Genderfluidity and Why My Identity Has Changed

When I was a preteen, I fantasized about body parts I could change at will. 4 years before Lilo and Stitch arrived in theaters, I wanted to be able to suck my developing breasts back into my chest or “push out” my vagina and have a penis. I didn’t want the different body parts all the time, but being able to switch things out like some sort of Mr/Mrs Potatohead seemed cool. I didn’t see the problem with it.

But my parents did when I talked to them about it. I was already a weird child and struggling with other aspects of who I was- my name, how I didn’t fit in with my peers, how I couldn’t understand the subtleties of teenage socializing, my developing sexuality- and they tried to squash that kind of “improper fantasy” talk out of me. Their rebuke didn’t stomp out the idea the way they hoped it would. Instead, I shifted those fantasies to late at night, in much the same way I was reading with a flashlight past midnight. Sometimes it was using a hidden stash of ace bandages to smoosh my chest the best I could. Sometimes it was finding something small I could use to gain the silhouette of a penis in my pants.

At the same time, my view of what sex was and wasn’t started to develop and I envisioned myself as both giver and receiver in all sorts of situations.

In the midst of the next several years, normal teenage angst and stress melded with abuse and my curiosity and contemplation about my body turned to rejection, dysmorphia, and outright disgust. I could no longer look at myself in…