R20 I can imagine being in Blu's situation.
All my life, I have felt gay. Before puberty, I didn't know what was different but I knew I looked like a boy and had more interests that were like a girl's. Then my sexual awakening came and I realized, ohhh I'm this TYPE of different.
I have always had transient little moments, feelings similar to déja vu, in which I felt extremely feminine and it called to mind various girls or women I knew and I just sort of imagined myself to be like them. Just little fleeting moments.
I never wanted to look like a woman, but I did want to be pretty and appreciated for my beauty. But although I was cute when I was young, I'm also pockmarked and I have prominent masculine features and I would never consider doing drag because I would be an incredibly homely woman, even by drag queen standards.
I have wondered what would have happened if I had better skin and different features and did drag for fun. Would it activate a feeling of 'am I transgender'? I think it probably would.
At the same time, I would never consider taking hormones that are foreign to my body chemistry, I would never have my genitals chopped off, and I know that I feel more (gay) male than I do female in spirit.
If I were growing up today, I think I might adopt the "two-spirit" label instead of the gay one. I present as male. I feel like I am emotionally more like a woman and psychologically more like a man and intellectually an even split between the two.
Being 43 years old, I find all the new labels overwhelming and I find all the word policing tedious and unnecessarily confrontational. But I think I get it. People take the options they know exist, and when I grew up, it was straight, bi or gay, and I was not straight or bi and everyone told me I was gay by demanding to know if I was gay and by calling me "fag."
Gay works for me as a label based on my lifelong connotations of gayness *but* given that I have so little in common with the vast majority of gay men, I think when I call myself gay, my meaning is more "two-spirit" than it is "horny, accomplished gymgoer with huge social network and loads of sperm in my colon."
