Life As Performance Art 186

I am a nonbinary male, androgynous and gender nonconforming. I dress like a conventional butch male, old jeans, rugged shirts, walking shoes, basic underwear and socks, cut my own hair, nothing fancy, and certainly no manscaping, no frills, just the facts. I also hate sports, especially hockey, love art and nature and baking and cooking. I would rather be surrounded by visual beauty than stuff or machines or whatever. I also know how to pound nails, though I'm not really good at it. I am not afraid of or ashamed of my tears, am nurturing, compassionate, pacifist, but don't piss me off. Equally male and female but in a man's body, or, why be both when we can be neither? Because I do not fit inside any neat categories on the queer spectrum, I often have to fend off some really dumb assumptions and sweeping generalizations that are sometimes made of me, especially by trans people. For example, this emotional and irrational attack I got on Quora from a transwoman because I had deigned to ask some questions about sex and gender that are not to her liking. i had the colossal gall to suggest that our obsession with being binary in the first place makes it necessary for some gender nonconforming people to assume they are a man in a woman's body or vice versa, and unable to accept or embrace paradox, or emotionally and psychologically survive in a culture that says men are men and women are women (and all the sheep are scared, Still, I don't think it is fair or just to demand that all cis men openly welcome transmen as men, or cis women to welcome transwomen as women. It is all very complicated, and there needs to be a lot of slack cut on all side. If we were all naturally fluid and relaxed and unconcerned about gender to begin with, then perhaps being trans wouldn't be necessary. But it is, for now, anyway, so get used to it. There should be room for a wide variety of perspectives, and a lot of transpeople seem to be insisting that because yours is correct, then mine must be incorrect. I did mention that I agree there is a difference between biological sex and gender. She seemed to have missed that. However, I am also concerned that by negating what we are biologically, then we could also be shortchanging ourselves as whole human beings. Gender reassignment is a choice, I am still not decided on how legitimate a choice, but it is one that I nonetheless respect. However, it could also behoove one to consider that not everyone is going to totally accept your self-definition, while completely respecting your right to it, and I completely respect your right to this. It doesn’t mean that I am going to agree. If a transperson insists that in order to be their friend that I have to agree with them one hundred percent, then we are going to have to forgo the friendship. I owe no apologies here, so please get over it. Respecting differences works on all sides. As to anyone's decision about transitioning, I do hope for the best possible outcome for them and that this is something that will help them move forward in life, whatever the decision. Of course, I would respect and address them as a woman, or a man, depending on how they are transitioning, because that is their preference. I think it’s going to take time for people on all sides of this discussion to learn to be adults about it. Everyone is too tainted by trauma to be adults right now.