I've only recently found that the term "bigender" describes my gender identity best. I always thought I was genderqueer! Well, not true, throughout my teens, I was convinced that I was overall "weird" in some undefineable way. My weirdness was in part due to my being a man for as long as I can remember, and then later also a girl or a woman on occasion. I grew up to be both, but most of the time, I am a man, presenting female, because my body doesn't lend itself to passing as male.

The question in the title line is taken from a rather unpleasant discussion I had with the leader of a local transgender community which, in spite of its inclusive description, is geared at transsexuals only, which I did not know. When I asked if I could join, I was told that it was a space exclusively for transsexuals, and when I apologised and said that I had not wanted to invade their space, but had thought that it was a space for people from the transgender spectrum, too, she asked me to explain what I identify as and when I explained, asked the above. How do you know it's not all in your head.

My answer ("Well, er, I just, er, know?"), while lacking in eloquence, sums up my view of this, and I have been pondering the question ever since. How do I know? What if I am just a terminally confused and mentally ill woman trying to take on a male identity?

For me, it was simply a feeling that I am not like other girls that I remember having as early as with four years of age. I was always convinced that I would grow up to be a man. My image of myself was always that of a man, and I also always had a vague notion of how I would ideally look like, and even though I knew that would not happen, it was what felt right. I still feel like that person, even though I look completely different. 

The question made me wonder- what if I have simply been so influenced by outside circumstances that I don't feel like a girl out of a deeply internalised misogyny? What if I was just so exposed to media without a female point of view that I simply took on a male one for my own? What if I am really just a confused woman? 

On one of my local BDSM newsgroups, a woman has recently told us the story of her coming out. She is a young single mum, lives in a tiny village next to a bigger, but not particularly liberal city, and she told some of the parents she was hoping to befriend at the kindergarten her daughter goes to. They reacted very disturbed and now their relationship is changed completely. She has lost all people she has had contact to previously, and it seems as though one of them is spreading the news around, as other parents have started giving her funny looks and avoiding her, too.

While I think that her situation is horrible, I do not understand, for the life of me, why she felt the need to tell these people, people she did not really know. She could not understand their reaction, as she is not hugely involved in the lifestyle and her preferences are pretty much limited to the bedroom. She just wanted them to know, felt the need that she should tell them - it seems that she sat them down and explained rather than mentioning it in a conversation. I do not understand that.

"Coming out" is of course a big topic in my other minority community. The pressure to "come out" is something that has been driving me crazy within the LGBT community in recent years, as it has become something that is almost expected of LGBT individuals. When they do not come out, they are ridiculed as closet cases, when they do, there is a huge amount of I-always-knew and told-you-so among the LGBT and straight community. People who perceive their sexuality as non-heterosexual are so pressured into "coming out" and sometimes come out twice when they find out that they are, indeed, not lesbians, but bi- or pansexual. I hate the pressure that is put upon people and I had no idea that it had reached our BDSM community.

Now, with this poor lady, had she told her friends because she wanted to I would have still found it difficult to understand her decision, but what throws me is that she felt the need that she had to tell these people. 

Why is there this feeling that those who are not sexually normal have to declare that they are different? It does not seem to happen for the benefit of the person revealing the news. In her case, so far, it cost her all the contact to people she had before. Maybe she is helping the understanding for BDSM folks a lot, because everybody perceived her as normal before her revelation, and she continues being herself, so they will eventually grow back together, possibly, but right now, she is putting herself through weeks of being ostracised because she felt she had to tell them.

With LGBT folks as well as BDSM lifestylers and, indeed, those who belong to both groups, I can see the need to explain some things to people as soon as it becomes apparent that it is a large part of their life. If I am walking down the street, hand in hand with my fiancée, that is a statement about my sexual preferences. It's the same when a friend of mine takes her pet for walkies on a lead. It is extremely visible, it cannot be explained away, and it makes a coming out inevitable. It does mean that the "coming out" part is skipped and people fast forward directly to the explanation.

With people for whom parts of their sexuality is not that visible, I do not understand the need to "come out" to anyone apart from prospective partners. I would never talk about my strap-on and the joys of flogging my fiancee with people I have just met, as I do not feel that it is necessary for them to know intimate details about my sex life.

Why do people who belong to minorities feel so pressured into revealing their deviancy to those who appear to belong to the norm? It does not seem to be about visibility or freedom, but rather about warning others, spreading gossip, appearing special. Those who are pressured into coming out before feeling comfortable or having established that their environment is so supportive that they won't be ostracised are driven to stigmatise themselves through this pressure.

While I hope that the stigma is ultimately changed through the increased visibility, I just don't see that happening.

Friends only.

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