I get to be a baby for real. Through various channels, I have been finding my way into the Queer community…whether that is within special trans groups…I have joined many different transgender support groups, but also, more generally and socially, into the LGBTQ community.
The trans support groups are interesting, and most of that has been positive and educational. But I have learned much more from one-on-one interactions with my transgender sisters in particular. One of them, who is becoming a dear friend, noted after asking how long I had been on HRT, “aww, you’re just a baby,” and it is so true. More correctly, I am a teen girl in some ways. What I am experiencing is a second puberty, and while this is accurate in a physical sense, it is also accurate in an emotional sense. I am crying a lot. Little flashes of tears. Tears of joy, tears of sorrow, tears of compassion. A domme friend explained to me about how women grow up with this, and learn how to regulate it, and that this is something I need to do. Sigh.
But this journey of leaving a testosterone-driven shell and entering one that is fed on oestrogen, is filled with wonder, joy, but also mystery and fear. Being able to talk to someone who is ten years down the line, has transitioned completely, and can talk to me about intimate things that we might never want to talk about with anyone, is so utterly helpful. That’s what she meant by calling me a baby. But I get this feeling generally in the community—that those who have gone before are helping those of us behind them on the developmental path—and a trans woman who might be half my age, but has experienced transition over years, has so much to teach me.
Finding Comfort in Queer
My kids joked when I came out that if I am non-binary, no matter who I sleep with I am gay. Modern kids! They were teasing me, but they were also right.
I had never had any interactions with the Queer community before because it feels dominated by gay men. And apart from never having been attracted to men, I’ve always found male sexuality alienating. This has felt even more true with gay men than with heterosexual men. I somehow feel that gay men are even more male, more manly than straight men. Of course there are the very effeminate gay men, and I am actually okay around them, it’s the butch ones that scare me. Plus, plenty of people in the gay community don’t welcome trans people either—we are just as disorienting for them as we are for cis people.
I was also never comfortable with the often lewd and sexual nature of conversation in what I perceived to be gay culture. This is just my own prejudice.
And yet, by being trans, and by making community with trans people, I have found that I am more often in situations where the kaleidoscope of Queer is on display. And more and more, I find it feels good to be surrounded by these people. All of them.
I recently found myself thrown together with a large group of more female and feminine skewed queer people who also happened to be somewhat BDSM oriented. I’ve never felt so comfortable in my own skin, in my own sense of self-expression, than I did in their presence. It felt a whole new life is just beginning—that there are these magical people out there, and we are no longer passing each other like ships in the night.
When you allow yourself to be seen, different people start to see you…and the people who already saw you in one way, begin to see you as you really are, you can finally relax into being yourself. We may proceed gingerly, but so far, the discovery is beautiful.
Beyond Non-Binary 