Gender

Gem Fusion

I don’t know how I’ve made it this long without gushing about Steven Universe! If you haven’t watched it yet you really should because it is THE best animated show on TV. It seems like a kids show at first but it has deep themes of queer representation, non-traditional families and gender roles, nonbinary characters, authentic relationship building skills, and self awareness.

As a nonbinary person I often feel like a gem fusion is the best way to describe what it is like to be me. Stevonnie, the nonbinary character who is a fusion of the titular Steven and his girlfriend Connie, is the most obvious analogy as it is a blend of their features, personalities, and genders meeting somewhere in the middle as a tall, attractive, dark haired androgyne.

But more often these days I find myself feeling like Garnet – a semi-permanent fusion between the volatile and aggressive Ruby and the prescient and peaceful Sapphire. They are both considered women but they represent very different ends of the gender presentation and behavior spectrum within femininity. Ruby wears pants and has a temper and personality that would typically be associated with masculinity. Sapphire wears a long dress, speaks softly, and is both kind and firm at the same time. Their relationship is a very obvious metaphor for queerness as the fusion of two different types of gems (as compared to two Rubies) is a taboo which results in them being shunned and hunted by the militaristic and colonizing Homeworld Gems.

While I could never aspire to be as cool and collected as Garnet herself, I really resonate with these two aspects of myself, the masculine and the feminine, blending together and co-existing in a single body while still being a woman. I’m much more of a lesbian than I want to admit, despite admiring some men physically, and the enduring romance between Ruby and Sapphire always gives me big feels. I hope that someday I can fully embody their values of flexibility, love, and trust in both myself and my relationships.

Unsubscribing from gender

Some days I really wish there was an opt-out button from this whole gender thing. I wish there was something I could wear, some way I could act, or something I could do to avoid the whole concept. Some way I could walk in the world for even just a day without being perceived as either a feminine man or a failed attempt at being a woman. I wish the me that everyone saw reflected what was really inside.

Being transfeminine and hairy is hard. Walking through the world in a skirt and a beard is exhausting. Trying to figure out if and what physical modifications would diminish my dysphoria is overwhelming.

I feel stuck. I’ve come too far to stuff it all back in a box and keep pretending to be a man. And I’ve never felt like I could become a stealth trans woman even if I wanted to. So instead I am trapped in this almost indefinable middle area that is only widely accepted in queer community.

Every night when I pick out the next days outfit there is so much that I have to think about. How will my body feel the next day? How much dysphoria will I face and which body aspect will it be this time? Does my outfit sufficiently cover the “inappropriate” parts of my body? Is this work appropriate? What meetings and VIPs will I encounter tomorrow? Will I have to go out in public beyond my own company? Will I have to walk/bus and if so how dangerous are those neighborhoods? Do I have the coat/shoes/accessories to make this work? All things I couldn’t possibly decide at 6:30 am before coffee.

So when do I get a break? When do things get easier? Will they ever?

What is gender anyway?

There has been SO much written on what gender is from a theoretical or definitional standpoint so I’m going to skip the theory and go straight to my experience which is the only thing I’m qualified to speak on anyway.

Gender for me is less about presentation and outward appearance and more about a framework for explaining my experience of the behaviors and expectations around what it means to be a man vs a woman vs being me. We live in a binary world where regardless of what diversity there actually is in behaviors and ways of being for men and women, there are still expectations of what it is “supposed” to look like. Moving away from those expectations helps everyone in my opinion. But after a lot of thinking on it, I believe that even without binary expectations, my nonbinary gender would still exist as a way for me to explain just HOW different my experience is from the norm. Categories may feel restrictive to some people, but for me it is somewhat freeing to have a place where I fit.

My genderqueerness started as a mental scaffolding for me to explain and create structure around my experience of the world LONG before it resulted in any outward changes. As I gained more language around gender, that scaffolding grew and took shape. Without terminology, it was merely a swirling mass of confusion for me. That is part of why I am a big advocate of language that evolves and grows to meet the needs of a society rather than strict and static definitions. Without this new language, I think I would still feel lost in that void.

I believe that gender more about your own internal experience than it is about how you are externally perceived. Things like gender presentation and clothing can be helpful in signalling to people how you would like to be treated (not that it is frequently respected) but more often than not, especially in this unexplored middle area, I think it can be a barrier to people claiming their gender identities. I see many people in closed groups and discussions talking about how they don’t feel like they can “be nonbinary” if they don’t want to or can’t access an androgynous appearance. I know those feels and it held me back for a long time. So I’m here to say “to hell!” with that model of gender!

If genderqueer or agender or genderfluid or one of the numerous other new words to explain the uniqueness of nonbinary/trans experiences feels like it fits or explains things for you, then try it on. Take the time to think and feel about the description and explore the diversity of ways other people are using it. One person or site may be using a very narrow definition that you can’t see yourself in (like genderqueer for me at first) but I bet there are already people pushing and expanding the boundaries of that new category. And you could be next!

If man or woman describes your experience then great! Life may not be easy because both have a heavy burden of expectations, but at least you don’t have to fight to be recognized. If they don’t fit, then leave them behind and find the real you. You owe it to yourself to be authentic. Other people can fight you about it but rest secure in knowing that you alone are the expert on yourself.

The power of categories

Gender terms cloudTransgender

Genderqueer

Nonbinary

Gender non-conforming

Transfeminine

MtX

These are all terms I use to describe my gender. There are dozens more already being used and more being created every day to describe and categorize the diversity that we experience in real life. I’ve heard many people criticize identity labels and say things like “why do I need more boxes to fit in” or “I don’t like to label myself”. And while I’m not trying to invalidate their experience, I want to share a bit about why I love labels and categories, especially for gender and sexuality.

I think there is a lot of power in words. Words give us access to intellectual concepts and and language can be incredibly freeing when it is allowed to evolve and grow along with a society. For myself, I didn’t grow up with the concept of gender being anything other than what you were told at birth and it existed as an assumed binary. I didn’t know that trans people even existed until well into my teen years and I didn’t learn about terminology outside the basic LGBT acronym until I joined a highly controversial GSA-style group at my conservative Evangelical university.

Even once I had concepts for transgender and genderqueer, I didn’t really understand that there was diversity within those categories. I knew I didn’t want to be a woman (or at least didn’t think that was something I could access in any way that was meaningful to me but that’s another whole post) but I didn’t think I could be genderqueer either because I thought that meant I had to be androgynous in the sense that I couldn’t have any visible genderedness about my body. So for many years I identified as gender non-conforming for lack of a better way of describing my blurriness.

But as I began to add terminology to my gender toolbox I also began to see places where I might fit. It took until another trans person I was dating suggested that maybe I was genderqueer before I felt like it was something I could dare to explore. And even then it took almost a year before I felt comfortable claiming my place within the genderqueer and trans identities.

Sadly, a large part of that was due to my tendency to self-police my own gender and allow the “not trans enough” feelings to guide me. But I also didn’t understand that not everyone of a particular identity label has to look or feel the same. The key to unlocking my gender was grasping that these are merely categories, useful for finding other people like you but also for pushing the boundaries together of what it means to not be a cisgendered person.

Once I accepted that I didn’t need to desire surgical or hormonal transition above all else and that I didn’t need to lose all of my features that people ascribe to a specific gender (like my beard) I was able to accept that being trans just means not identifying with the (binary) gender you are assigned at birth. I was trans because I was not cis. I am genderqueer because I exist in a blurry space outside of the well-explored binary boxes. I am nonbinary because I don’t want to be a man but I know I’m not a woman. I may have been assigned male at birth but I can transition to be “X”. I can be feminine and have a beard.

So don’t let identity police get you down and tell you what you can or can’t be, especially not based on appearance. And don’t listen to those little shoulder devils whispering doubts in your ear about “being enough.” Claim the categories and terms that work for you now and don’t get hung up on how you might feel about your gender next year. It is OK to evolve and grow. It can be a step in your journey or it can be your final destination but either way it isn’t “just a phase.”