Gender is an extremely personal thing. Let's get extremely personal.

My story

When my egg cracked

My gender identity was never something I questioned - it was never something I knew you could question. When I started seeing other transgender people existing and being themselves, I felt a vague but increasing sense that I could relate to them. At that point, I was still a long way from "changing" my gender identity. It was more a sense that transgender people were somehow "my people". It didn't make sense at the time, but eventually I started wondering "what is it about me that is like them?"

The button test

The button test is - in my opinion - a simple but effective tool to help you figure out if you might be a binary trans person. Maybe less effective to find out if you're non-binary, because the test itself is binary. The idea of the button test is simple. If I gave you a button that could instantly make your body look like you'd been born the opposite sex, would you press it?

When faced with the same question, I knew the answer like it was written in ancient texts, like it had always been so. Yet, I decided that still didn't make me transgender. Or at least, that I could choose not to be.

I sat with these thoughts for months. I thought, "Wanting to push the button, wishing for a different birth, isn't the same thing as being transgender. " In a way, that's true. Wanting to change the past is very different from wanting to change the future. On the other hand, it reveals things about yourself that bear further questioning.

Gender identity is what you make it?

Gender identity works differently for different people. For me, gender identity is linked with gender presentation. All of gender is a performance - we wake up each morning, put on gendered clothes, walk with a gendered gait, talk with a gendered accent, and use gendered mannerisms. The real reason we do this is because everyone else does. I won't get into a history lesson, but many things we think of as "very masculine" or "very feminine" actually were once considered very much the opposite - like heels and makeup!

This performance forms a crucial aspect of how we integrate with society. Part of the social contract requires us to show who we are, and what gender we are. I picture three main ways your gut reaction could respond to this contract:

1. You feel good, or at least neutral, about the gender you perform for society.
2. You feel jealous of other gender performances, they feel more vibrant, more enjoyable, or more "you".
3. You feel confused, or feel that none of the gender presentations you see around you are appropriate for you.

If you feel number 1, you might be cisgender, or you might not have dug very deep. Either option is okay. If you feel number 2, you might be somewhere on the binary transgender spectrum (or, if you relate to an androgynous presentation, you might not be a binary gender at all). If you chose number 3, maybe you're non-binary, or maybe you're just at the start of your self-discovery journey.

"Choice" for gender

The concept of "choice" is a strange one when it comes to gender. I think the safest thing to say is to reiterate that every trans person is very different. Many trans people have a very strong understanding of their gender from a young age, and suffer from mental illness until their gender presentation is rectified. For those people, "choice" means choosing life or death.

This wasn't my experience - or at least, I wasn't struggling in any way I recognised - and gender was something I faced later in life. For me, it felt like I was "choosing" whether to be transgender. In reality, I was choosing whether to transition. The moment I knew this was possible, I could no longer "choose" to stop thinking about it. On the other hand, it also felt like I was "choosing" a contract to perform, and I knew which one I wanted. In that respect, it was easy. It was obvious. Eventually, I needed to take action. So I saw a doctor and found a therapist. Now, a few years later, I'm in a much happier place.

The Perth Gender Picture

I wanted to share a tool that was extremely helpful at the start of my transition. I started therapy specifically to help navigate gender and transition, and my therapist was fantastic. Importantly, she introduced me to the Perth Gender Picture.

The Perth Gender Picture, or PGP, is a new tool created right here in Perth, Western Australia. The PGP has two triangles, the top one representing your gender identity and the bottom one representing your gender presentation. The left vertices of the triangles point to "male" gender or masculine presentation, and the right vertices point to "female" gender and feminine presentation. The bottom point of the bottom triangle is for androgynous presentation, and the top point of the top triangle is for a gender identity that feels neither female or male.

To complete the PGP, you can draw pretty much whatever and however you want, with the general idea that you make an amorphous blob showing how your gender identity and your gender presentation feel right now, then you also mark where you'd like it to go.

This structure is helpful for many reasons, but here are the ones I'd like to point out:

• The PGP makes it very easy to account for grey area, confusion, androgyny and fluidity. You have the freedom to complete the PGP however you want.
• The PGP makes a distinction between gender identity and presentation. This is crucial, because it's perfectly okay to desire a gender presentation that's different to the typical presentation for your gender identity. The important thing is to work out what your own feelings are.

My therapist and I recently revisited my PGP, and I filled it in again. It was so gratifying to see the difference between early 2022 me and late 2024 me.

Closing

It's hard for me to be vulnerable about some things. In this post, it feels like I've been very clinical. All my articles so far have struck a balance between storytelling and helpful information, but gender is something that feels very "detached" from myself, even today. Maybe I still have work to do, or maybe I'm a touch non-binary. I'm happy for now, but self-discovery ans self-improvement also never ends.

Thanks for reading this article. Please share the Perth Gender Picture so that other trans people can find it! I'm also interested in feedback. Let me know if you found this article interesting or helpful.