The first time I realised that I’m not actually cis was when a really close enby friend of mine asked me if I’m really okay with being referred to as a “cis woman”.

At first I was like, yeah, I don’t really mind it. But then it felt so wrong that I felt like I was lying both to myself and the world.

I realized that I was deliberately trying to ignore and avoid confronting the surprisingly big amount of uncertainty in my mind regarding my own gender identity. Why? Because I was scared of how society treats those who fall outside the norm. I was terrified of being alienated even more because of who I am. But then I decided that enough is enough and to face the issue head on. I have been living my whole life up until now being treated differently because of being disabled but I never gave up and kept going because it’s all I can do.

And so I decided to look up what it exactly means to be cis, and obviously, that itself made me realise that I’m definitely not cis. After this realisation, it all started to make sense why I could never relate when my cis friends and family members talked about how a woman should be behaving in certain situations and on top of that, I felt like it was pretty suffocating. I thought something was wrong with me because I never fully felt like a woman and as it turns out, when I took some quizzes online to find out what my gender identity could be, most of them suggested that I’m either a demigirl or a paragirl.

Now, both the terms ultimately mean the same thing, i.e. partially identifying with a feminine identity. But the main difference between the two terms is that a paragirl has to identify with the feminine to the extent of at least 50% while there’s no such rule for being a demigirl.

Demigirl is a gender identity term that falls under the umbrella of non-binary genders. It refers to people who may or may not be assigned female at birth (afab) and do not identify fully with the assigned gender, mentally and/or socially.

And since I like how unrestricted the term demigirl is, I decided to just go with it instead of paragirl.

Although I’m lucky to have received positive responses from the people I have shared my gender identity with till now, I’m painfully aware that a staggering amount of people say that those who identify as demigirls are just women who are confused and/or want attention.

But allow me to just ask them one question: how can you be so sure that you are cisgender, agender, genderfluid, or whatever the hell you are?

You just feel it, right?