Have you ever felt like you needed something to feel better, but that thing was terrifying to you? I do, all the time. I’m terrified of getting top surgery. Not because I think I’ll regret it, but because of all of the things that could happen. I’m a non binary 21 year old. I was blessed and cursed with a very femme face, and an ass to boot. (All the puns intended.)
Agender & Non-Binary
3 Things Non-binary People Are Sick of Talking About
I recently came out as nonbinary this year. After 20 years of concealing my need to be my true self, I’m finally able to express my gender or lack thereof freely. When I first came out, there was a lot of questions. Like, way more questions then when I came out as queer. Questions like “so..are you a trans man then?” Or “do we have to use they? It’s not really proper English.”
Gender Outlaw
I have been robbed. Perhaps, long, long ago, there may have been words to describe my experience. But I have been robbed of language, and my experience has been robbed of meaning. Lacking, now, in language that applies to me, I am forced to fit into concepts too narrow for me. I can identify outside of the binary, but my identity exists only in relationship to the binary. Even the word “nonbinary” communicates what I am not, and cannot convey in any meaningful way what I am. Assigned female at birth, I am allowed to exist now in opposition to that, in relation to that, but never free from it.
I Am Real
I wish someone had told younger me that parents lie. They lie and lie and lie and they don’t always know what’s best for you. Not in the way I was raised to believe. Being queer in a -phobic household can really shatter your sense of self-worth. Having to listen to supposed “holy” men rant every Sunday about how God finds this and this and this disgusting and how you will be punished is almost its own form of abuse.
A Lifetime Question
It wasn’t until I was in my early fifties that I finally worked out that I was agender and asexual. Figuring out that I was asexual was the easier part of the equation. That really only required coming across knowledge of the orientation. But it still took me 45 years to get to that point, because it took me 45 years before I heard of asexuality.
THEY
I never realized how crucial awkwardness was to being a true LGBTQ+ ally. Recently, the pronoun they changed my mind. They has evolved beyond plural, into a singular pronoun for an individual with a non-binary gender identity. For some folks, they works well, while she or he doesn’t. But the word they, used in this way, seems to cause discomfort. I’ve heard many complaints and (in my admittedly limited experience) these are the most common.
My Gender… Drag Queen: Gender as Performance
I am all woman. Well, at least to the outside world, those who don’t know me, I appear to be all woman. I am six feet tall, a 35 inch inseam, have DD breasts, ample hips, a soft jaw line, long hair and I don’t shy away from dresses and make-up. In fact, I embrace the feminine on stage.