Gender fluidity is one of those things that many people don’t understand, it is where the person is often fluid between male and female and is very new in society; many people are used to either cis-gender or transgender and the non-binaries are not talked about often enough. When I was growing up there were no leaflets about being non-binary and being young and influential I picked up a leaflet on being transgender and assumed I was that label. The leaflet described having body dysphoria. I had body dysmorphia, this is where a person doesn’t like anything about their body and this can make even buying a simple piece of underwear very complicated. Body dysphoria is where a person does not identify as the same sex they were born with.

I assumed I was transgender as the description fitted how I felt about my body. I started the process of transitioning into Jack which my parents and partner were very supportive of. I went to the children and adolescence mental health service (CAMHS) and they helped me integrate into sixth form. They talked to my head of year and gave both my teachers and parents a booklet to read. I was then referred to a Gender Identity Clinic where a psychologist analysed me, however the psychologist was useless as he had no knowledge in other gender binaries and so classed me as not decided when it came to whether I was transgender.

My partner had started to question me, not because they did not support the idea, but because they wanted to make sure I was positive in what I was doing and I had even begun to question it myself. I decided later to change back to identifying as a cis-gender woman and I didn’t question it much after that. It wasn’t until the summer before I started my first year at university that I realised I wasn’t cis-gender. I used an anonymous therapy website to give people advice as it helped me too, when they asked what my gender was I would avoid answering or would answer ‘duck’ or ‘alien’, I would also answer male and it was here that I discovered I liked being both Male and Female. I did some research into it and discovered that there was a gender binary called Gender Fluid and found that I fitted into that label more than any of the others.

I am part of the LGBT+ society, the society enabled me to meet like-minded people and I felt like I finally fitted in. I started to explore what being male meant to me and slowly I started to try wearing male clothes when I felt more male. I named myself Elliott and I would wear a binder – a compression vest which compresses the breasts to make them look flatter. I started to talk about it more and use my experience to help others. People do not talk about non-binary genders enough and this is because there is not enough research done.