I need to make this post before 2023, because so much has happened in 2022 that has... Complicated things, that has made me feel like I need to finally start making public posts again. Sorry for the long post, it's just difficult for me to present only a little of my story when this has been a long time coming.

I've been quiet for quite some time regarding personal matters on my profile because of my custody battle, but my ex won. I'll save the family court related story for another subreddit, but this part is relevant because being a mother to my kids was a full time job, and gender expression and other ways of affirming my gender was just not at the forefront. I didn't have time. Also, in a lot of ways, being a mother influences my gender, and it seemed like enough at the time. My children (now 5 and 2) were my world. Now I don't have a family anymore.

I'm 28 years old. I got married to my ex husband at 20 years old, and I met him at age 19. I left the marital home with the kids at age 26. It's been a long 8 years of bullshit. This gender confusion thing isn't exactly new, but since I came out to my ex while I was still with him, I didn't get a chance to functionally BE whatever I was, you know? I came out to him as bigender, and he said he was okay with it, but he was clearly lying. While I was married to him, it was difficult to be my true queer self, since he disliked it anytime I was trying to participate in queer culture. It was very difficult being married to my ex husband, because it was so isolating being married to this white cishet guy who couldn't validate me on my experiences. But when I talked to other Asian women who were married to white men, they didn't have my problems, and I still continue to feel unable to relate to other Hmong women today.

Fast forward to when I had lost physical custody of my kids, and I met up with someone I had feelings for. It's this really long story😅 that I'll save for another time, but the tldr version is that they are the first trans person (amab nonbinary) I've ever had an irl sexual encounter with, but I felt like it wasn't queer enough, and that I was being treated like a woman. (I'm not saying they're not trans, but they're pretty masculine, it felt like it was functionally straight, and for some reason I just couldn't handle it.) I don't even know what being treated as not a woman sexually would even functionally be like. 😅 They don't talk to me anymore unfortunately. I've been really trying to work on myself and just trying to focus on activities that give me gender euphoria, since a big thing with our interaction that made me uncomfortable was that I felt like I was being treated like a woman.

After this happened, I started seeing this polyamorous guy named Chris that I met through Tinder, and everything was normal and great. I started to go to this trans support group, and I wasn't sure if I really belonged there or not, but Chris was supportive about it. Then, about 6 weeks ago (or more, I've lost track at this point) Chris just completely ghosted me. Wasn't responding to my texts or returning my calls, nada. Because I wasn't having any more straight sex (and I'd go and see him directly after the trans support group meetings too) I had to face what I really felt about my gender and what that means to me sexually and socially. Meaning like, yeah, I had come out to my ex husband way back in 2014, but I was still functionally a woman since I didn't have a queer community around me irl, and no one ever validated my gender irl. It's a bit weird, with Chris it was different than my nonbinary friend, because he actually made me feel valued and special as a woman, but he was the last person like that for me. It was a bit of a conflict of interest anyway I guess.

I forgot to mention, back with the nonbinary person from tinder, they really wanted to validate me on my name, since they saw I had put bigender on my tinder profile, and when they actually used the name irl, it felt weird. Like, I was embarrassed when they used it. I do still like it online, but it's feels different when said out loud. It's very cutesy, and I felt like I needed a name that commanded respect. And when I joined the trans support group, I didn't want to be embarrassed, but I also didn't have a better name to introduce myself by either, so I gave some initials from the name as my name. Some time after Chris had ghosted me, I asked people at the trans support group to call me by a masculine name that sounds similar to the cutesy name, though I still use the initials as well. It's nice to use several different names interchangeably.

So yeah, I've been grappling with whether or not I'm transmasc, or just "lesbian aligned". I use quotation marks because I'm still bi either way. I just know that after Chris, I am very uninterested with being attractive to straight men. I just can't take white cishet men's emotional burdens anymore, when all they do is just ghost me or otherwise devalue me. I can't do it anymore. It's so disrespectful. I've never been socially lesbian OR socially a man. Wherever I go, the cishet men are always attracted to me, and I want to distance myself from the straight community as much as possible. I want to be seen as queer as possible.

It's difficult for me to just suddenly say I'm not an Asian woman, since what I went through with the marriage, childbirth, family court, and how I was raised in my culture is that of an Asian American woman. I wanted to be included with the boys when I was a kid, but because I wasn't included, I wasn't one. To say I'm a man just seems so final. If I transitioned, that's it, done. That seems scary to me. 😅 It's also not what I went through? (So it kinda feels misogynistic to say that I'm trans, since it kinda feels like I'm denying the truth, and just being a "not like other girls". But it's true, I've never felt like other girls.) But I didn't grow up as an Asian man. That just seems like a lie to suddenly say I'm an Asian man because that's just not what I experienced. It's just tough bc I feel like if I knew what being trans was when I was like 5, I'd just be a guy. But that's not how things happened.

Also, the idea of having male privilege kinda freaks me out, and I don't want to make women uncomfortable. The idea of suddenly needing to use the men's locker room and bathrooms makes me very uncomfortable. I'm incredibly sensitive to smell, and I don't care for "man smells". It's like, when I'm vulnerable and sleepy/just waking up I'm no gender/a woman, but when I get ready to go out and present myself for the day, I want to be tough and cool, so I'm "now a guy".

I know that was REALLY long, so idk if anyone's going to see this, so thank you for reading this and sticking with me.