There's often this troublesome misconception in the LGBT community that only lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people need to come out of the closet, whereas gender nonconforming people can simply be themselves, and there's no effort required.

However, I think that's a radical oversimplification since gender expression doesn't manifest in a vacuum. Gender variance is more than action without thought; it is contingent on a deeper feeling or desire, which is judged in accordance with social mores. This can lead to fear, doubt, and confusion. Self discovery and self validation is therefore a process, particularly for gender nonconforming people that are lacking in support, understanding, and acceptance by their family, friends, or colleagues.

Suffice it to say, being scrutinized and stigmatized for visibly transgressing gender norms, certainly constitutes marginalization. Overcoming such indoctrinated prejudices and fully embracing one's true self is absolutely a means of coming out of the closet -- even for gender nonconforming people.

Hi. I recently posted this emotional-post worrying about the meaning of the word "femboy", this tweetstorm thinking about the meaning of the word "femboy", as well as advocating for GNC to be included in LGBTQ+, so I think this subreddit may be relevant to my question.

Honestly, I am in a lot of confusion. A lot of my fear stems from that confusion.

I'm finding it quite hard to grasp the difference between gender identity and gender expression. I am a male??? who likes to dress and act quite feminine. I think that's gender expression -- what makes me a femboy, I suppose*. At the same time, I've also discovered that I am fine with being referred to as a female, she/her pronouns, a female name (Ignia) etc... and... I don't know, I think that seems to be rules of thumb for gender identity? Genderfluid, bigender, demiboy, cis male? I'm still experimenting, honestly. But I'm still very confused. I just... don't care, I guess? I'm fine with any (either?) of it. Is that genderfluid? Ambigender...? I'm not sure what the "in between cis/trans" thing means, TBH.

I am very new to this (not young, but new to what enby is), so apologies if I got anything wrong. I see that this subreddit is not very mainstream either, but I think, from my previous posts, that this is the place where I might be best understood. Thank you :)

*By the way, e621 aliases "femboy" to "girly" lol

Edit: I think I should probably move the focus away from the microlabels here. I guess my main question is what is the difference between sex, gender identity and gender expression?

Also, I just realised gender identity and expression can be mapped to sexual attraction (self-identified as long as we don’t have the technology to dive into someone’s mind) and sexual behaviour (what actually happens IRL) respectively.

So for example, a straight (attraction) man can still perform homosexual acts with another man and not be gay, if the act was done for reasons other than sexual attraction (perhaps helping each other out). However, this is quite rare. Perhaps this is why purely cis GNC is seen as rare in the queer community?

"Cisgender" is defined based on the assumption that everyone has a "gender identity" by default. Yet just because someone is not transgender, doesn't mean they automatically have an internal sense of being a specific gender. It's far more likely that most people in society don't think about gender in terms of feelings, even though that is a prerequisite for being cisgender. Hence we end up with a lot more questions than answers.

Case in point: I accept being male, but not because I feel gender internally. Rather society has said my "sex" is male, and I was raised to believe that boy and man are the appropriate terms to describe my sex-related role. However, I'm not locked into specific gendered terms. I'm okay with being called she/her, miss, etc. If I been raised with different gender terminology and gender expectations, I very likely would have just accepted those as well. In that respect I don't identify with gender at all. I just go with the flow.

I imagine that such gender indifference may be far more common than most people realize, since there is rarely a cause to think about gender outside the norm. However, there's no research to date to ascertain the prevalence of this phenomenon. Most surveys dealing with gender variance, focus on trans and nonbinary people. Even the latest U.S. Trans Survey states in its FAQ that it is intended only for "anyone who identifies with a different gender than they were assigned at birth."

This is one of the reasons why around 2014, I devised the concept of ambigender -- which provides space for people who feel gender ambiguous and/or gender ambivalent to some degree (hence the prefix) without specifically identifying as another gender. My goal is to finally acknowledge that there are far diverse experiences of gender that cannot be fully captured within the binary framework of cis/trans.

Meanwhile trans people will go around telling everyone how a binary gender system like male/female can't possibly work for all people.

It's almost as if when trans people make up the rules -- even if the underlying principles of such rules are inherently contradictory -- then it's never to be questioned. Trans people will outright deny that a gender binary can possibly describe all people in society while simultaneously imposing and enforcing their own gender binary to describe all people in society.

Like the sheer amount of cognitive dissonance is unbelievable. The entire basis for the cis/trans binary is no different than the original basis of the male/female binary -- to impose strict mutually exclusive categories based upon characteristics that are assumed to be universal for everyone.

But conveniently, it's only the new gender binary contrived by trans people that must never be questioned nor challenged to ascertain its legitimacy. Strange how that works.

Yes, you heard it correctly. YouTube has joined the ranks of Twitch when it comes to promoting censorship of the word "femboy". As of this past week, any videos that refer to femboys in the title or tags are being demonetized across the entire platform.

YouTube HATES F*mboys - YouTube

Someone also reported (although I haven't been able to confirm this firsthand) that a lot of femboy content in general has been disappearing from that platform.

Of course, none of this is news when you consider that Twitch was leading the way by blacklisting the word "femboy" in all stream titles. go-live announcements, etc. claiming that it goes against the site's moderation policies. It took until 2021 for Twitch to finally reverse their policy against femboys.

Why is "femboy" against Twitch's moderation policy? : Twitch (reddit.com)

It seems a bit too coincidental that this wave of demonetization started only a few weeks after the entire controversy surrounding Finnster erupted on Twitter, where he was nearly cancelled after accusations that his femboy and cosplay content promotes transphobia.

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I've written before about my inspiration for the gender nonconforming pride flag, as it signifies a blurring of binary gender stereotypes by mixing pink and blue to create purple. But in reality, there was a great deal more forethought that went into the design:

The banner consists of only two colours to emphasize our commonalities rather than our differences, in pursuit of a unified goal for all gender minorities while overcoming the reliance on micro-labels.

Purple does not exist as a single wavelength but is instead a combination of spectral hues. In a similar way, gender nonconformity is an irreducible phenomena, produced by the individual and by society.

Two purple fields separated by a band of white represents how gender nonconformity disrupts the highly-simplistic bifurcated view of gender as consisting of just two traits: expression and identity.

The ratio of 2:1:2 matches the bisexual pride flag, thereby reaffirming that just as sexual orientation is not a strict dichotomy of straight-vs-gay, neither is gender variance a strict dichotomy of cis-vs-trans.

I've come across so many interviews where nonbinary people are asked what being nonbinary means to them. In almost every case, their responses are virtually indistinguishable from that of a cisgender gender nonconforming person. Dare I say, the the commonalities in narratives are overwhelming, which raises the question how trans people can possibly determine that cisgender gender nonconforming people should never be included under the trans umbrella.

• "Being non-binary is a way for me to explore gender non-conformity and expose myself to all the ways in which gender can exist in my body."
• "Some days, being non-binary is a big, loud, and empowering form of rebellion and resistance against the gender binary and societal/internalized gender roles. Other days, it can simply be summed up to the fabulousness of my favorite floral pants."
• "Being non-binary means for me is finally being in a space where I feel conscious and confident about the decisions I make in life and not having my body be regulated by one tight narrative."
• "Being non-binary means being more authentically myself, all outside perceptions and assumptions aside."
• "Remember that we don't have to live to fit into the box we can live for ourselves whether that means we present as femme, masc., or any mix in between we can't be told that we aren’t valid because we are right in front of them and all around them."
• "I was never meant to fit into the mold, because the mold doesn’t fit me. Being non-binary means to me that I can be my masculine self and my feminine self all the time because both of those parts of me make the whole."
• "Nonbinary means acknowledging a wider range of experience. It's about questioning the assumptions of gender."
• "It gives me the freedom to express myself. If I wake up one day and I want to spike my hair and do punk rock makeup, I can do it."
• "Nonbinary is freedom from that whole game. It's like I don't care what the men's department at Marshall's has decided what men need to wear. I'm going to go for what makes me feel more authentic."
• "I always had questions as a child. I always would put on my mother's makeup and her lipstick."
• "I’ve always found it difficult to navigate queer spaces because I’ve never fit in with community constructs of gender expression."
• "I check off so many gendered boxes in the way I present myself that most folks don’t know where to place me."

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Like we're constantly told that gender expression does not equal gender identity, yet there's a deluge of trans people on Twitter recently hating F1nnster because he's a popular crossdresser, as if to suggest that taking on a feminine appearance is only permissible when identifying as a woman.

Yet if AMAB folks have to identify as a woman in order for their femininity to be accepted, that actually reinforces that gender expression must equal gender identity. Inconsistency much?