I’m not sure what my gender is. I was AMAB, and I'm potentially bigender, potentially female, potentially still male. IDK.
The main thing that is making it so wildly confusing for me comes from how I was raised in an LDS culture. I was told constantly that young men needed to step it up, ask girls out, that young women were these practically perfect princesses, daughters of God, etc., and that young men were these pervy little creeps who if they worked really hard could become worthy of love and redemption. That wasn't to say women didn't go through plenty of their own shit, if not much more. But for me personally, being raised as a young man in the Church is responsible for most of my self-esteem issues, since I didn't ever feel like a young man the way I was "supposed" to.
At the same time, I was feeling awful about myself because the stereotypes I did fit (especially being very sexual as a teenager, using porn, etc.) were ones I fit to a T, and the ones that people said were the worst. So I constantly hate(d) myself— both the parts of me that fit into female gender roles, and the parts that fit into male gender roles. Most of all, I hate(d) that I couldn't fix myself to fit into either.
This is relevant because it has made exploring my gender very confusing. I can't tell if I want to be a girl because I feel like I am one, or if it's being skewed by other things. Like how I don't identify with the traits that the Church has always told me men should have— being strong and tough and acting on people and being controlling and independent. Or how I have seen the way I act (dependent, emotional, etc.; all things I have self-esteem issues about), and believe that means I should be treated how the church treats women (read: punished, the self-hatred coming out). I think it's led to cravings to be objectified, looked down on, and assisted to a fault, the way that women are in the Church. So I don't know if my gender dysphoria is "real" or not (or if that even matters), and I have no idea how to untangle it from the self-hatred that came with the gender roles people in church have been preaching to me my whole life.
Some of this is societal, for sure, and not just coming from Church. In fact, I think pretty much all of it exists within American culture at large. But I think it's way, way, worse in the Church. And to top it all off, I don't want it to turn out that I am trans or bigender, because even with as supportive family and friends as I have, many of them (including my parents) would never accept me for who I accept myself as.
