Nonbinary

It's so helpful and healing when we other people's stories that help us see and feel that we are not alone.

“Gender is a slippery illusion. Like the flat outline of a cube, you can perceive its shape as either concave or convex, extruding or withdrawn. If you're especially adept, you can see both simultaneously, or perhaps, even for a moment, neither at all. Upon deeper inspection, you might deduce the truth at the heart of it all: there is no one “correct” form. Yet all of them are real.”

“Because our language has been using “singular they” for centuries, this has become the most common pronoun for referring to anyone whose gender is not known, not specified, or not in the male/female binary. As of 2017, the official stylebook for the Associated Press now recommends using the “singular they/them” for nonbinary individuals.”

“Best practices include specifying pronouns in email signatures and business cards, mentioning a person's pronoun alongside their name when introducing them, and always asking for someone's pronoun.”




“I've started taking a kitchen sink approach to my gender: it all goes in, except the things that don't. Motorcycles are, in fact, part of my gender. So are boots. Whiskey is still a part of my gender. Eye shadow and blue lipstick have gotten mixed into it, but red lipstick and nail polish feel like drag, and not the fun kind. Turtlenecks might have been part of Steve Jobs's gender, but not mine. Practicing martial arts has been a long and complicated part of my gender. The kind of shirts that your gay uncle wears on his yearly visit to Key West? Definitely part of my gender. Cats are integral to my gender. The necklace my mother gave me. DIY haircuts. Calluses, scars, and tattoos. Gray dresses cut in the same style as a burlap bag. This one pair of high heels I bought last month. Baking, but not cooking, and definitely not reality TV shows about cooking.

How can these things be part of gender? I can hear some snarky critic getting ready to school me already. Motorcycles are not inherently masculine. I agree! My gender isn't inherently masculine either. It just really fucking likes motorcycles.

My gender surprises me—it dressed down for a long time, in gray corduroy and a peacoat. It kept its eyes averted. Now it has all kinds of demands.”


*****

“I identify as gender nonconforming because I've never been privileged by white cis-gender constructs. I have never seen a space for myself within the confines of cis manhood. What is cis-manhood? Am I a cis-man in a dress, in a shirt, with short hair, with a wig? What if I was assigned male at birth but I don't feel like there is a man or a woman inside of me? What if I was assigned male at birth but I feel like there is a peacock on fire flapping its wings on the beach inside of me? What if tomorrow the peacock is dead but a baby fawn walks out of the ocean of my gut and that is how I feel? Can that not be my gender? If not, why not?

Maybe someday this feeling, this resentment toward such strict notions of gender, will change.”
[...]

“Right now, I would rather not identify with any gender at all.

I walk down the street and I feel the peacock kick inside my stomach, I feel a little girl inside of me dead. I walk down the street and I imagine my breasts growing after estrogen. I want to keep them hairy. I have a dream where I'm pregnant and then give birth in a bathtub. The whole bathtub is filled with my placenta. There is a dream where I'm more brave and I look the way that I feel. There is a dream I have where to be brown and to exist outside the binary does not feel like I'm being hunted anymore.”
[...]

“I tell my friend who still presents outside the binary that I want to be alive. I want to live. And so this is my gender: a desire to live. And if trans and gender nonconforming people were not killed and incarcerated and starved so constantly then maybe I would be more legitimately trans or nonbinary. Maybe if it weren't for capitalism then I wouldn't be so afraid of existing outside the binary. I wouldn't be afraid of dying poor and young.

I'm wearing pants today, my hair is short, you can call me sir. I know what's in my belly. She'll wake up someday.”