Elastic

I have many times reflected on why many masculine women and feminine men do not end up with any conflicts of gender identity. In other words, they are perfectly fine with who they are but simply embrace mannerisms and traits that run counter to expectation for their birth sex. Sometimes these people end up being homosexual and our hunch that we are dealing with a butch lesbian or an effeminate gay man is suddenly confirmed.

However many people who bend gender norms are heterosexual. Married men who enjoy dressing as women for pleasure have no conflict of identity (ie. they don't necessarily want to be the other sex) and many straight women enjoy the increased elasticity that society provided them to dress and behave as they please with much less stigma than men.

So clearly there is a broad mosaic of gender behaviour and sexual orientation that allows for an intermingling of results. Among this mosaic are also people who to varying degrees are uncomfortable with birth sex but we just don't know why.

So in essence we can think of gender as having some elasticity but has a breaking point beyond which the individual ends up with a significant societal conflict and cannot live comfortably as their birth sex dictates. But if you are able to live within the confines of that elasticity then you can function especially today where the tolerance for variance is broader than ever. People who might not have dared to express and dress differently are given more Carte Blanche to push the envelope.

The landscape today combines people who want broader expression with those who have issues of identity and many of them are trying to figure out what to do. Hopefully their experimentation and reflection will lead them over time to discover who they are and provide them with a comfortable resting point.

Get out there and live.