Subject to Change at Any Point

Identity: Queer pre-transition kind-of-femme transmasculine person, although that is subject to change at any point.

Hi! I'm Luka, 26 years old (when did that happen?), from Berlin in Germany, and I never know where to start with these things.

My journey towards finding my gender identity probably wasn't the most "traditional". Growing up, I never minded wearing dresses (in fact I loved it, and still do) or doing "girly" things - at the same time, I spent most weekends at the football field (that's soccer for you Americans) and loved riding my skateboard at breakneck speeds. Gender just wasn't much of an issue in my family, and I'm glad for that.

In school things didn't change much, since I was a bit of an outcast and while that fucked me up in other ways, it also meant there wasn't much peer pressure to conform to any gender stereotypes. I listened to metal and read books on military history while painting my nails and drawing princesses, and that was fine. Physically, I had so many issues with my body anyway that the part about my sex being not quite right didn't really stand out. Things only started getting weird when I became older and expected everyone to treat me in the same neutral way, but was suddenly confronted with being "Mrs. Ö" and boys treating me as, well, a woman instead of one of them.

For the next couple of years I agonized about what exactly I was, identifying as just about anything from butch lesbian (in retrospect: LOL NO) to girlfag to transman to genderqueer and back, never feeling quite "trans enough" to seek out other trans*people for advise, even when I started volunteering for a GLBTQ non-profit. The turning point really only came two years or so ago, after a long talk with a trans-female friend of mine, who convinced me that really, if I felt transgendered, then I was transgendered, and that it was perfectly fine not to fit the stereotype of the über-butch transman that I'd been seeing everywhere.

Long (loooong) story short, since then I've (inofficially, because German transgender laws suck) changed my name to the gender-neutral Luka, tried on male pronouns (there aren't any gender neutral ones in German) and realized that they fit me much better, gotten many people to use them, came out in most places, joined a trans* support group, and am planning on starting transitioning to male as soon as I get over my doctor-phobia and manage coming out to my parents. I'll probably always identify as genderqueer, but realized that having a male body and "public identity" would make me more comfortable.

When I'm not out challenging the gender binary, I volunteer as a peer counselor for a GLBTQ youth network and at a club caring for a 19th century fortress, do historical re-enactment, read, draw, cook, sew, watch crappy television, do drag, hang out, and travel as much as I can.