I made this blog in order to help me grasp my gender and to help reduce anxiety regarding my gender. Recently I have come to be settled with the idea that I am both. I am both a man and a woman in one person and right now my body appears to be female to most people. I dress in men’s clothes and from the back I might appear as a man. I can bind which will also make me appear male, and sometimes I enjoy that.
At this point in my life I am learning to accept who I am, regardless of how “uncomfortable” I might make people. I also need to be aware of my health and being overweight most of my adult life has been partially tied to my gender confusion. Today though, I am focusing on losing weight and building myself up to look more masculine. I try to work out every day and I will be purchasing a bicycle so that I can ride it to work. I walk my dog, I love hiking, and I want to be a farmer. All these things are activities I didn’t do when I just “pretended” to be a woman – frankly they weren’t good for my image as a woman! I am happy to be slowly increasing my activities in order to build an active life – I know that it won’t happen overnight like if I took hormones…. but I will be much happier with the result.
Just like when you grow tomatoes. You can force them to grow in a greenhouse, use chemical fertilizers, use herbicides and pesticides to take the fast way out…. but the tomatoes that come out the other end are far below in quality than the ones that are grown and tended naturally. I love organic fresh tomatoes and frankly…. I wouldn’t want anything less for my body. So it took me 15 or so years to get my body fat and out of shape, and very femme. It might just take me that long to have a masculine body, hopefully 10 years less. I am 2 years into it and so far when I look at the old photos of me from 2 years ago I am proud!
Slow changes are easier to deal with anyway….
Izzy Ahee 
This is a rather parallel of an argument I made years ago about sexual identity. My theory has always been that pretty much everybody, if you strip off the cultural/societal/ethnic indoctrination, is bi-sexual – that is, they are all able to have sex with pretty much anybody and enjoy it. My proof of that is that practically anyone can have satisfying sex with no one else there and if you can do that, you can probably do that with pretty much any other shape of other body. Not to say that there isn’t quite a bit of sense in an instinctual predisposition to enjoying heterosexual sex and thus produce offspring.
In the same way, many people think they’re internally programmed to be a woman or to be a man. I have come to think of myself as a person who exhibits lots of internal and external behaviors, some of which society calls feminine and some that society calls masculine. I think that’s true of most folks. I wonder sometimes about people who elope to the “other” gender through SRS. I am glad I didn’t, though, if I had been much younger, I might well have strongly considered that option.
I am curious about your comment about “my body fat and out of shape, and very femme” Just about everywhere I have seen, folks recommend being slender to be more femme. Perhaps I am just reading this wrong, but would like to know more.
I just happened to find your blog and I love it! I identify as androgynous most days, trans some days, and genderqueer everyday. Confusing, I know, but gender is like that. Anyways, I’m glad to read about another person who is just as confused as about all this as I am.
Jessica, it’s true that in our current media saturated culture that being thin is considered femme. However, curves are also associated with femininity. Breasts and hips tend to collect fat and become larger in female bodied individuals. That gives the classic hour glass shape most people associate with femininity.
If you type “androgynous” into google images, a whole bunch of really skinny people with pronounced jaw lines will pop up. That isn’t to say over weight people cannot be androgynous, but I do believe that is the nature of the blog post.
A reply about body shape and type. In the past, with my ex-husband, he was not open to me being transgender or genderqueer at all, even though he cross dressed in private all the time. If he caught me wearing his underwear, he got upset. He insisted that I keep long hair and remain of a voluptuous shape… he liked me slightly obese, large breasted, wide/heavy hips, and a chubby but. As a teenager my mother always tried to push me to wear clothes that accentuated those attributes for me. Since I am obese I tend to be very curvy and voluptuous, but today I make different choices and I am working out to change those facts. So instead of doing push ups that just build upper chest muscles I do men’s push ups as well, this will help reduce my breast size. I also do weight lifting in order to bring out my bi-ceps in order to take the attention off other areas. I would also prefer to be healthy rather than obese… therefore I am working hard to lose weight and to see what my body might look like a whole lot smaller and healthier. Today I also dress to hide those “curvy” areas.
Here’s an example of what I looked like for my husband: http://www.mycommentstop.com/Site_Comments/Sexy_Category/BBW_Comments/images/bbw_champaigne.gif
Here’s a picture of a genderqueer that is more what I am looking to accomplish. I may need to have breast surgery to be comfortable but I want to try natural first.
Nice comparison pics! Good luck with working out. It’s great that you are striving to be the person YOU want to be. I think so many queers and trans have tried to shove themselves into one mold or another to please other people.
I’m also trying to build muscle and reduce breast size naturally. Be careful, because too much development in your chest can make breasts stick out even more. That started to happen to me, so I had to tone down my workouts a bit.