirdly: my hairs grew super-fast, I got super tall, my voice started to crack and I had wonderful mood swings.
But one thing was missing: curves on my body. I was as flat as a plank and bullies used that fact against me. They made me feel bad about how I looked. I tried to blend in as much as I could, even though I felt I was different than the girls around me. Also, there was something else in this stressful melting-pot: I realised I was gay.
For seven years, I tried so hard to fight against the rainbow flowing in my veins, but that’s for another story.
Fast forward to university, I met my girlfriend and then I came out to everyone in my life. I was so happy to have that weight lifted off my shoulders but little did I know, I was still carrying something heavy.
“that’s how I felt in my own skin: restrained and claustrophobic”
Imagine you have to wear a super small onesie that your precious mother put in the dryer and it accidentally shrunk. It would be super tight and every single movement would be so uncomfortable. Well, that’s how I felt in my own skin: restrained and claustrophobic.
Some days would be better than others, while other times, this feeling was constantly stuck in my mind. I wasn’t sure what was going on and I started to question my gender. One night, I asked my girlfriend as a joke ‘would you still love me if I became a guy?’. She said she would not leave for that and gently asked ‘do you want to be a man?’
I broke down in tears trying to explain that I didn’t know what I was, that I didn’t think of myself as male but that I felt bad in my body. Then, as wonderful as she is, she hugged me and told me we would figure that out together. She suggested I make an appointment with a sexologist.
“gender doesn’t need to be binary, it can be somewhere in the middle”
That sexologist, Dr. Forgues, was an angel coming from the sky, in a rainbow, while sitting on a magic unicorn! She was specialised in gender dysphoria and I cannot tell you how much she helped me. She is the first person who explained to me that gender doesn’t need to be binary, it can be somewhere in the middle.
She gave me an example of a man who kept his pronouns and his male attributes but felt dysphoric about his chest. After therapy and appointments with specialists, he decided to get breast implants and he was really happy with his body after.
That story opened my eyes: I didn’t have to choose to be just a girl or just a boy; I just had to find where I was comfortable with myself.
Slowly, I made little changes to my physique to be happy when I looked at myself in the mirror, gradually lifting the weight off my shoulders. My girlfriend helped me so much and was so open-minded: she encouraged me to shop in the men’s section (because I was shy to go there) even though I prefer those kinds of clothes; she came with me to the hairdresser when I cut my hair short and she was by my side when I went to get my first packer.
“you just have to be your true self”
As you can see, you don’t have to fit inside the binary, as some people say, to be valid. You just have to be your true self. At the end of the day, you are the one living in your body. I wish I had understood that before and stopped listening to what others say is ‘normal’. Gender identity can be quite a journey, but it is totally worth it.
Maika Montminy
Edited by Ash O'Keeffe
LGBTQ+ Activist
