trans | what does "feminine" mean?

Maybe it's not really "I'm male" but that "I'm not a woman". There is a difference between negating one identity (woman) and taking on another positive identity (male). You can be self-identified as (apologies to everyone who acknowledges more than two genders, but I'm having a hard time theorizing this as it is):

not woman, not man
not woman, man
woman, not man
woman, man

...in any sex of body.

And then of course you get more complex gender identities. I think I covered all the variations of the binary...but this gets more complex if one adds in a different set of identity signifiers (I am using the terms "male" and "female" to cover some other gender-specific variations which would be not necessarily "man" or "woman", like "dyke", "fag", "faerie"--because there aren't any other useful signifiers for this):

not woman, not man, not male, not female
not woman, not man, not male, female
not woman, not man, male, not female
not woman, not man, male, female

and etc. I've forgotten my combination formulas, unfortunately.

I think I fall under the category: "not woman, not man, questionably male (in mind), female (in body identity, social role, apparent sex)".

so, if one were to be really exact, one might list attributes according to mainstream gender, broader gender still associated with a specific sex, psychological gender, apparent sex and body identity--which subset one fits into given the above (larger) categories. And possibly current social role and desired social role. Such as, "no I'm not a woman, yes I am a dyke, no I don't feel male, yes I have a female body and yes, I identify with it". (no, these are not my attributes, it's just an example.)

So I would say, "no I'm not a woman, no I'm not a man; no, I'm not male, yes I am female; yes, it's likely my mental processes are male or androgynous; yes my body is female; and yes I'm okay with it.

Freaking 'a'. Maybe that system's screwed up, but I just thought of it just now and had to write it down somewhere. I realize I've left out androgynous, intersex, and third-gender, etc.

But what this stems from is my thinking that maybe it's not that I'm male-identified. Being not-female identified (as an example) does not automatically mean that one is male-identified.

Maybe it's that being female-identified has caused me a lot of problems, so I decide to stop clinging so tightly to a female or "feminine" identification. But here again is that problem, the word "feminine". Is Kali feminine? Maybe I'm misusing that goddess-name, but my point is...what *is* feminine? Is it heteronormative femininity? Is it something which is exhibited by the majority of the nontrans, female population, and some (or perhaps many) of the male population, regardless of identity? Is it trained, and if so, is femininity across cultures relative and not absolute? If so, is femininity within subcultures relative and not absolute? Can you be a butch dyke to heteronormative culture and still be _feminine_--just feminine in a different way--that you may still have a mind that is recognizable as female because of its--presence? (I was never identified as a butch--I may be screwing this up.)