In 2013, between the hours of 10 p.m. and 1 a.m., I would lie awake at night, searching through definitions, hashtags, and profiles on Tumblr, the blue screen of my treasured iPod illuminating my face. Those nighttime hunts for information didn’t feel like a waste of precious hours of sleep. They felt purposeful, like I was looking for something — I just wasn’t sure what. My hyperfixation with this platform turned into an all-out search for answers; I was looking for truth.
Slowly, through the majestic algorithms of 2013-to-2016 Tumblr, the platform’s gender-diverse community went from my periphery to the front and center of my online world. I was enraptured because these profiles of internet strangers “looked like me,” and not just literally. This was more than haircuts and a sense of personal style; these people had girlfriends and boyfriends and were fully separated from my understanding of gender identity. They felt so familiar to me. I wanted to know more.
Today, I could describe myself in any number of ways. I have an incorrigible sweet tooth, a special interest in elderly cats, and a terrible time trying to grow succulents; I’m also transgender nonbinary and one year post-op from top surgery. For a long time, I didn’t know that about myself or have any idea that I would ever transition. As I come up on six years of being out as myself, nonbinary and bisexual, I feel deeply assured in my gender — but it wasn’t always that way. Gender, now an abstract idea and so personal to me, used to be a rigid and unyielding snare. It’s like I was Peter Pan, trying to pin my shadow back to the heel of my foot, trying to confine something that never should have been restrained to begin with. I was terrified to be nonbinary because I didn’t fully understand what that meant.
Gender, now an abstract idea and so personal to me, used to be a rigid and unyielding snare.
Tumblr was one of the few places I went to voraciously consume content and be myself online. Tumblr was my first space for writing, and the place I often retreated to when I was depressed and life was hard. Among the many fandoms and memes, I was also searching for answers about god, religion, gender, and my sexuality. I was learning about myself and, eventually, discovering the type of people I wanted to be like. I was an LGBTQ+ ally before I came out as bisexual, and later an outspoken transgender ally before coming out as transgender nonbinary — and that is largely because of Tumblr’s community and support.
Recently, I dove into my online past in an attempt to find out where and how I began exploring my gender. What makes up the internet archive for L Brinks, who they were and who they are now, floored me. As far back as 2013, I found mood boards for what I would now describe as “gender feels” and “gender euphoria.” At first, these mood boards were filled with haircuts I really liked. Then they evolved into people I was attracted to — or, more specifically, bodies I was attracted to. What I later realized was that I often found individuals attractive because I also wanted to be them (a common sentiment among transgender people as they navigate gender and sexuality). What I had assumed to be my bisexuality was actually both bisexual attraction and gender dysphoria.
Looking at these aesthetic mood boards so many years later, the first thing I felt was a deep sense of familiarity. I created something very similar just one year ago, on Pinterest this time, in preparation for top surgery, knowing that my wardrobe — and my relationship to my clothes — would change after this procedure. But what I had not yet realized was that this cycle of self-discovery did not begin a year ago, or even three, four, or five.
In my Tumblr archives were tips and advice for binding breasts safely and good supplements to take while on testosterone or estrogen — public service announcements I would reblog, ostensibly for the benefit of others. But why even interact in the first place? I didn’t know any transgender people personally; all I knew were stories from biased adults in my community who proclaimed these “confused” children were harming an entire generation. I had no perspective, but I was not filled with hate toward the transgender people I encountered online; they seemed human, and I felt like I could relate to a lot of what they were saying about themselves.
I was four or five years out from meeting a trans person face-to-face, but here I was, a rural, conservative, Pentecostal kid who had only ever known the gender binary, casually interacting with this community online. That implication is astronomical to me. Now I see so clearly that Tumblr was what brought gender dysphoria, and later euphoria, to my attention.
Many of my initial interactions with gender exploration, however, focused on pain and fear. I was reading so many stories about people who were depressed and on the cusp of coming out but had yet to take the leap. They were like me, and we were all perpetually online, trying to survive.
I remember when young trans people would go viral for dying by suicide. It was always the same story: bullying, isolation, and a lack of acceptance from their family. There were so few visible examples of happy, thriving transgender adults that, for a long time, I was afraid that being transgender would mean years of struggle and loneliness for me, too. But despite the fear, the discomfort I felt with my gender continued to prevail. The more I learned, the more I realized how uncomfortable I was with the idea of being a woman.
I didn’t come out as nonbinary until 2017, four years after my gender exploration began. That may not seem like such a long time, and it feels almost trivial to reduce it to such a small number, but time moves slower and simultaneously impossibly fast when you’re dismantling a truth you once took to be fundamental.
What made coming out possible, and helped me accept myself with certainty, were my conversations with other transgender people. I went from a lurker, reading through conversations and watching as friends encouraged each other and shared advice and explanations, to asking questions of my own. I realized there were quite a few transgender mutuals in my network on Tumblr. They assured me they understood what I was feeling, that it wasn’t a trend, and that even if I never came out to anyone, I’d still be transgender, and that helped me feel secure.
I am not a midway stop on the cisgender sliding scale, but an outlier and exceptional individual.
I was terrified of being “wrong” and making a mistake and somehow disappointing people. When I faced those doubts head-on, a nightmare scenario would play out in my head: me saying something like, “Oh, I guess I made it all up.” But through my conversations with trans people, I learned that exploration was part of the process — and that it was the inherent transphobia in society that gaslights gender-diverse individuals, makes them uncomfortable in their own skin, and tells them it’s “wrong” to question their identity, step outside of the binary, and see what makes them feel most authentically themselves. The only reason I ever experienced fear was because I was separated from my community.
What saved me, and carried me through coming out, was unconditional love and support. Listening to others and reading their stories — first on Tumblr and then in real life — helped me discover the language I needed to uncover my own gender identity. This is what directed me to share my own experiences in a transparent way and eventually into writing about being transgender nonbinary.
To me, being nonbinary used to mean existing somewhere between men and women. Now I know that I am not a midway stop on the cisgender sliding scale, but an outlier and exceptional individual who isn’t confined by any role or perceived gender performance. I know who I am because when I found the people who understood, I felt like I was coming home. When I came out as bisexual, I joked that the label felt like the most perfect pair of well-worn jeans, comfortable and my own. That is what being nonbinary means to me: coming home as myself.