When I was younger, I wasn’t like the other girls. I was a boy.
Life has been really chaotic since I was given the gift and the curse of being aware of it, and in my adulthood I actually put time, effort and money to live according to my values AKA started transitioning medically, to help myself live like any normal man would.
This article is part of my story, and especially my struggles with people getting used to it, with the main subject being my family.
I promise, this is NOT going to be a boring lecture about gender. If anything, I’m only going to tell you a story.
A kind of stupid story, that exists to share how, sometimes, even fundamental things about your existence, like your name, are NOT always taken for granted, and how people’s different beliefs shape how your identity is seen by others.
BY THE WAY: I am doing alright. I am a trans man, one that is monitored carefully by doctors.
My gender dysphoria, AKA the mismatch between internal gender and the gender I was assigned when I was born, is a serious thing that is bothering me daily.
I am legally treated by doctors with hormone therapy to physically become comfortable in my own body.
This isn’t a rushed decision, I have struggled with this for a very long time, and I am happier than I’ve ever been before.
ALSO: this article explores the concept of labels and how they get their definitions later on. If you’re not comfortable with seeing a different view regarding gender, you’re free to avoid reading this article.
MOREOVER: If you are under the transgender umbrella, please note that I’ll be sharing an experience from my life that is pretty transphobic later in the article. Just warning you, in case you’re sensitive to it.
Body Mods In Progress
Currently, as of late July 2026 as I am writing this article, I am almost 2 months on testosterone. The internal building crew, contractor and architect of my body are laying down the foundations, and everything is awkward.
My body is like a really messy construction site right now, where I am going through a second puberty, and come out to more and more people who know me for a long time, so that they are aware of the construction work.
Coming out, to me, is a process I carry out mostly because seeing the same people every day and having them use the wrong name makes me feel really icky, almost as if I am physically in pain. I’m coming out because of discomfort.
And funnily enough, I am not even intrusive or annoying about it. I simply tell them that I started medically transitioning, prefer to use the name Mark, and that I have made the transitioning decision seriously, out of genuinely not resonating with womanhood, not liking being perceived as a lady, and wanting to live like a normal man with a male identity.
Being referred to with the correct name is a very human thing to ask for, but people are, apparently, having an unusually hard time doing it.
Everyone who knew me since childhood is obviously uncomfortable about this, just to varying degrees.
Some of them think the pill is easy to swallow, some want to puke. Some deny the pill’s existence or say that the pill is fake. It’s a complete clusterfuck.
It’s as if I am demolishing an old cafe called “Girls’ Place” to build a cool restaurant called “The Manhole” in its place, and people who were Girls’ Place regulars are watching the new building being built, with signs placed around the construction site that say “coming soon: The Manhole”, and the regulars keep referring to it as “Girls’ Place but something is changing but it’s still Girls’ Place”.
Obviously, things are more complex than that little visual example, but routine and the power of habit work under the same principle.
WTF Is Ship of Theseus?
The Ship Of Theseus is a famous thought experiment, like the Trolley Problem. This is the dilemma:
In Ancient Greek mythology, every year, the people of Athens commemorated Athenian King Theseus’ adventure where he saved the children of Athens from King Minos and slayed the Minotaur.
Part of the remembrance involved taking Theseus’ actual ship on a pilgrimage to Delos every time.
Obviously, sailing a wooden ship over and over and over for multiple years caused the ships’ timbers to rot, and the Athenians replaced the rotten parts of the ship every time something broke, until the ship was made entirely out of replacement parts.
If all parts were replaced, is this the same ship?
That’s the gist.
People constantly disagreed over this for centuries, as most people are separated into two groups, where one believes that the ship is the same ship, and the other denies it being the same after the replacement of parts.
The Family’s Mixed Messages
You may be asking yourself, what in accordion reeds does the Ship of Theseus have to do with misgendering.
Stay with me, as this is a surprise tool that will help us later.
Back to the gender construction zone now.
My family has known about my identity and chosen name for at least a couple of years now, even if they started seriously trying to use my new identity only after I started my medical work.
I’ve tried to express how I feel multiple times, and I am honestly very sure they are aware I feel uncomfortable when I am referred to as a woman. They are thankfully actively correcting themselves when they slip, which I do recognize. They seem to be supportive-ish.
The problem, however, is that they are still holding on their beliefs about my gender. They basically do believe in the existence of transgender people, but firmly hold on their belief that I have absolutely NOTHING manly, nor anything that makes a man in me, and that I am pretty much not a man in the end.
They have this belief and it’s not subtle, even if they are trying their best to use my name and partially accept me or something.
Even if we have had some good conversations together, some conversations can stick like tar, because of how uncomfortable they were.
Sadly, I had one of the uncomfortable ones a few days ago, when I was having a normal conversation with my dad and brother, discussing what we would do before leaving for vacation, and they suddenly changed the topic to my gender identity after I had previously corrected them with my name a couple of times.
They did something that kept messing with my mind, once again.
They asked me to tell them why I identify as a man, and specifically what about me makes me a man. And that they asked me to justify my gender supposedly because they wanted to “understand” me.
I told them at first that it’s not something I can directly explain, because I simply happen to resonate deeply with manhood and the societal “package” of being a man, and that I simply want to live as one.
Where they flipped the script, likely on purpose, was when they told me that everything about how I express myself, my hobbies, how I act and how I live, are all things women with a masculine identity can do. Basically, they told me that the entire essence of who I am is something that exists in masculine or eccentric women and thus I am not a man.
To them, a man is someone who looks rugged, likes destruction or at least makes people intentionally upset (is an asshole), shows no emotion, drinks beer, goes to the army and has a penis.
Believing that women can do masculine hobbies, dress masculine and present masculine is a very inclusive belief.
This is something I am highlighting positively, of course.
However, expanding the spectrum of womanhood and shrinking the one of manhood to hyper-masculinity, stereotypes, and going to the army, and always ending it with chromosomes, and genitalia is not.
That’s EXTREMELY backwards.
They changed the definition of what a man is, so that it’s so small that I can’t fit in it.
It’s kind of as if they believed in dragons, had a literal dragon in front of them, but kept calling the dragon “a big chicken that breathes fire”, because apparently dragons have to kill people and destroy things with fire, and if one doesn’t, then it’s just a very big chicken that has horns and talons.
That poor dragon is just nice :(
I told them that masculine women and men being just men and living their lives come with different sets of expectations, and that it’s different socially for them to do these things, which is the definition of the “societal package”.
I also responded to the genitalia part by saying that a man who lost his penis is still a man because of the other characteristics he possesses.
“Nuh uh”
Was what they said.
Later, they actually changed the data, and claimed that masculine women and men are treated the same way (according to them), while denying the existence of gender expectations and characteristics. And that basically me transitioning was pointless.
I told them that I just want to have someone to look at me and register me as a man without me having to explain anything, just from voice and appearance alone.
They still had something to say to that of course, and immediately told me to reduce my expectations, since according to them I won’t be read as a man, EVEN AFTER TRANSITIONING, that I should get ready for heartbreak for I will be seen as “just a woman that is more hairy”, and that I should “stop caring about what people think of me”.
Here’s the problem:
We live in a world where, whether you pass as a man or woman (no matter how masculine), comes with different stories and meanings tied to each.
I want to be perceived as a man doing a masculine thing, not a masculine woman that breaks norms and is a baddie. Baddies are EPIC and I LOVE masculine women, but I feel like this life doesn’t suit me.
The most stupid part of this whole thing is that almost EVERYONE else that I know outside of my family has identified me as a man, or once they heard I am trans they thought that it wasn’t a surprise because of how masculine I already felt to them.
Strangers whom I meet will 99% of the time normally call me Mark without asking me about my name or showing doubt.
It even happened numerous times for me to be at a restaurant with my family and to have the waiter address me as a boy without any irony in their voice.
The Gender of Theseus
Here’s where I will bring the Ship of Theseus back into the port and talk about it.
HEAR ME OUT.
I remembered the Ship of Theseus because of a video I had seen in the past made by Vsauce, a YouTuber called Michael Stevens, who talks often about physics, philosophy, ontology and reality.
I specifically remembered the video “Do Chairs Exist?”, where Michael explores the meaning of the word chair and its boundaries, like the point when something is no longer a chair. It is a video that explores the problem that the Ship of Theseus is about.
If you want to see the video yourself, check it out here:
What Michael presented in that video is that the building blocks that make up reality do not inherently have labels by themselves, and that it was humans who decided what words mean, so that they can categorize reality.
What makes up a chair, by physics, is just wood atoms. However, humans will refer to these atoms of wood as a chair only if they are arranged in a way that the humans have agreed on represents a chair, or, as Michael called it, are arranged chair-wise.
This can be directly applied to the Ship of Theseus, once we realize that a boat registration authority would say that the ship is the same ship, even after the continuous repairs, because of the name and the unbroken legal registry, but a warehouse would claim the pile of old rotten planks of the real ship as the ship, if they had to define it materially.
Both the Ship of Theseus and Vsauce’s chair analysis reflects on this observation:
Identity is not a fundamental property of the universe. Identity is a contextual label defined by human language, purpose, and agreed-upon boundaries.
Labels are made-up human inventions that exist to be practically useful for communicating ideas, fostering community, organizing matter and other human behaviors.
You can see where I am going with this.
I, as Mark, believe that the gender labels (not sex!) can mean different things depending on the beliefs of the individual.
There, I said it. OooOoOOoOOoOoO scary!
MARK IS THE WOKER!
I personally believe that, if people perceive the Ship of Theseus differently, defining it on different qualities every time, then, they also perceive the concept of gender differently.
What’s worse is that people will use labels in ways that will directly represent their beliefs, background and at LEAST how much or how little afraid they are of complexity, uncertainty, the chaos that exists in reality, including the fluidity of language.
Here are some examples of how the word “man” can be defined differently:
- In biology, “man” refers to a person of the male sex. We use this word like this because the two sexes need different kinds of healthcare to suit their anatomies.
- An online teenager can use the word “man” as a friendly greeting, without really giving a shit about what the other person identifies as. Simply using the word “man” like the word “bro”.
- The government will use the word “man” on an ID card to refer to a person who uses male gender markers. It can also be changed legally.
- A hardcore feminist who was treated badly by men will use the word “man” to express discomfort from their experiences with men, or even use it as an insult by assigning negative or toxic traits to it.
- Some guy might associate the word “man” with courage, and use it as a compliment even on women, like telling them that their hardships are manly, without meaning it negatively.
- A man whose own masculinity was threatened by authority figures for not fitting the mold of what a “proper” man is and was forced into a norm box, will consequentially assign limited and stereotypical traits of manhood to the word “man”.
- An artist with a certain past might want to reclaim the word “man” as representative of all masculinity in his art.
- A woman that was wronged by men or felt as if they are incompetent, will associate the word “man” with stupidity, mental simplicity, and lack of empathy.
- Someone who has learned the experiences of transgender people and is a supportive ally, will think the word “man” represents any person of either sex who identifies as a man.
- Some people who grew up with conservative and traditional beliefs that support that the meaning of life is merely to reproduce and create offspring and that nothing else matters, will associate the word “man” with the penis and outdated traits of masculinity.
People will say ANYTHING about gender, and more than half the time, will believe that their view is THE ONLY reflection of reality.
It may be really hard to accept for some people, but the truth has many sides to every story.
Man’s Gotta Do What A Man’s Gotta Do
Even if it stings, I need to accept that my family may never see the man in me. It genuinely sucks, all while I appreciate how they are still trying to use my name and correct themselves. They are not oppressive, and these gender interrogations with the unwinnable gender games aren’t happening frequently.
It stings, because deep inside I wished to be understood and seen as something I feel I am.
Sometimes, the best you can do is trust yourself and tell yourself that your opinion about yourself is the most important one.
How you see yourself is more meaningful than how anybody else sees you.
The most time you will spend on this planet, you will spend with yourself, so treat yourself with love and understanding.
What other people were taught to believe about gender should NOT change how you perceive yourself, especially since you have spent more time in your body than anybody else. If you wouldn’t listen to people judging how you live or what you like to do, don’t listen to them if they judge your gender identity.
How I perceive my manhood is valid.
To other people, manhood can be defined differently.
This is my Ship of Theseus.
I believe I am a man because I identify as one, live as one and have barely any friction passing as one even before testosterone.
Science might say something else. My family will not accept a different view as part of the complexity of reality. My friends think my vibes are manly. A stranger on the street might simply think I am a fruity gay man. People who don’t want to believe that gender is a spectrum, will think I am just a confused woman with stubble on my face. Someone online might think that I write like a 30 year old cisgender man (not trans).
Everything is bullshit that humanity made up for convenience and to communicate. I choose my own bullshit.
My Reality is Beautiful
It’s ironic how my family kept telling me that I am never going to pass as a man.
In the real world, I am perceived as a young dude most of the time. Strangers on the street, people in restaurants, and almost everyone else seem to not see me as a woman. They use male or neutral language towards me a lot. Waiters, to the most part, refer to me as “my boy” in Greek.
When I introduce myself as Mark, there is zero friction. No questions, no side eyes.
My parents would argue that there wouldn’t normally be friction because people are trying to be nice, but I personally think that it either doesn’t matter to these people what name I use, or I simply pass well enough to have nobody question me, as not everyone can be just “nice” ALL the time.
It’s online where I am most naturally seen as male. When I talk online, MANY people have told me that I type like a cisgender adult man (cis = born male, identifying as male).
Obviously, I value how I am perceived online from vibes alone, because the internet reflects people’s personalities very clearly, as anonymity makes them feel comfortable enough to show who they really are. Their interests, mannerisms, slang, emojis/stickers, posts and all the design they do around their profiles to express themselves are forming together an unconscious crystal clear reflection of who they are.
If you look carefully, you will notice a lot.
Or, at least, this is what I, as Mark, think.
The fact that my purest and most unfiltered presentation of myself is creating the vibes that are often associated with being male, is an incredible green light, at least to me.
Many transgender people unfortunately don’t have the same experience, and I am grateful for all the circumstances and factors that help me pass so easily and so early in my transition. To me, taking a couple of steps back and remembering how far I’ve gone with my identity helps me realize how great, and honestly not always granted it is.
And as always, my world isn’t limited to just my parents, which is a great realization to have!
People online see Mark.
My barber sees Mark.
Waiters see Mark.
Fellow artists see Mark.
A professional famous accordionist sees Mark.
My friends see Mark.
And most importantly:
I see Mark.
See yourself too.
Liked this article or felt touched? Don’t hesitate to send me a message from my Contact Me page!
This was a pretty personal and kinda daunting text to write, and hearing back anything would be much appreciated.
Thanks for reading!