gender thoughts

Gender is a performance and everyone, I'm about to put on a show.

I used to think that being trans meant being restricted. It meant clutching at a binary and begging it to recognise you; it meant constricting clothes and horror stories of broken ribs. It meant reading lists and lists of labels, trying each one on like a badly fitting pair of jeans. Maybe this one will work. Mm, not quite right. I guess this one could fit? Pride was a buzzword, a requirement. It was part and parcel of The LGBTQQIAP++ Community. A community made of shitty jpegs covered in compression artifacts reciting suicide statistics. Care about us; we're dying.

Gender is a lie. (Animated word art.)

Passing was a pipe dream; passing was just out of reach; passing was a myth; you weren't trans except for when you were passing. "Positivity posts" were an ineffective medication for an illness nobody let themselves speak about. Gender, a massacre - trans bodies, the victims.

Nonbinary symbol (a combination of the mars and venus symbols) with the text 'break the binary'

It makes me sad to think about that time. What's worse, though, is the threat that my past is someone else's present. If I am sad for my younger, gender-questioning, terrified self, that sadness is mitigated by my present: I am no longer questioning, I am no longer terrified. That doesn't apply to everyone.


I'm not sure when it started to change.

It might have been:

Maybe it was none of those things. Maybe it was all of them.

Gender: (tickbox) Non-conforming

I'm not sure how I would change it, if I would change it at all. The internet played a complicated role. Without it, I wouldn't have had the language to describe my experience. Maybe, though, I would've found my own language.

They Them Theirs

For a while - a long while - femininity was abhorrent to me. It was stifling, false, nauseating. I tried so hard to find true neutrality. I killed every interesting part of me to do it, and still failed at it. I tried masculinity, and found it equally unfulfilling.

So I gave up.

Somehow, that was the best thing that could happen. I'd created my own, equally constrictive set of expectations - swapped out one hell for another. Giving up allowed me to do... well, whatever I wanted.

Trans flag

It turns out, that what I want to do varies. I was close, I guess, with the genderfluid label, but even then: it was boy OR girl OR (carefully androgynous) enby. But now I'm

I hope you're happy too, or will be soon.

I believe that trans means being free. Free to break rules, to be uncategorisable, unidentifiable. Free to wear dresses with packers and makeup with unshaved legs and all the rest of it. Free to experience joy, love, religion, language, family on our own terms. Free to live the lives that past queers fought for.

Gender's a performance, bitch, and I'm going to win a fucking Oscar.

- N

A box of chocolates decorated with the trans flag.