I have two big appointments this week. One of them is at a local clinic, where I’ll undergo various labs in preparation for hormone replacement therapy. The other is at a tattoo parlor.

This is going to be my third tattoo. I also have pierced ears and bleached hair, which has previously been blue, black, and pink. I like making permanent and semi-permanent changes to my body, and I’m far from alone in that. As a matter of fact, a lot of transgender individuals--especially those of us identifying as nonbinary--tend to be excessively inked, pierced, and dyed. This is something that’s led to a good deal of mockery--some of it teasing, some of it genuinely malicious. Nonbinary people are seen as “edgy,” childish, and irresponsible, because we modify our bodies. Many people are far too willing to take this a step further, and thus claim that we must be confused or mistaken about our gender identities.

There is a correlation between our genders and our stereotypical appearance, but it isn’t at all indicative of immaturity. Rather, we’re often pursuing something of which cisgender people are less often deprived: power over our own bodies.

I am seeking out hormone therapy because, in the last several years, I’ve come to recognize that I’ve spent a huge amount of my life living with gender dysphoria. There’s an insidious quality to dysphoria that a lot of people don’t quite understand: for many years, I didn’t know which parts of my body were responsible for this discomfort. I only knew that there was something about my physicality that was distressing, and that I could find no plausible way of fixing it.

That distress remains now, and I expect that it will continue to be present once I’ve begun hormone therapy, because my body will never quite be what I wish it was. Since I’m not a binary trans man, I’m not even sure what that ideal body would be--only that I don’t have it now. At times, it can feel like my physical self is my enemy, even more than the external forces that make it difficult to be trans. It’s made far harder by the fact that I’m inextricably tied to this form--I can’t ignore or escape it. I can’t even necessarily adapt it to reflect my gender.

Some things, however, I can do. And among those things are tattooing, piercing, and dying: three of the key visual components of the stereotypical nonbinary person.

When I got my first tattoo, I was riding on a wave of euphoria unlike anything I’ve experienced in years. For an evening, at least, I felt the way I used to before puberty, before conscious dysphoria. It took me a while to realize that this was because, for the first time since getting my ears pierced at age eleven, I had gone through with a permanent decision about the state of my body. I had reestablished ownership over it. I had proven to myself that I had power over my skin, not the other way around. For the first time in my life, there was an element of my physical body that accurately displayed a piece of the person whom I consider myself to be.

Now, as I mentioned, I’m taking steps to begin hormone replacement therapy. For a lot of nonbinary (and binary trans) people, however, HRT isn’t the answer--either due to barriers beyond their control, or else because they don’t feel that it’s the right course of action for them personally. Yet there are other ways to own our bodies. And they aren’t in any way deserving of mockery. We aren’t a trend. We aren’t confused. We’re making our own decisions to bring our physical selves closer to the people we are, and that needs to be respected.