In so much of my life I’ve gone through so many shifts and changes but the ones I’ve been going through in the past 3-4 years, and especially the past couple years here in Colorado since really embracing and jumping into my ”gender journey”, have been more intense, more mind-boggling, more stark, and more rapid — almost so continuous that’s it’s hard to keep up with it all.
The world around me feels like an ever-changing kaleidoscope: dizzying and bewildering but also colorful and beautiful. And, at least to a certain degree, in my own hands. Maybe I am the one spinning this kaleidoscope to turn the world around and see it in different shapes, in dazzling colors.
As my gender expression changes, the way the world around me behaves towards me and/or reacts to me changes, too. But also, as my internal gender identity changes or, rather, as the level of self-knowledge & confidence & awareness in my own gender identity increases, my way of relating to the world around me, of building and pursuing relationships changes.
The dynamics with my cis-male climbing buddies is becoming more and more platonic while also getting stronger. I do believe that both they and I are getting more and more used to, and maybe comfortable with, my being “one of the guys”: that’s my “bro time”, my “bro space”; we climb together, plan/go on climbing trips together, and change in the men’s room together. I’m finally getting the closeness and intimacy and camaraderie with nice cis-men that I’ve yearned (& sometimes had) my entire life without having to be sexual or romantic with them.
On the other hand, I’m finding myself to be sexually and/or romantically attracted to non-cis-men more and more, and maybe exclusively to queer persons. For the past couple years at this point, I have been consistently attracted (in a sexual and/or romantic way) to people who are queer and most of the time specifically gender-queer as well. And genderqueer people with more feminine energies but not exclusively feminine (regardless of anatomies).
I think different parts of me — and specifically different aspects of my masculinity & gender-fluidity & being non-binary — are coming out and being expressed within these various spheres of relationships. With my cis-male climbing buddies, it’s the strongest and “toughest” parts of my masculinity; I’m just a “boy with the boys”, “one of the guys” in that space, almost fully to the masculine end of the spectrum (while still being happy & proud about not being a cis-man!). With my platonic gender-queer friends, there’s more of a rainbow of identities of mine that come out, spanning a wider range of the gender spectrum. And specifically, with the gender-queer people with whom I interact romantically and/or sexually, there’s still a lot of my masculinity finding its expression, but in a different way than with my cis-male climbing buddies. Within the romantic/sexual gender-queer interactions, the part of my masculinity that comes out is a complement to their feminine energy, rather than being “on the same wavelength” of my buddies’ “bro-ness”; in some ways it’s gentler, or calmer; and it’s also less far on the male side of the gender spectrum, a little closer to the non-binary or gender-neutral center, leaving more space for my own gender-fluidity as well as the other person’s gender-fluidity.
In both spheres it’s a new way for me to relate to people and to experience how people are relating to me: it’s a new way of relating to & being treated by cis-men as well as a whole new world being around other gender-queer people.
Colorful and dazzling and ever-changing, like a kaleidoscope all around me — or is this kaleidoscope inside me?
The Little Prince and the Fox 