**EXCLUSIVE** Man Or Woman?

Since childhood, growing up on a farm in rural northeastern North Carolina, I would often hear people around me say, “he’s so pretty; he should have been a girl” based solely on my physical appearance. From an early age, I questioned what they meant, what it means to be masculine AND feminine, exactly why we have these gender roles in society, and what these roles mean to me. Through years of self-exploration and discovery, I came to realize that what works best for me is to define myself, to not let society impose its gender constructs on me. If I must be labeled, I choose to identify myself as a gender non-conforming man and/or androgynous – a term that is defined as possessing both masculine and feminine characteristics.