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Genderfluid

Oh, and by the way: I am genderfluid. I’ve written it in my profile bios since day one, but never really posted about what it means to me. It’s difficult to explain even to myself. Well, here goes: Sometimes I identify as mostly female and sometimes mostly male, but I’m never strictly either or. Maybe I could use the term genderqueer or non-binary, since there’s an overlapping, but the fluidity is also an important component in who I am.

I hope this is no big deal to you, dear readers, as you have been very understanding and supportive about anything not conforming, both to me and each other, ever since I came here. I hope you continue to treat me the same. No one has ever questioned my ambiguous personality or the more or less manipulated pictures of myself and some of you have also been discussing gender in a very open-minded way. That makes me dare write about this. Everything I’ve written about myself is true, well, except for the fiction parts of course. And even in the fiction there are truths about who I am. To write fiction is to write truths.

On this site you get the more female side of me, who is a creative and mostly positive girl, who may be the only one in Sweden who wears a black dress when celebrating light and joy on Midsummers Eve, who marches in Pride, who is kinky with her partners, who paints her nails, flicks the finger in the face of the world and who sometimes likes to roll herself into a blanket, disconnect from the world and read the entire weekend. Despite her black clothes she likes the lightness of summer. She is the one with visions, who writes privately, she is the author.

She co-exists with another one. A more male entity that is more logic and organized, more caring for others, used to taking care of business, getting things done. He has no sense in clothing and just cheers when he can remove her damned bra. He is more pragmatic, but also lately more neurotic and depressed, as he shoulders all responsibilities, and he can’t stop doing things once he’s at it. He’s not as relaxed anymore and is often in a strange, brooding mood. He moves in the shadows and emerges once in a while. Cranky when he has to face people and pretend. For some reason he prefers the heavy isolation of winter. He is the one writing at work, writing to communicate, he is the copywriter.

This division might sound like a “we” but there’s really just “I”. And I’ve always been this way. As a pre-school child I was looking and behaving androgynous. When my mom was shopping clothes for me, and the shop staff came to help, they always had to ask me if I was a boy or a girl. I always hesitated. I don’t know what I would have said if my mother had not been there. Not that I wanted to change gender, not to either. I just felt like identifying as a girl was as valid to me as identifying as a boy. No matter how my body looked. I’ve always felt in between. I wanted clothes from both sides of the store.

Like I wrote in the previous post about my pansexuality, I didn’t understand myself for a long time. Why would I do this, I wondered. What’s the point of dressing in what society decided is “wrong” clothes? Well, it’s like going the whole life with gloves two sizes to big and then suddenly getting a pair that fits perfectly. It’s not sexual or fetish, it just feels right. Beautiful clothes makes me feel at least a little bit beautiful myself. But I can’t fully explain it even today. There’s still some stigma surrounding this, mostly because of peoples prejudices, confusing identity and fetish, and I don’t want to be misunderstood; I’m neither butch nor sissy. I am not one gender dressing like another, I am dressing as who I am.

And of course it’s not all about the clothes. That’s just a tangible, external manifestation of what happens inside. It’s how I think, feel and interpret the world around me that is fluid. The me inside switches between modes that identifies with different gender. Sometimes I have to change clothes in the middle of the day cause I feel differently than I did that morning. I’m told there’s changes in body language too, but I do not see that myself. Somehow I write and interact differently too.

At the moment I am more content – and confident – with me being female. The male me is the burned out, fatigued, side. He stepped forward and had to shoulder a lot of responsibility over the last couple of years and all my energy went into keeping him alive. Which meant there was no room for my female side, she was pushed back and got desperate, struggling for freedom, wanted to live. Now I’m trying to let him rest and to let her loose on the world. Wish me luck!


It took forever to write this post. I’ve been coming back to it in my notebook on and off for a while. At first I felt obliged to explain myself to you so you wouldn’t feel deceived about who I am. Then I wrote a new version to sort it out to myself. Cause I am still struggling to understand and that makes it hard to explain. It’s the eternal question: Who am I? Oh well, I am a writer, no matter the gender, and hope you’ll continue to read my ramblings, thoughts, reports from life and of course my fiction.