I think to some degree, even if subconsciously, I always knew I was male. This, despite being assigned female at birth, seemed straightforward in my experience with being transgender. I was female-to-male transgender, simple as that.
Until it wasn't so simple and straightforward.
Some gender diverse people experience a singularly binary or very structured and limited view of what it means to be transgender during the initial phase of gender exploration and self-acceptance. Such was the case for me. I began coming out in the summer of 2020 to a few close friends before I publicly came out at the start of 2021 and began my social transition as a binary female-to-male transgender man. This eventually led to me pursuing hormone therapy in the form of testosterone injections in the summer of 2023. For about two years of hormone therapy, I watched myself change and felt my confidence and love for myself grow as my body began to reflect a version of me that I previously only ever dreamed of seeing.
And then something unexpected happened.
Around the summer of 2025, I became much more inconsistent with taking my testosterone injections. Not because I was lazy or forgetful, but because I started to feel that, just maybe, I had seen and received all the changes I needed in order to feel like the version of me I wanted to be. Even stranger, my once raging gender dysphoria surrounding my breasts began to slowly become less and less consuming. I started wearing bras instead of binding because it was better for my health, and it felt immensely better on my back, but soon the reasoning for me wearing bras became simply enjoying the way they shaped my body. I slowly realized, maybe top surgery wasn't for me after all. Just maybe, I not only tolerated having breasts, but I also enjoyed them.
That was odd. Shouldn't a trans man hate his breasts? Shouldn't a trans man be confined to a binder all hours of the day?
It didn't take long for inconsistent injections to become a realization that hormone therapy was no longer something I needed. So, I stopped taking testosterone. Very quickly, I got a regular menstrual cycle back, and again, I found it to be something that didn't bother me. My body, face, and hair became softer. I still had more body and facial hair than the average person assigned female at birth, and of course, I still have a deep, masculine voice, but I was starting to look, as I said, softer. This, I didn't mind one bit.
This, to some, may scream of what jaded folks online sometimes refer to as "transtrenders" or may lead to the accusation that I am simply a trans man in denial about wanting to detransition. Neither of which is true. But if I no longer saw myself perfectly fitting into the binary trans male box, nor do I consider myself to be detransitioning... what did that make me?
It took some time, reflection, and analysis of queer culture before I settled on what I consider myself to be. I found the term bigender to be the most fitting. While I still identify as a trans man and am happy with a masculine presentation, I found myself relating to a womanhood I never truly had the chance to grow into until I became secure in my masculinity. That there could be an existence of both the binary male and binary female in my personhood at the same time. While it felt liberating to call myself a woman again, it also felt strange and new. I also still am a man after all. A man coming into his womanhood.
This, of course, is only my story. This topic, though, can translate across all sorts of gender variance. Nonbinary people, trans women, other bigender individuals, people assigned female at birth who don't fully identify as female in some way or another— we all have a unique and probably very complicated relationship to womanhood and femininity.
For me, that means realizing that my voice is, in fact, valuable and important when it comes to feminist issues, but also understanding the nuance of the situation and that I shouldn't amplify my voice over those who solely identify as women or female. It means realizing the toxic traits of masculinity that had subtly become ingrained in my thought process and learning to smash any traces of patriarchal ideology. It means feeling free to wear makeup or put on an outfit curated from the women's section of my local department store without feeling ashamed. It means allowing myself to experience life as me— with no limitations.
Many gender variant individuals who are assigned female at birth experience a phase in their gender exploration that I like to call the phase of toxic hyper-masculinity. I think this is rather self-explanatory, but allow me to break it down nonetheless. You find yourself realizing that your assigned sex at birth and gender presentation no longer match, and immediately, your mind jumps to the conditioned, binary-centered ideology surrounding gender. That gender identity is only two options: male or female. That gender presentation only comes in two forms: strictly masculine or strictly feminine. There is an inherent and unspoken truth about our society; there is an expectation to choose one or the other. The problem (and solution) is that there are more than two choices. There are more than two ways to "perform your gender," as I like to say. This "one or the other" mentality, though, often leads AFAB individuals to exclusively present as hyper-masculine and only accept the masculine part of their gender variance, all without consideration for the reality of what gender variance actually is. Yes, there are absolutely AFAB people who are strictly binary transgender men, but many people still forget, or refuse to acknowledge, that gender is and always has been a spectrum. We let society's expectations on masculinity, femininity, androgyny, manhood, and womanhood dictate our identity, thus limiting us until we develop a nuanced outlook on gender.
So, from someone who considers himself a bigender trans man, the intersection between manhood and womanhood is complex. Understand, though, that complex does not mean nonexistent. Womanhood and femininity are not exclusively binary female traits. Womanhood is what you make it. For me, that looks like someone who likes to dress with a feminine touch now and then, someone who uses both traditionally masculine and feminine pronouns, someone who hopes to experience motherhood, someone who is an outspoken feminist, someone who is proud of her body.
No matter how one may identify, womanhood is as much a spectrum as gender itself is. Gender expression and femininity present an infinite number of possibilities. As I said: Womanhood. IS. What. You. Make. It. Period.
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