From Vanilla To The Rainbow Pool

The pursuit of self-awareness by a gender exploration virgin

For clarity, let’s frame this up from the start. For forty something years, I’ve identified as a straight cisgender woman. Now, I’m not so sure. Now, gay transmasc is sitting rather nicely. This is the beginning of my journey. Come play.

It is odd to me that although I have questioned my sexuality numerous times, until recently, I have never questioned my gender. My explorations of sexuality always conclude the same way; I am definitely attracted to males. But I have never wondered if my gender identity matched that which I was assigned at birth (female) because I was never encouraged to explore gender. Growing up in the 80’s and early 90’s in Australia, sexuality was still a hot topic of debate, so few were ready to get jiggy with gender.

For all intents and purposes, I outwardly identify as a cishet woman. I never questioned that. I am aware that I was never ‘girlie,’ and femininity took more effort than I was usually willing to give, but I wasn’t a tomboy either because, didn’t they like sports? I described myself as “boring vanilla” even though the claim didn’t quite feel right. When I explored my sexuality, I felt like gay described me, but that made zero sense because I absolutely was not attracted to females. I never even vibed bi or pan. I laugh now at the number of times I’ve said, “If I was a man, I’d be so gay.”

As an adult, after the mandatory years of doing what I was ‘supposed’ to do, I ultimately embraced my passion and pursued a career in writing. Go me for embracing the starving artist lifestyle. I wrote horror under a non-binary pen name because my thought at the time was that women writers were not taken seriously as horror writers. Hmm… was that really the reason?

Then I started bouncing around genres like a lost puppy.

I was surprised, excited, and uncertain when two males characters in my paranormal sci-fi revealed they were in a relationship. This couple attacked me with their complicated and yet frustratingly beautiful connection. I quickly discovered something interesting — while writing male-female sex scenes is super uncomfortable for me, writing about two men and leaving the girl bits out of it came surprisingly easy, no pun intended (maybe a little intended). I wrote it off as knowing what to do with the boy bits, but what do I do with girl bits? Yeah, I see the illogical argument now, too.

I didn’t see it coming, but before I knew it, I was writing an MM Sports Romance series. Now, I am so unbelievably in love with the MM Romance genre that I already have another series planned for after I’ve completed the first. It was while researching for these books that I began to look at myself and explore my own gender. Even as I write this, I accept that my vanilla heart started its journey towards the rainbow pool well before I began my research. Maybe it had always been tumbling and perhaps just the gradient has changed.

Where things really started to take a strange and wonderful turn for me personally was when I started writing the third book. I introduced a gay trans man as a main character. Research for my character was the first time I explored gender. As I glimpsed the lives of young people discovering themselves and embracing nonbinary and other non-cisgender labels, and I learned to understand the experiences and the signs (for want of a better term), I started seeing myself. The unexpected thing was that it was never scary; it was freeing.

Perhaps I am not entirely the cisgender woman I thought myself to be. Huh! I was forced to stop, think, and explore my own past. Based on that alone (and watch this space for more on the plethora of signs that now make me forehead slap myself), I have determined without a doubt, simply based on the definition, that I am genderqueer.

But wait, I thought I was a straight cisgender woman? If I’m not cis, then technically (and let’s keep this baby on the surface while I still tread water) I’m trans. So, what? Am I a gay trans man? Initiate head spin. It was a strange moment to realize that my vanilla ass wasn’t so vanilla, to realize that I wasn’t just in the rainbow pool, I might be swimming all around the damn thing.

There was something else that happened that I believe nudged my vanilla covered rainbow seed and prompted this deepest exploration: I yeeted my toxic family. (That’s the best way to say it because to say it in more serious terms gives it more weight than it deserves.) In a moment of saying, “You know what, that’s enough. I’m done,” I began to feel a freedom and a lightness I’d never experienced before. I felt light enough to see myself.

I think it’s a great thing to question your own sexuality and gender identity. I never looked at myself and considered that I wasn’t woman (oh jeez, every time I write that, it feels more distant). Yeeting my family allowed me to see me because I had spent my entire life trying desperately to live up to their expectations of what I was supposed to be, and I don’t just mean in relation to sexuality and gender, but that is clearly a part of it. Now, I see it all — the signs that I was never so damn binary are glaringly obvious in hindsight.

Hi, I am KP. I identify as genderqueer. I think I identify as nonbinary. I am 98.8% certain I identify as transmasc. I’m open to the very real possibility that I may be a gay trans man, but I’m not there yet. My pronouns are undecided. I haven’t settled on any labels and I don’t feel like I need to.

Right now, I am still questioning, and I think that’s amazing. I think everyone should question. Are you really who you are, who you are meant to be, your happiest version, or are you still wearing the mask that everyone else created for you when you were a child? I took my mask off and what I saw was beautiful. If nothing else, questioning has allowed me to see me. How wonderful is that?

Watch this space to follow my journey. I don’t know where it will take me, but I know I’m not alone and you never need to be either.

KP_the_writer Writer of the words — MM Romance