By

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I'm bisexual. It was pretty easy for me to figure that out when I fell head over heels for one of my friends in high school, and I recalled moments from my childhood in which I stopped to admire the sheer beauty of girls. My behaviour made my school suspicious of my sexuality, so I got tired of constantly denying it and came out. People mocked but frankly I didn't give a shit. I even told my family who didn't understand, nor did they support me but they haven't been cruel about it. Due to family problems, I don't live with my mum and sister anymore and my dad always has my back, no matter what. My bisexuality has never been brought up between us and I'm happy with that.

As I turned fourteen, I started questioning my gender. Unlike my bisexuality, it wasn't clear to me. Let me tell you more about that.

The society I live in is painfully male dominated. Women are preferred to stay at home and look after the household whereas men are expected to study and successfully carry out a career. Whenever I want to buy something, I have to ask my male cousins or my dad or my uncle. I can't go out myself. All of these inconveniences in my life made me wonder if my desire to be a male is just wistful thinking, and maybe I envy my cousin who gets to drive my dads car when I should be doing that. But then I reflected on my behaviour and I found that I'm really feminine-I love makeup, I'm not fond of sports and I also like my boobs. I don't particularly embrace what's between my legs but I reckoned your genitals aren't really something you admire. I decided that maybe I'm gender fluid: sometimes I'm a girl and other times I'm a boy. My best friend was the only one who I told, and she completely supported me and agreed to refer to me with non binary pronouns. I tried binding on days which I thought were my boy days, and I drew on a stubble but I just couldn't feel any joy in it. Then, I thought I was a Demi girl. I soon realised this wasn't the case either and so I labelled myself as agender. No matter how I tried to define my gender, it just wouldn't work. I felt like I was lying to myself. I felt like I should just accept that I'm a girl and that maybe I'm just faking being transgender for attention or something. I didn't tell my best friend any of this because I was afraid she would agree with me on this. I was afraid she'd start feeling that I was lying.

So how did I get over that? By realising that gender roles and stereotypes have been so deeply ingrained in my brain that I let my personality define my gender. I discovered this when I took a trip into the world of drag queens. I watched an entire season of RuPaul's drag race and I was mesmerised by how comfortable these men felt in their feminine self. I realised that wearing wigs, makeup, dresses and tucking didn't make them any less of a man...and then I thought about my desire to be male. When I fell ill, my voice went deeper and I delighted in it. I realised that if I am a boy, I can still love makeup, and I can still enjoy having long hair and I can still want bigger boobs. I went further into tumblr and found transgender men that were feminine, transgender men who wore makeup and dresses and were so sure of their gender.

So I decided that I'm born a drag queen. While the drag queens have to tuck and blend their weaves and pad their body, I have been born with a feminine body to cut the slack. I've never felt more comfortable in my skin than I do now. I remember desperately trying to play cricket to feel more like a boy but who decided that sports is for boys and makeup is for girls?

I'm free, undefined by gender stereotypes and perfectly happy in being a feminine boy. And I couldn't be happier about my discovery.