when i came out to my cis-het boyfriend as genderfluid, he asked me what that meant. when i explained it to him, he said: “that’s weird”.
we were driving in the car. he was driving. he quickly looked over at me afterwards, as my face, space, and whole being was impacted by the weight of his statement. horror, pain, and grief erupting through my eyes. tears beginning to rush.
needless to say, i broke up with him. it took me awhile, but that moment taught me who i wanted close to me as i transitioned (and who i didn’t want close to me). it taught me self-care, boundaries, and respect. it tacught me to see how ingrained self-erasure had become for me as a non-binary person, and how low my sense of self-worth was as a result of it. it taught me how deep the pain of many years and lifetimes and generations of erasure feels. i was crying for days after that incident. i didn’t know what was happening to me. enormous grief portals opened in my body. i didn’t have language, but i had community. i had listening arms to hold me, and that was enough.
i slowly decided that i needed to be very careful and more discerning about who i was sharing my time and energy with. in order to create a space where i could explore myself and my gender in this new and unfolding way, i needed folks around me who were aware of these genderqueer grief portals and who treated these portals with respect. we are all always just doing our best, and i think a part of being human means stumbling into each other’s pains. i choose people who practice accountability and empathy when harm is caused, instead of denial. i think this makes a big difference.
i became quite a bit of a queer separatist. i surrounded myself with other non-binary and genderfluid folks, and the occasional token cis-person who got it enough. now, i had been coming out as queer and poly in terms of my sexuality for a few years before discovering i was also genderfluid. the process of shedding heteronormative lies shoved down my throat from being raised strictly catholic is a life-long process. not allowing myself to be attracted to who i was attracted to fucked with my internal sense of self-trust. the first time i experienced a romantic and sexual relationship with a person who wasn't a cis guy, my heart exploded. the first time we kissed, i spent hours running through my house squealing in liberated queer joy. when i came out to my mom about being romantically and sexually attracted to people other than cis-men, she said: “I don’t want to hear this. I don’t know why you are telling me this.”
the pain of coming out is so real. because a lot of the time, i think, we aren’t met with the devotion and celebration we deserve in revealing ourselves to the ones we love. i think this is why i have had a particularly hard time with coming out day this year. why i navigate a hesitant balance with exposure and hiding. visibility and invisibility. maybe i have had a hard time because i still haven’t come out to many folks in my bio family and/or life about being non-binary. maybe it’s because i also have to continually keep coming out to folks i have already informed. as a person who was born assigned female and identifies as sometimes femme, i know when i dress or act femme, i carry passing privilege. it keeps folks from questioning my presentation and therefore, along with other privileges i carry, like whiteness, it shields me from transphobic violence.
it is rare that i feel i get seen for who i am in regards to my gender. i'm tired of gender norms, gender binaries, and gender "cages", which are ideas about masculinity and femininity that are polarized. i'm tired of distrust and disrespect for the liminal. i navigate the tension of feeding an oppositional gender binary by presenting more as “masc” or like a “man” in order to “prove” to folks that I am “really” “genderfluid”. living with that tension is exhausting. for me, being non-binary means my gender is a living question mark. It means I am not someone who knows what or who I am all the time, and that is okay. its hard to explain. it might make you uncomfortable. that’s okay.
it is rare that i feel i get seen for who i am in regards to my gender. i'm tired of gender norms, gender binaries, and gender "cages", which are ideas about masculinity and femininity that are polarized. i'm tired of distrust and disrespect for the liminal. i navigate the tension of feeding an oppositional gender binary by presenting more as “masc” or like a “man” in order to “prove” to folks that I am “really” “genderfluid”. living with that tension is exhausting. for me, being non-binary means my gender is a living question mark. It means I am not someone who knows what or who I am all the time, and that is okay. its hard to explain. it might make you uncomfortable. that’s okay.
a whole new level of my queerness revealed itself to me once i started to affirm my gender fluidity. everything became more complicated. i dwell in the complexity of what it means to be beyond binaries, in between and before, and sorely, deeply misunderstood and projected upon by cis-hetero patriarchy.
gender fluidity is not a “new” thing. it’s not a recent trend that kids are into these days, as some older cis folks might like to think. it is as ancient as the earth. the more i learned about my own gender fluidity, the more i learned how the gender binary as a system of control is explicitly linked to whiteness, european settler colonialism, and capitalism. learning from teachers like maría lugones (check out her work on the coloniality of gender: https://globalsocialtheory.org/topics/coloniality-of-gender/), khari and their incredible comic book my gender is My Gender, and mentors and deep, kindred friends Pınar Ateş & So Sinopoulos-Lloyd (check out their life-saving work at https://www.queernature.org/), taught me how the earth mirrors my queerness back to me, taught me how gender was organized into an oppositional binary in order for folks to be more efficiently controlled to produce profit. i continue to grow and deepen my responsibility and my understanding around how gender has been colonized and how the binary arises from a traumatized euro-centric, anti-black mentality.
being fluid, being queer, living with a gender that is a question mark might be weird to some people. i refuse to center these people and their opinions of me in the context of my own life anymore. (as alok menon says: there are no trans issues, there are only cis issues). it hurts to stay in the closet, and it hurts to come out. i choose to embrace my weird, undefinable, and fluid self, and ultimately, i know that there will be people who will love me, there will be more-than human ones who will affirm and validate me, and there will be places where i will be celebrated for being myself. and that’s enough. whether i am in or out of the closet or somewhere in between, i am enough. and so are you.
deep bows & indescribable awe for *all* of the queer ones, the liminal dwellers, the ones who are fluid like water. the ones who came before me and the ones to come. my prayer is that we remember our magik. that we remember how sacred we are. how necessary. that we remember we are somebody’s dream. someone dreamed us. the earth dreamed us. we have always been here, we are here now, and we will continue to be. in so many ways, may it be so. may it be so. may it be so. and blessed be.
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