Reflect on your own gender journey.
Gender isn’t a binary—it’s more of a journey which can evolve and grow and change over time. There can also be emotional ups and downs, that are important to acknowledge.
For this activity, draw in the box below your own gender journey. Then, read through some of the journeys other LGBTQ+ teens have shared.
Here’s what other LGBTQ+ teens have shared:
“So I was assigned the gender like, you know, female. But as I went growing up like middle school was when I started questioning. Like am I truly like female of my feminine side? And I started becoming a little bit more masculine, but I would try to cover it up by being feminine and kind of clouded how I felt. And as you see throughout growing up, it gets more clouded. And I just kind of wanted to cover it up saying like, oh, yeah, I'm a girl. But growing up, being fully grown, I became at ease with being gender fluid and really fine any pronouns. And you don't have to stress about if you're female or male, like you don't have to just choose one. Choose whatever you want.”
– Ness, he/she/they, 18, HI
“Honestly, I’ve been all over the place. Sometimes I’m like ‘yeah, she/hers’ other times I’m feeling super androgynous and feel more they/them. It’s nice to be okay with it always flowing".”
– Tye, she/they, 16, AK
“I spent most of my life feeling like I needed to be what the doctor told me I was. It wasn’t until I learned that gender really is a construct did I begin to start exploring my gender. Turns out, I’m a little bit of everything”
– Cam, they/ them, 16, AL
“So in the beginning, I used to identify as a cis girl. And then around in seventh grade, I was gender fluid. I didn't really know what the word meant, but obviously with reflection, I knew that I was gender fluid. But then that I identified as a cis bi girl who used she/her. And then for a very long time, I identified as a nonbinary lesbian, these they/he pronouns. And yeah. So then very recently, I found out that I was a nonbinary man, probably around like, I don't know, a year ago. So now I use he/they/zem.”
– William, he/they/zem, 18, FL
‘OK, so this starts off with a squiggly line, because I didn't identify my gender at all when I was a child. I just knew that I wanted to be anatomically male, and that was it I didn't identify my gender. So it's a big squiggly lines pretty much just to represent that. Um, I went through this phase of once I realized that I was a girl, I realized or I thought that all girls wanted to be boys, because that's like the situation I was in. I wanted to be a boy, and I thought all girls wanted to be boys. But eventually, society influenced me and made me realize I was a girl and that not all girls wanted to be boys. All my friends were telling me, oh, we enjoy puberty. We like the changes that are happening. It really led to this big moment of questioning, which is why I have this big squiggly line right here, because I realized like I was different from other girls and I thought maybe I could have been genderqueer, maybe it could have been a lesbian, because at the time I thought lesbians were just masculine women. And I thought that maybe I could have been trans. And eventually, after a few years of soul searching, I realized that I was a trans man. Ever since I've decided on that identity, I've stuck with it. Ever since, I've identified as trans since I was 11. And that's why it's just a straight line from trans question mark to trans man with a little smiley happy person to represent that.”
– Luke, he/him/his, 17, FL
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