Being Genderfluid

In this deeply personal episode, I share the story of my gender journey—how it began years before my divorce, long before I even had the language to describe it. From a pivotal moment at a swingers convention in New Orleans, where I first met someone embodying a nonbinary expression, to the early childhood memory of being told that “boys don’t paint their nails,” this episode traces the quiet awakenings and bold experiments that brought me home to myself.

I talk about what it was like to swing between masculinity and femininity, trying on names, clothes, voices, and ways of being—all in search of what felt true. At one point, I performed femininity just as I had performed masculinity, unsure where my real self ended and the performance began. But over time, with the support of chosen family, trans support groups, and my own willingness to feel the discomfort of growth, I found something even more honest than either extreme: I found the middle. The fluid, alive, ever-shifting space between.

This episode explores:

• The difference between performing gender and expressing it
• Early moments of gender suppression and their lasting impact
• The emotional turbulence of trying on new identities
• How a supportive partner and community helped me navigate unknowns
• The importance of play in discovering our truth
• The power of naming, and why “Myra” still lives within me
• How I came to embrace being both masculine and feminine—and neither entirely.

If you’ve ever questioned your gender, your identity, or the roles you were handed—this episode is for you. If you’ve ever felt like you had to choose between boxes that don’t quite fit—this is for you. And even if your journey looks different, my hope is that by sharing mine, you’ll feel a little more seen, a little more invited to be curious about your own truth.

I also introduce the term “gender fluid” as the label that resonates most with me—not because it’s fixed, but because it gives me permission to flow. I share how I now express my femininity in ways that feel embodied and joyful—painted toenails, skirts, sensuality, softness—and how that expression no longer needs to prove anything.

This episode is a love letter to the middle space. To the part of us that doesn’t need to explain, only express. To the people who helped me see myself more clearly, and to the younger version of me who just wanted to be free.

⚡ Mentioned in this episode: my first experiences with makeup, going by Myra, navigating family conversations, and how gender identity evolved alongside relational growth.

✨ Listen in if you’re seeking:

• Representation for gender exploration and nonbinary identity
• Hope during a transition or identity shift
• A mirror for your own becoming
• Permission to play, to try, to feel, and to not always know

💬 Prompt for reflection: How do you currently express your gender? Does it feel aligned with who you are—or who you’ve been told to be?

Thank you for listening to Human Beings, Being Human. May this story help you feel more at home in your body, more alive in your truth, and more connected to your own beautiful becoming.

Transcript

0:02

Hello everyone and welcome to Human Beings Being Human. I'm your host Kinzie. In today's episode, I'm gonna talk about being gender fluid. I realized in my last episode how I started. Off with my divorce. And I said that was the beginning of my journeys, but it really wasn't the first journey I had. My gender journey actually started before my divorce, so I'm gonna start with that journey.'cause it really is the first one that. Led me down to the path that I am today, the path of conscious growth. So to start my story, we'll go back to 2015, and it was a pivotal moment because I met the first non-binary person. And had a chance to get to know a non-binary person really well. I was at a swingers convention in New Orleans and one of the facilitators, was a several day convention that had a bunch of parties, but also workshops and events and one of the facilitators. We ended up taking a lot of their classes and because of taking their classes, we asked a lot of questions, got to get to know them. Ended up becoming friends and this was a female bodied person who was very masculine presenting and was really the first person that I had gotten a chance to get to know who was clearly demonstrating non-binary. Expression, and it was illuminating for me because up until that point, I had felt very constrained in my gender identity. I felt very performative in my expression. I felt like I was trying to performing masculinity more than actually expressing my masculinity. And yeah, I wasn't really conscious about how I was expressing my gender, nor why, and definitely had suppressed a lot of my feminine sides. To give you a little backstory, I remember when I was five or six years old and my sisters had painted my fingernails. I remember being very excited to have pretty nails, and my father came home and I showed him my nails and he said, boys don't paint their nails. I don't remember him saying it in a mean way or rude way, but it still, I still felt shut down. I still felt that what I was doing was wrong. But I didn't really know why. Just that energy, that aliveness, that excitement about expression. My joy was shut down. And that was the moment that has stuck with me ever since. And really, the first time I felt wrong for being so free in my expression. And 30, literally 30 years later when I was 35. Here I am in New Orleans and I'm meeting somebody for the first time who's truly expressing themselves authentically and doing so in a way that is not the norm, not the default. And in seeing that person, all of a sudden I felt permission to be that myself. I felt. Possibility. Okay, wait a minute. I don't have to pretend to be a guy. I can just be myself and what does that look like? I remember feeling both very excited about. Finding a new expression, finding a new way of being, but also, very confused and very unsure of myself on what to do or how to do it. But I remember after meeting this person. Feeling so alive and excited. It was like the genie was out of the bottle and there was no turning back. Even though it was a, uncertain road forward. It was still, I finally felt like I started to understand a part of myself that had been very confused for a very long time. Leaning into that, whenever. I got back to my home. We were living in San Marco at the time, and I was going to Texas State University, which thankfully had a transgender group like support group and ally group, which gave me a place to meet others who were. Exploring their gender identity. Some people who like me were just figuring things out. Other people who had, who were very far along in their journey, some of which had already transitioned and were there supporting others along their journey. So what that did was give me this safe space to open up to ask questions. To be heard and helped as I started to figure out what gender means to me.'cause at first I jumped immediate. I went from being uber masculine, pretending to be uber masculine, to performing uber feminine. And I wanted like as soon as the feminine had permission to. To express herself. It came full force. And at first I wanted to transition fully and really embody femininity by changing my name, changing my outfits dress. And I tried wearing makeup and even going by a feminine name, which was Myra and. I was trying all these different things out to figure out what was my truth, figure out what was really alive. And, looking back now, I can see how I was practicing, I was playing with gender and the way different things would show up for me, I remember painting my fingernails and, being really self-conscious about my hands after I did that, whenever I was around people. It's interesting because like I would put on makeup, I'd wear a wig and go out and about and I'd feel very self-conscious and exposed. But it was practice, it was play. It was practice. It wasn't, didn't feel very playful at the time, but in a way it was. And yeah, I was grateful that I had that. My ex-wife at the time was very supportive and understanding, and in fact, very encouraging about me transitioning. She could tell that I. Was struggling a lot with who I was and making this shift really helped give me a sense of like comfort and confidence in a way that I hadn't in a long time. But it was also really hard on the relationship. I was like going through puberty again. I had a lot of doubt, uncertainty. My emotions were all over the place. And yeah, I felt very uncertain on that road, but each step helped me figure out a little bit more and each conversation I had with someone helped me understand myself just a little bit better. But it was definitely a process. It was definitely a journey. I'm grateful that I had a lot of support from, the group at Texas State, but also friends. There was a couple that we met also at the Swingers Convention in New Orleans. We became friends with them and stayed in touch after. The event. And she ended up giving me a bunch of stuff'cause she had a bunch of friends who were transgender and, she had a ton of clothes and wigs that she had collected over time and she just gifted all of it to me, which felt amazing. I felt really lucky. To have people who were there to see me and hear me and support me and cheerlead me and trying out and figuring out what gender means to me. And specifically with, trying out femini femininity and letting myself really. Be as feminine as I wanted to. Which isn't to say that everyone was supportive. My family, my parents were open, but not understanding or, yeah, accepting. They were accepting, but not really understanding. I remember my father came to Austin. One day to have a conversation with me about me transitioning. And he was trying to be helpful. He was trying to be openhearted, but his judgment definitely came through. He said he was concerned about how hard my life would be. If I transitioned, which is ironic because he didn't seem all that concerned about how hard my life had been because I hadn't transitioned and, but nonetheless, I can understand where he was coming from and that he was trying to help. But my father is one of those. I man, a few words, and this was one of the few times he's ever actually shown up to listen. So as much as it was appreciated, it really wasn't that helpful. By this point in my life I've given up that my parents will be there to support me now that, they are in the ways that they can, but they aren't going to be able to meet me in the depth. That I can meet others and that's okay. Anyway, back to my story. As I practiced playing with gender and my femininity. I did some research on, transitioning with hormones on having a speech therapist helped me modulate my voice. I started to performing being female, like I went from performing masculinity to now performing femininity. But I didn't really know what else to do, so I kept trying everything, clothes and I discovered the name. Myra started going by that. And around this time is when things started to really get rocky with my ex-wife. And when I realized that things were, truly problematic with her and I started working with the relationship therapist, the gender journey took a back seat for a little while and that actually helped because once it took a back seat and, it wasn't my priority. I started to realize, oh, wait a minute. I don't need to be, female in order to be feminine. I can just be me and express the parts that I enjoy being feminine and leave the rest like I think of it now, as think of a pendulum. Was I was all the way over masculine. Then the pendulum swung all the way feminine. And once I let go, it landed in the middle and I realized I liked that being in the middle so much better. And this is why I like the term gender fluid.'cause I don't really feel I'm totally masculine or feminine. I'm both and I love being both and. When people ask me my pronouns, I typically say he and she, because I love being a he and I love being a she IE Myra, doesn't always present herself as much as my masculine side, but it really depends on the space and the people I'm around. And Myra is still very much a part of me. And I still very much treat Myra and recognize Myra and let her be seen. The things that I really enjoy now that help me express my femininity is having my toenails painted and getting pedicures. I love pedicures, especially having gel nail polish. It's amazing. It's something I do all the time. I shave most of my body hair, which I like and I wear, feminine clothing, especially like on the waist down. I love wearing skirts, long skirts, and I love wearing short. And yeah, these are just little ways for me to express myself and let my feminine side out. There's lots of other ways, but those are like the most pronounced in terms of appearance. But yeah, you know what I really learned from that whole experience was that I didn't have to be either or. I could be both and I could express gender, my gender identity, how I wanted to. It didn't have to be stuck in a label or in a box. And once I had a living example to look at and reference that gave me the permission to. Experience, experience it internally to let it out from the internal and really allow myself to be myself. I realized I had been suppressing my feminine side my entire life. And looking back I can see how. Damaging That was, and for myself and for a lot of my relationships and it was so helpful to be able to finally be able to explore this part of myself, finally be able to unlearn the old ways of being that had kept me trapped in a mindset that didn't fit. My body didn't fit me, didn't fit my self expression, and I remember how at first the labels really helped me explore and understand gender identity. The, at first the labels really helped expand my understanding of gender. I remember also taking a. Sociology of gender class and that helping a lot to expand my understanding of what the human experience around gender just really is. In that class we talked about how gender is expressed and understood in different cultures and communities, and by looking at others and seeing how different their expression and understanding was. It helped me to look at my culture and my upbringing and realize how limited it was. And yeah, I feel for me, this sense of not knowing who I was not feeling comfortable in my body was excruciating, but it was also like, I didn't know. I didn't know what was wrong. Or why it felt wrong. I just remembered that it didn't feel good to be who I was, and that when I got a chance to really be myself in this way, I felt so much better now. I definitely struggled to feel comfortable being feminine wearing feminine clothing, and I remember. Looks from strangers walking down the street or in the grocery store. People were uncomfortable around me. But, I think of those moments, there was really rare and I feel lucky that I, was in Texas State, which is. More liberal than not campus and near Austin. So definitely more liberal area in general. And but nonetheless, I was, yeah, very lucky and very grateful that I got to be in an environment that supported my gender journey. And once I found what fit for me, and that's why I used the term gender fluid. Because I am masculine and feminine and I love being both. And I will get more into the Kinsey scale and another episode when I talk about my naming journey. But, the Kinsey scale is the idea that one isn't gay nor straight, but that it's a spectrum and most people are, somewhere in the middle. I think, Alfred Kinsey first coined that term with sexuality, but it works just as well for gender. And I would say most human experience is on a spectrum. For me, I feel like I'm the living embodiment of the Kinsey scale in that I'm not gay nor straight. I'm in the middle. I'm not masculine nor feminine. I'm both and I love that about myself. I love that I can now know myself to such a degree that it is inspiring and encouraging and freeing to express myself, and it's part of why I'm sharing this story with you now is so that. You can see yourself in my story and ask yourself how you feel about your gender identity and your expression. Does it feel good? Does it feel bad? If so, why are there questions you have about the way you express yourself or questions about the way you'd like to express yourself? These are all. It can be very challenging questions, and I wanna make it a little bit easier for others to ask them and to know you're not alone. There are so many others that have been on this journey, myself included, and I'm really glad that I have this opportunity to share my stories with you all so that you can better find yourself in your stories. Thank you all for listening. Talk to you next time.