Having read back through all of the posts in this thread (including a couple of mine) I wanted to jump in here again at this point. Being that I am older than dirt, discussions regarding labels, pronouns, etc., are pretty-much lost on me. It's not that I don't see the value or think it's not important. It's simply that it's foreign to me. It's sort-of like my computer. I know how to accomplish what I want to do with it, but I really have no comprehension as to why or how it works!

I'm transgendered, & more specifically transsexual. I have a male body & a female psyche. There is no in-between for me personally. But, at the same time, since I couldn't be 100% female, my back-up wish, I guess, would be to be 100% male. (It's really the "split persona" that kills me.) I don't have anything against being male. I don't dislike my male body (except that it's now getting old.) In fact, if it were someone else's body, I'd think it was pretty fine... given it's age. It's just that it doesn't in any way match what's inside (my psyche, as I've termed it.)

There have been times in my life when I've been able to repress my female psyche & function more successfully as a more-or-less cisgendered male. However, beneath the surface, my female psyche was always present too. And also following every period of time when I was functioning as a more-or-less cisgendered male, at some point, my female psyche would come roaring back stronger & more demanding than ever.

Perhaps, had I been born at a time when gender fluidity was more known about & discussed, I would have been able to find a comfortable place to rest somewhere between the two extremes. However, since I grew up at a time when the two extremes were all that was acknowledged, that's how I learned to view myself. Perhaps the culture we grow up in has some impact on how we come to view ourselves in terms of our genders.