"I don't see gender. Man, woman, I don't think about it, I imagine most don't either. Everybody's the same, just people to me."

These were the words delivered to me by a friend I had decided to, yet again, approach about his thoughts on my transitioning. It was a conversation I deemed necessary, courtesy of a single eventful night that weighed and bothered.

I was worried he lacked perspective on my decision to transition. And to be clear, I wasn't exactly asking for a level eye-to-eye here.

It's irrational for any person to expect total understanding from others on their unique lived experiences. I don't think it unreasonable to ask for a baseline respect and acknowledgment of my wanting to be perceived and treated a certain way.

As a straight, cisgender man, he remains decidedly disconnected from how a queer trans woman might go through life. This was and remains no issue — I could never begrudge someone for finding comfort in their identity.

I refuse to be a hypocrite; to my mind, there are few things socially worse.

Keeping this in mind, two issues were causing me frustration. Issues I couldn't leave unaddressed if I'm to attend his wedding.

One: I was stifled in my ability to talk with him about anything and everything surrounding my transition. Now, I'm not talking about the nitty-gritty. Transitioning is equivalent to an avalanche blanketing your identity.

Like it or not, it's going to take a lot of time to shovel myself out and help the new me break through the thicket of snow. Until then, my being trans is a spider web, its sticky tendrils tangling up all aspects of my life.

Even once I've dug out the avalanche, much like the perpetual guiding hand of my neurodiversity, I can never wholly ignore my transness.

Consequently, it makes talking to him mighty hard when nearly everything intersects with my transition, ranging from job issues, relationship troubles, to everyday little things. Especially since I'm in the relatively early stages of transitioning, my identity comes up in one way or another in any semi-serious conversation about life.

The second issue, however, was the sharper pebble in my shoe. In many ways, he still treats me like one of the boys. Ironically, given my coming out and opening up, I feel more like a man in his eyes than ever before.

A frustrating dismissal of my identity, intentional or not.

When I voiced my problem, his response of not seeing gender was also not an unexpected one. It boiled my blood, but I struggled to entirely fault him.

I used to say the same thing. Who am I to judge?

A common argument between me and my ex revolved around the way men treated her. Or at least how she perceived them treating her, fearing that her looks informed the typical interaction with a man.

At first, I would listen and provide comfort. Then, I would provide other possible explanations.

My goal was never to dismiss, ignore, or disagree. I knew men were plenty liable to treat her poorly. To have so many men do so purely because she was a woman, to me, beggared belief.

The intentions of an individual man, however, matter little when the clear and inescapable societal issue of the poor treatment of women is at play. To insinuate that such fears are not valid risks invalidates women's lived experiences altogether.

Eventually, these conversations would get heated as she refused to accept any other possible explanation. During one of our last arguments about this, I exploded at her over text, no longer able to simmer my biases.

In brief: why do you have to make everything about gender? Why does it have to be a big deal? I barely even think about it!

It's not a particularly proud moment. No less, it's reflective of the perspective I fostered to survive.

Beginning in my teens, I went gender-blind because, otherwise, it was all-consuming. Boys were far too boyish for me, and an uncrossable rift sat between me and the girls. Internally shipwrecked and stranded, I repressed my transness.

For a long time, I mentally identified as something close to non-binary. Never once did I tell anyone this, fully realize it myself, or alter my presentation to suggest anything other than straight man.

Nonetheless, people (including my ex) seemed to have some kind of inkling about me, regularly categorizing me as different from most other men they met. I never complained, because occupying a non-male space pleased me.

If I could see myself as not quite man, then my outsides didn't need to matter.

Fittingly, gender as social construct was a big topic in one of my very first university classes, which left me confused. It seemed, to me, so obvious; independently, I had already reached this conclusion on my own, free of any outside influences.

Was it not natural to divide your gender from your body?

I didn't question as the people around me asked probing questions and hastily scribbled in their notebooks.

During my six years of higher education, I made scant few friends.

Being in an English and creative-writing program, I regularly ended up the sole guy in the room, especially in later years. Unfortunately, the uncrossable rift between the girls and me that I first identified in high school remained strong.

When, on the rare occasion there was another guy, he would sit beside me and try to strike up conversation. They were aliens to me; I just wanted them to leave me alone.

Strangely, it was less lonely to be the quiet man in a room full of women than to have another man talk to me. I never understood why men gravitated my way, annoyed my unfortunate maleness flashed like a neon sign to them reading open to being buddies.

On the other hand, when a woman happened to make the active choice to talk to me, I earned permission to have a connection I secretly craved. Yet the distance remained, the few women I did get to know better only truly relaxing once they knew me.

Funny how awful being treated like a man by default seemed. How easy it was to lie to myself about it not being an issue.

Still, I learned something valuable: gender is like water, and we're all fishies.

It's a common analogy I've seen crop up. Most everybody breathes gender in like fish do water, invisible to our perception. To be the fish violently snatched and trawled up to the strange world beyond the endless blue is to be dysphoric.

And all you can do is uselessly flip-flop on a deck, aware of the bounds of your world once it's much too late.

Here's another one: gender is like politics.

All too often, people become apolitical due to the whole shebang feeling hopeless, throwing their hands up in the air and claiming they no longer care. Nonetheless, politics are inescapable, ignorance hardly lessening its effects.

So maybe you don't care about gender, but it most assuredly cares about you.

I tried the whole not-seeing-gender gambit. In my case, it was a pretty serious case of regressive coping and refusing to face the obvious.

Am I implying that's the case for my friend? No, I doubt it. He's a man clearly comfortable in his skin and identity.

Luckily, when I point out how he's treated me like a man, he owns up and apologizes. Consciously or not, he accepts there were a few moments where he's treated me like a man, admitting to saying things he'd never tell a woman.

"I only see you for you. I don't get why it has to be a big deal."

In the same breath, he turned around and complained about how masculine the boys we went to school with and grew up alongside were. Similarly to me, he acknowledges bucking the social expectations to be like most of the other boys around us.

And I know it's no lie.

At a younger age, surrounded by more typical boys, both of us would turn quiet. Sometimes, we would turn and look towards one another with a raised brow when the boys would posture or brag.

Honestly, this is probably why we became friends in the first place; out of all my cis male friends, he's the one who lasted for a reason.

Yet, sometime after high school, he learned to put on a face for the other men, to mesh in. I've seen it happen again and again; his ability to pal around is impressive. Meanwhile, my discomfort with masculinity consistently barred me from the same.

He might not always enjoy it, but the weight seems a feather compared to how masculinity collared and crushed me.

I feel his position is one only offered to the straight cis man. Even if he's not super masculine and gets frustrated with other men on the regular, a few pushes of the right buttons and they'll leave him alone.

When men pestered me for masculine bonding, I stammered and failed, their voices always louder. I've been in more than a few situations where, if I were a cis lady, the actions of some men would have qualified as harassment in the eyes of many.

My friend doesn't deal with the same treatment from men that women can face daily. He doesn't understand how much it killed inside to have everyone insist I was a man and get treated like one.

Believing and feeling like you can exist without seeing gender is a privilege. When I tried to grab hold of that privilege, it crumbled in my hands. I could only cope, whereas he genuinely embodies the idea.

Sitting on the opposite side of a common argument in my previous relationship gave me clarity. How frustrated I must have made my ex. How dumb I was.

"I respect that you're trans, it's your choice, but are you sure? Why can't you be [birth name] and just ignore how others treat you."

At first, I brushed it off. In retrospect, it tears into me with tooth and claw. We haven't talked since; I don't know if I want to bother reaching out.

I've explained it several times by this point. Will he ever get it?

For the record, I think the basis of my friend's perspective is sound. If people moved beyond strict gender roles, the world would be a far better place.

I just wish he didn't arrive at the solution without fully realizing the problem. Effectively, he's turned a blind eye to the issues driving him to not see gender in the first place. On the flipside, he barely acknowledges the moments when gender factors in, like when he admits to how awkward he would feel in a group of solely women.

Somehow, that doesn't count as seeing gender. I lack the same luxury.

I'm twenty-seven. For half my time on this rock, I've made a go at existing as a man who doesn't see gender. I have the lived experience of knowing his way ruined me.

At what point did it seem like I wasn't trying to be [birth name]? Did all my attempts to ignore and triumph over the emptiness inside not matter?

When were things supposed to flip right-side up and make sense? Twenty-eighty? Thirty? Thirty-five? Forty?

I'm so tired of waiting.

I wasn't filled to the brim with certainty — I could no longer spend my life merely flirting with the idea of being a woman.

I owed it to myself to slide into second base and give it a whirl.

According to him, I should have continued ignoring all the things that pushed me to the brink. I wish I didn't have to see gender either sometimes; it sounds altogether quaint.

Frankly, I think I rather he dismiss my transition entirely — full-on transphobia, the whole nine yards, none of this dancing around. The sting of ripping off the Band-Aid, hair and all, seems far better than the slow biting peel of feeling like I ought to give another chance.