AFAB lesbian who might be non-binary but still identifies with the term “woman”?
Hi - I’m an AFAB lesbian who’s recently been questioning my gender identity. I’ve used she/her pronouns for most of my life and have just recently started going by she/they.
I still really heavily identify with the label of “woman”, and throughout my process of reconsidering what my gender identity might be, I haven’t experienced any discomfort, dislike, or dysphoria around being described as a “woman”. But, as I think about it more, I’m not so sure if I still identify with she/her pronouns anymore? Like the thought of someone referring to me as “she” rather than “they” seems just a little uncomfortable. “They” feels really comfortable, and “she” less so for some reason.
I think throughout this it’s been hard to separate how I feel from how society and other people perceive me. I present more masculinely than most women, and as a lesbian I think a lot of the time men (and other women; mainly women who have an attraction to men) don’t really think to treat me as a woman, because I’m visibly a lesbian. It feels like most people see me as this odd third thing because I don’t dress conventionally feminine and I don’t experience an attraction to men.
I think a lot of women (especially around my age group) make an attraction to men a defining part of their girlhood/womanhood. When you can’t have “girl talk” about guys with female friends, it can be super isolating. Especially since I’m more masc, people tend to stereotype me and box me into this trope of being a “man-hating lesbian” and write off any perspective I have in regards to dating because I just “won’t get it” since I’m a lesbian.
Essentially because society oftentimes views lesbians as inherently subverting traditional ideas and beliefs in regard to what a woman “ought to be”, it feels like my womanhood is so frequently invalidated due to my sexuality. In that way it’s difficult to know if the thoughts I’m having about falling somewhere on the non-binary spectrum are because of how I truly feel, or because the people around me tell me I must not be a woman because I’m not attracted to men.
TLDR: Do many of the AFAB non-binary people still relate to using the term “woman” even if they don’t use she/her pronouns? How can I know if my feelings about potentially being non-binary stem from myself and not external factors or belief systems?