To define is to limit and as such queer must never be defined, yet strategic essentialism (Spivak) demands that I do, that I name the unnameable, and describe the ineluctable. Yet we must never forget that something about queer is inextinguishable, inexhaustible; that ineffability is part of what it is: without it, queer isn’t queer.
— Jonathan Kemp, How to Build an Identity Without an Essence
On top of the family piano sits a silver-framed photograph of two infants, not yet four months old. Just below, I am plunking away at my assigned scales for the week until boredom inevitably kicks in. My shoulders droop, and I let my wrists hang below the piano keys as I glance at the babies above the sheet music. They’re not looking at me, probably distracted by someone off-camera who's working overtime to get them to smile. Staring in utter fascination, my eyes dart between the two as I compare the shape of their eyes, the slopes of their noses, freshly formed hairlines, and the color of their nightgowns. One’s dressed in pink, the other in blue. As the last chord I play rings out in the distance, a small toothless smile begins to crawl across my face. It’s me. I’m the one in blue.
Even if I can’t name it at the time, I will mark this moment and this photograph as a sign that I am somehow different. And different feels right. Different feels like magic.
Years later, I will revisit this memory and understand it as a clue, even if it’s not.
And when I eventually come to learn that blue belongs to no one, I will still see the color as a symbol of the binary I never fit into. It will be my gateway to someone, something, or somewhere else—anything that is as far beyond GIRL as I can get.
Last week, a friend asked me if I wanted to try and articulate "where I was at" with my gender. I’m not even sure if I understood the question.
I wanted to believe that my friend was just trying to understand, trying to connect, but the minute she opened the door to this part of the conversation, I felt the spotlight beating down and the room faded to black. I couldn’t see her sitting across the table. Floating above my body, I saw myself shut down in real-time, doggy paddling in a sea of shame and confusion.
“I don’t know,” I stammered, “I don’t know…if I can—if I know how to—to explain it...”
Fortunately, as a 32-year-old fresh off of six years of therapy, it took me about 60 seconds to clock what was happening. By the two-minute mark, I had pinpointed almost the exact memory from space and time where I was first made to feel small because I couldn’t or didn’t say the “right” thing at the right time. I saw myself losing the argument again and again and again. I felt myself shrink down to the size of a dime.
“I know what’s happening,” I said quietly, “…and I don’t want to feel this way.”
And so in an attempt to stop the spiral, I tried, haphazardly, to explain as much as I knew until the lump that had formed in my throat felt too big to hold, and I started to cry.
My gender is one of the coolest things about me. It’s fucking out of this world. And yet all I have to point to, in an attempt to help others (or even myself) understand, are the things in and of this world. I feel grateful for the signs and symbols I have access to, but as close as they manage to get, they still fall embarrassingly short.
There is grief in this gap—the space between my felt experience and the language that fails me every day. I don’t want to feel as though I must explain in precise terms what has happened/is happening/has always been happening inside of me just to know that it is real—just to feel validated by a world that lives outside of me.
I want to trust my experience and see it as enough, but I still struggle not to gaslight myself every day. I worry this degree of frustration and confusion is only proof that I am simply “wrong” or that others will use it as ammunition against me. I worry I will make others doubt what I know at my core to be true: that I am queer; I am non-binary.
No one asked me to “prove” myself—not even my friend. But it still doesn’t change how flooded I feel when someone asks too many questions at the wrong time—when they start to ask about me. If they aren’t queer themselves, there are parts of me that feel threatened, as though any attempt to understand, any bid for connection is actually just a test set up for me to fail. It must be a trap. If I don’t seem happy, if I am not certain, something must be wrong, and that something is me.
I don’t want to be angry at the people who love me. I don’t want to be angry at the people who don’t, so I let myself feel angry at the world instead. I don’t want to punish the people who are trying, and I don’t want to force myself to educate those who won’t. And so I choose to internalize the anger and watch it morph into shame. I take on confusion that isn’t mine. I make it my fault for being “other” as if it’s a bad thing to begin with.
I’m no stranger to this survival tactic, and I see how for so many years it has kept me safe. But now that I’m an adult, now that I call the shots, now that I know more about who I am, I want so much more for myself.
I want to feel excited and proud of whatever comes out of my mouth when I talk about my identity—even if it’s not the full picture—even if it doesn’t make sense. I don’t need to make sense to anybody but me. I don’t want it to feel like a joke, but I also don’t want it to feel so serious.
I want to accept that the metaphor on the page will always be just that—a metaphor. Instead, I sometimes feel like the unintelligible fool who just can’t seem to get it right. What if I’m wrong? What if this is just all made up?
At the same time, my queered gender is so special to me—it’s the lens through which I see the world. Sometimes the idea itself feels new, but when I really listen, when I really look, I find that I have always been this way. I have always felt this way.
And after all, I didn’t leave one religion, just to find another. I didn’t break free from a box only to feel the demand of attaching myself to new labels so people could understand me better.
I don’t want to be a top; I don’t want to be a bottom. I don’t want to be a masc; I don’t want to be a femme. I don’t want to wear a dress to the event; I don’t want you to hate me if a year from now I do. I don’t want to explain the differences between bisexuality and pansexuality when every definition I find only confuses me more. I don’t want to make fun of my straight friends with my new queer friends; I don’t want to correct my cis het friends when they accidentally misgender me when they’re drunk. I don’t want to draw attention; I don’t want to take up space. But see me, know me! Validate me! Please.
I don’t want any more new words! Yet isn’t our shared language the thing that connects us all? And maybe even binds us together?
What if to question what I’ve been told is the queerest thing about me?
What if my gender is the truest thing about me, even if I can’t explain it?
Is there a right way to be this way?
And who gets to decide what that looks like, feels like, sounds like?
Or what if I get it wrong?
What if I hurt somebody along the way? What if that somebody is me?
What if I wake up tomorrow and change my mind?
I want to feel seen, but how can I expect that from the people around me if who I am is in constant flux?
Can I blame them for being so confused?
Can I expect (or even want) to be known if who or what I am is actually just unnamable?
Am I an asshole for thinking (knowing) that I am more than just a girl? Or am I just a shitty girl who failed?
What if I think girls are phenomenal, and I am also not one of them?
What if I want to be a sister but not a woman?
What if being an auntie to my nieces is my everything, but when my queer friends refer to me as an uncle, I am beaming?
What if I’m just a little guy, but not a man?
Why do I get angry when people assume some days I wake up feeling like a dude and other days I wake up feeling like a girl?
Why do I want to scream?
What will happen if I get top surgery? What will happen if I don’t?
What if to have and to hold these questions is the very essence of my queerness?
What if I don’t have to know? What if I never will?
What if Charlie XCX was right and I really am just a girl?
I would like to blame this assumption that I simply must know on the fundamentalist principles that raised me, the religion that scarred me, and the spiritual trauma I endured. I want to blame it all on the patriarchy, sexism, misogyny, the endless list of internalized phobias, comphet culture, and any other new phrase I’ve managed to educate myself on over the past four years since I consciously began this gender journey.
And while examining these concepts has enabled me to carve out a new way of being, giving me a sense of freedom and expansion, this process of learning and unlearning has also managed to reinforce the reality that in the end, we are all totally fucked.
Recently, I traveled to a country outside the United States and needed to renew my passport. While filling out the paperwork, I noticed the option to change my gender to X. The idea thrilled me, and for a flicker of a moment, I felt pleased by this small mark of societal progress. That is until I did a quick Google search and discovered (unsurprisingly) that not all countries recognize this label. Choosing X could potentially lead to entry refusal in certain countries. Feeling deflated, I questioned the purpose of pursuing this change. Why complicate things solely for self-validation? Recognizing the problematic nature of my thoughts combined with the knowledge of my privilege and ability to pass as a woman, I called it quits and selected the box for F.
FINE, whatever gets me through the gate.
There is complex grief hidden under the awareness that unless I make some serious adjustments to my appearance, the outside world will always see me as just a girl. But I like the way I look (mostly) and no one—except for my queer friends—has ever called me sir. And it’s not even that I’d want to be called that on a daily basis.
Because it’s not enough to memorize my pronouns—I want you to see me as genderless. I want you to know that I am.
To confess: I resent my passing privilege just as much as I hide behind it. Because if it feels easier to be perceived as a woman or not correct others who misgender me, I can and often will choose not to. After all, it takes courage to correct people, it takes courage to tell people who I am.
Does the dentist really need to know? Does the cashier really need to know? And how much does it hurt me really to have most people assume I am one thing when I am another? Can’t it be good enough to hear the right pronouns even if I know they still see me as the girl they have known for so long?
If I can “handle” it better than some, should I just suck it up and stop complaining? If so, where do I put the hurt? Where do I put the anger? Am I expecting too much from total strangers? And whose FAULT is all of this anyway? Aren’t we all just dressed in drag? What else does RuPaul say? And what would Ram Dass say?
It is a lot to deconstruct, and it’s even more to rebuild. But what would happen if I stopped trying to make sense in a world that demands I do? What if I stopped allowing the confusion of others to dictate what I’ve always known to be true?
I don’t want to be angry; I don’t want to be unsatisfied with the status quo. And yet I do, at times, miss my ignorance. Alas, I cannot unsee what I have seen. And no matter how confusing it may be at times, I wouldn’t change knowing who I am for the world—literally.