for now.

Let me start by saying this: I am a cisgender woman. I am not an expert on gender; only on mine. I highly encourage you (if you’re cis, too) to educate yourself on different genders and gender expressions. If you seek out trans and non-binary people online, do NOT expect or demand emotional labour from them. Pay them for education, if they offer that. Otherwise, just witness and shut the fuck up.

Why the fuck did I look at my gender to start with?

I guess it all started in lockdown when I saw more and more people online questioning or celebrating their gender outside of the binary. It brought up quite complicated feelings inside of me. It was a bit of a revelation. My brain went… “Huh. There are more ways to be. Maybe there is a way for me, too.” Don’t get me wrong, I knew of trans people, had a basic understanding of what trans means. But there was nothing beyond that (talk about cis privilege); no thoughts, no wondering, nothing.

I watched and learned. That learning process still continues, but I’m confident today that I’ve got my bases covered. Equipped with this new knowledge and with witnessing the variety of gender expressions, I started looking at what gender meant to me and how “woman” fit into that picture.

I hate what woman means in our society

The ideal (white!!) woman in our society is slim (straight sized), tall(ish), blonde, has big boobs, a sizeable (but not too big!) bum and blue eyes. Yes, the occasional brown or black hair is allowed, as long as it is long and shiny and “feminine”. Don’t even try to tell me otherwise. I have… never been any of these things. Well, I do have blue eyes and I would argue I have (originally) dark blonde hair but it’s far from that perfect blonde. I’ve also always been fat with small boobs and an arse that is too big to be attractive, another thing women must be to men.

And that’s just appearances. You also need to be the good girl, hardworking, non-disabled, heterosexual, want to marry and have children. You have to be a “lady in the streets, but a freak in the sheets”. You have to happily answer to “Miss” “Mrs” or “Ma’am”, depending on your age or your relationship to a cis man.

You can’t be opinionated, dominant (unless it’s in a sexual setting), loud. You are not allowed a “male” job or a career in which you’d make more money than a man, let alone one you’re in a relationship with. You get the gist, I could probably write a book just on things that women are supposed and not supposed to be, do or feel.

Why not just be a raging blue-haired feminist?

Well, I AM. But looking at my environment, I saw people stepping into their true selves; something I was promoting but not fully living. For a lot of them, it meant coming out as a different gender than they have been assigned at birth. So, I went on a little journey of my own.

I asked myself: What does it feel like to be a woman? How do I KNOW? Well, that was a bit of a mindfuck. How DO you know??? I just kind of… knew?! Or did I? Hm.

My thought process

Right, hm, sooo… I have the physical bits of a woman. Ugh, what bullshit. That doesn’t make a woman. That’s just what made them decide to put “f” on my birth certificate and in my passport. Feels a bit reductive. Also, all the things I have are somehow wrong. Too something. Too fat, too small, too non-conforming.

Wait! I have heard that word before! Am I just a gender non-conforming woman?? Maybeee… how do I find that out? Yes, I could have asked a search engine, but I didn’t. I asked Instagram and TikTok and binge watched hours of content. Fun fact: The TikTok algorithm knew me better than I did and I “discovered” (👀) that I was, in fact, pansexual. Who knew. Story for another day.

So, non-conforming or fluid are all words generally associated with someone outside the binary. Now, there is no perfect dictionary definition, so I could just claim that?! Didn’t sit well with me. Didn’t feel quite right. WHY not?

Here is where it gets interesting: I had this whole phase of not wanting to take up space in a community I (probably) didn’t belong to. I still don’t. I also don’t go about telling everybody how queer I am for a silimar reason. I have never suffered the consequences of queerphobia and it feels disingenuous taking up that particular space. I embrace my queerness fully and am happily “out”, but I won’t try to claim oppression where it’s never occurred.

Anyway, I was in that limbo of should I, shouldn’t I. What actually makes me gender non-conforming? All the physical aspects? My thinking and how I present myself to the world? My physical reaction to people calling me ma’am, miss or missus? All of the above, I guess. It’s also a feeling stirring inside of me: I’m not “normal”.

But you’re… cis?!

This is where I landed, yes. If I had to describe my gender, I would describe it as “witch”. Very seriously. That’s where I land. And whenever I dress like that and wear that black lipstick… I’m THERE. Gender euphoria. Witchophoria. I turn myself on so much, I want to fuck myself. Also, very seriously.

What makes it more complicated is that I do not see “witch” as gendered. Anyone can be a witch. And a lot of trans and non-binary people have been burned or hanged as witches in the past. So we share a witch wound there. But I digress. So, I see witch as gender neutral. Does that not make me “neutral”? Non-binary? Stepping out of it all?

Not for me. I cannot quite explain it. For me, it’s like “witch” is my highest gender expression and it comes with a whole lot of “woman”. It’s this amalgamation of two concepts that both ring very true inside of me. It’s like wearing the perfect outfit that not only fits perfectly, but is also comfortable. Like finding the perfect spot on a sofa (I’m sitting in mine right now), but on steroids. It’s everything I am, poured into my personal gender expression.

They didn’t make a mistake when they said I was a girl and would become a woman. They just couldn’t quite grasp how expansive “woman” would become for me. So, yes, I am a cis woman and I am immensely grateful to the trans and non-binary community, who have raised these gender questions in me by being themselves, unapologetically. Examining your gender should be obligatory. We would be better people.

Stay magnificent. Stay witchy.