Ah, I assumed “relationship with food starts to get kind of toxic” meant a toxic relationship with the food, not the structure.

No, I don’t fast after, which is what differentiates my BED from bulimia. I’ve never felt shame from my eating specifically, it’s always been a method of self-soothing anxiety about future availability of food. I do feel shame when I’m reminded that’s not a healthy mindset around food, but the shame is complicated and partly about my economic status, not the food itself. You may not have BED, but I would recommend looking into eating disorders.

The only reason it’s getting brought up is because you said that your relationship with food can be toxic when you try to meal plan, and that’s a big indicator light that you may also have an eating disorder. Autism, ADHD, and eating disorders are very commonly found together, so it’s not like you can only have one or the other.

It’s an unfortunate stereotype that all eating disorders are anorexia, but not all of them come from a concern about weight gain/loss. I have a binge-eating disorder from growing up in poverty, and it’s given me the compulsion to stuff as much food into me as possible because I grew up not knowing when my next meal would be.

When I super focus on it (meal prep, shakes, etc), it starts to become a major point of anxiety in my life, and my relationship with food starts to get kind of toxic.

I go through the same thing whenever I try to control my binge eating, and it turns hella toxic.

So, I’m afab and probably agender, which is where the confusion is coming from. I’m on estrogen and progesterone because otherwise my cycle is stuck to ‘on’, so even my relationship with hormones is complicated.

Neither of these things directly tell me my subconscious sex, but when the testosterone makes me feel awful, or when being treated and seen as a woman makes me feel wonderful, or when estrogen gives me mild waves of buzzing bodily euphoric, I make inferences about my subconscious sex from that.

See, none of that resonates with me at all. Going off my meds makes me feel terrible, but that’s from the resulting anemia. I’ve tried living as a man, I’ve tried living as a woman, I’ve never gotten that “yes, this is me” feeling that people talk about. I don’t know what “psychological self conceptualization” as a gender means, because it’s all uncomfortable for me?

It feels like what you’re talking about is the university course and I’m still in primary education.

When I say gender identity is biological, I am talking about what Julia Serano calls “subconscious sex” which she also sometimes interchanges with “gender identity”, which is basically that innate and unchanging sense of your sex / gender.

Okay, but what about those of us that have never had an innate and unchanging sense of my sex/gender?

It’s one of those things you kinda had to be there for. Japan used to be practically synonymous with new tech, and now it’s just been baked into the aesthetic of the genre.