A story about what it feels like to be bigender

The other day, my partner alerted me of a really cool podcast story, and we listened to it together (for her, she listened a 2nd time).  It’s about a subset of trans-people, and a subset of non-binary people even: people who identify as bigender.  I’ve heard this term before but didn’t have a clear grasp on the experience of bigender people, largely just equating and blending it in with people who identify as “genderfluid,” in my mind.  The two terms definitely overlap, and the podcast didn’t mention “genderfluid” as an identity, but it told a very gripping and personal story of someone who is bigender.

I’m just going to summarize this person’s story, but if you have a half hour, listening to this podcast would be a half hour well spent!  Here is the link:

Invisibilia Story About Paige (Go ahead and skip the first 2 minutes – it’s just podcast producers doing introductions and general banter.)

Paige is in her 30s and lives in San Diego.  Her story is not a common one, even within the trans-community.  She grew up MAAB (male assigned at birth) and was largely fine with that, didn’t think twice about it.  She had fleeting feelings maybe she was supposed to be a girl, but they were very rare, and she didn’t dwell on them.  She joined the Navy and enjoyed it.  She got married; got a job, a car, a house – everything most people hope to do.  When she was 30, still living full time as a man, her body mysteriously stopped producing testosterone.  She got put on testosterone replacement therapy, and that’s when things started getting strange.  Those fleeting feelings of being female returned full force and with more frequency.  She began to feel a really strong split between “guy mode” and “girl mode,” and she had no control over when or where it might happen.  When in “girl mode,” she began to feel repulsed by her body, even to the point of vomiting from disgust.

She talked to her wife, and decided to stop taking testosterone and start taking estrogen instead.  The disgust started to wane as her body changed, but at this point, she was aiming for androgyny so that she could feel comfortable in both guy and girl mode, something she kept flipping between, often multiple times within a day.  There were certain things that changed for her depending on which mode she was in, perception-wise and personality-wise.

It’s been confirmed through psychological tests on a small sample of people who are bigender that there are in fact some differences going on.  This research is really in its infancy, and nothing has been conclusive on a large scale thus far.  But, well… makes sense!  (I am far from saying men are from Mars and women from Venus or anything like that, haha.)

Parts of her story are really sad.  Her marriage didn’t make it.  She spent a long time feeling like an alien, hiding her true nature, etc.  A lot of things a lot of people can relate to…

The interesting thing comes in the conclusion though.  It seems that the longer she was on estrogen, the more she “settled into” being female, on a psychic level.  She has stopped “flipping” uncontrollably, for the most part.  It does still happen, and it’s super jarring, but she is living close to 100% in “girl mode” these days.

This is super fascinating to me – although I am really in neither “guy mode” nor “girl mode” ever, my gender identity is static.  I can’t imagine what it would feel like to go back and forth, uncontrollably, at inopportune times.

More than just a few people experience this though.  Something like 8% of MAAB trans-people, and 3% of FAAB trans-people.