After Dragonlet (now 9) came out to us in December as nonbinary (cf. https://toot.cat/@naga/115708931052881812 ), they're gaining more clarity.

As of this week they are exploring the idea of possibly being #agender.

Which set me thinking. When I talk about dressing femme or genderfuck, I routinely say that I am a cis man. And that's still the result of my self-examination.

But looking back on my childhood, I can see pretty easily that -- in a more open-minded generation, perhaps also needing more open-minded parents -- I could easily have followed the same path.

I remember sometimes in early elementary (ages 6-8ish, probably) wishing I were a girl, but also being ambivalent about that. More that I didn't like being a boy, and didn't know there was anything else.

In a similar vein, I've never been entirely het.

Really, I've never been highly invested in either my male gender or my (for a long time) self-perceived straight orientation. Neither was ever key to my identity. Like, for example, in my teens having sex dreams about both femme and masc people and not feeling at all perturbed about either in the morning.

Musings. And I'm happy with where I've ended up. But it's easy to see how I could have gone a different path. And so glad for Dragonlet that they can choose a different path.

Having typed all that out, I'm starting to ask myself questions I didn't think I still had....

I don't know yet what the answers will be, but I'm asking them.

This is so cool!

GenderQuest continues. I'm pretty sure agender doesn't fit me. I plan to sit with demimale as a possibility for a bit and see how it feels.
Genderqueer sits as a fine umbrella term, but I want to be careful of stepping on the toes of people of that identity who mean it in the sense of "'queer' as in 'fuck you.'"

@naga This is the label my partner has used (they'll also use nonbinary), after years of "I keep having to check my gender every few months"

It makes sense for me that you might explore it, and I've wondered if it applies to me too. (I've described my gender as "inertia cis" before!)

@shinybat Oh, cool. That's useful, genuinely. Thanks.

@naga I'm glad! I remember seeing the Genderbread Person model at university and just having the male:female aspect be sliders *plural* felt so notable because I was much more sure of "not a woman" than "am a man" - although being ace in the 2000s, even the late 2000s at university, felt like a rejection of masculinity in its own right on some level.

When I first realised I wasn't aro, I briefly thought I was heteroromantic because I assumed that any man I'd find would want something my sex-averse self could never provide. After coming out as demigender, my partner (whom I actually knew from fandom for years before we fell in love) joked about how I wasn't *technically* proven wrong after all 😂

@shinybat Love it!

My therapist told me about the Genderbread Person a few months ago in the context of a prop for talking to Dragonlet about their identity, and I also immediately loved the dual sliders. I haven't gone back to it for myself yet, but that's in the plan.

I'm fairly genital-averse (any configuration, including my own junk), but less sex-averse. And decidedly not orgasm-averse.

Shit's complicated, right?

@naga Absolutely complicated!

I'm also somewhat squicked by any genital configuration and if anyone asked "what's in your pants?" I'd go "waste removal equipment" ;)

It's all sensory for me and always will be. I've liked neuroqueer as an adjective label for me, on the basis of "my queerness is inseparable from my neurodivergence in general and my SPD in particular," and really enjoyed finding that platonic crushes have been described in the ace community as "squishes" because mine are literally People I Want To Squish...

@shinybat Jalan is really trying to help get my compression/bondage/no-decisons-time needs met under trying circumstances for us.

RIffing on a meme I saw a while back, she recently asked, "How can I help squeeze your soul back into your body?"

@naga I love that meme 🖤

The no-decisions-time thing is also something my partner particularly relates to. Very helpful sometimes when brain is going brrr (derogatory)

I feel entirely confused about kink being seen as basically Sex: Extreme Edition when "vanilla" sex squicks me a bit and certain aspects of kink don't! Ideas of "sexuality" feel irrelevant to me because everything comes down to me being #ActuallyAusquishtic ;)

@shinybat Love the hashtag!

Kink is entwined with sexuality for me in the sense that bondage/submission/loss-of-control always prompts sexual arousal, but that link dates back to before I knew what sex even was, much less kinky sex. So it's something wired, or maybe based on early stuff like comic book visuals.

But sex (broadly construed) definitely doesn't have to be part of time in bondage for me, and often I don't want it to be. At least at a cognitive and emotional level--my body always has its ideas.