i figured it out last year. I was working in harm reduction and the place I was working also has a trans advocacy group. so we got a presentation about trans acceptance and how to deal with it in our workplace. part if the presentation was on what it means to be trans, saying that the only requirement was identifying differently than what you were assigned at birth.
thru my 20s I often thought something like "I would totally identify as non binary now if I was aware of the concept when I was younger." I could nor relate to cis people who were confident in the gender binary, but more importantly I couldn't relate to trans people who were assigned a gender at birth but KNEW they were a different gender. Like if someone was trans and said "I always knew I was a boy" it was completely alien to me, having grown up AMAB I never once felt like I was a boy. Trans people were having gender certainty I had never experienced.
Non binary never hit quite right tho, I felt like there was still some level of gender occurring, and I didn't understand it. So...
I'm agender. No gender here lol. I'm not trying to do anything about it. In life I go by he him and it doesn't bother me at all. It correctly identifies my physicality, my male privilege, etc. Sometimes I think maybe I should insist on they them because it would help normalize different pronouns, but honestly just like not really feeling being nonbinary, it doesn't bother me at all when I'm referred to as him. Its a word, that doesn't reflect my lack of gender but doesn't matter to me.
I've never told anyone this before lol. So I'm still new at thinking about what this means.
Oh I feel this. Hexbear is the first and only place where I am "officially" presenting myself as something other than she/her which I am not at all sure about anymore, but I don't mind it either. I feel like my gender is just my name, I have just always been "just me" as in no particular strong feelings of being anything really apart from just me. Not sure if that makes sense. Have had very hyper-feminine years in my life and also times when I loved wearing my grandfathers old suits and being pretty masculine, but am starting to think my anxious drive to "be a girl" when younger was more from being bullied and not presenting gender normatively aka sticking out rather than what I wanted to be/am.
I have very broad shoulders and been told I behave "boyish" and was bullied for my size for years which I think explains why I so wanted to be more normative aka petite and more feminine. But, once I found sports and lifting in later life I felt so much more at home in that role, embracing the bigger frame and the way I am. Yet didn't still feel like I want to be masculine, but instead I am just me. Pretty sure being audhd is connnected to this too.
Not sure if any of that makes any sense and this is the first time I am trying to articulate this in any way, but your post just resonated with me.