Braver than the binary?

I love this. It’s funny, you know – I all of a sudden find myself coming at this from kind of the opposite side. I have to date privately identified as agendered/non-binary (because that’s how I feel on the inside), while continuing to identify publicly as a cis-woman for largely socio-political reasons. This was mainly because I assumed everybody basically does the same: they start off non-binary and are conditioned, on the basis of what they are designated at birth, to look, act, and to a greater or lesser degree (due to the way they are treated and the ‘lens’ thus created) *feel* the gender they are assigned at birth. Some of us recognise it as such, and some of us do not, I figured. Some of us, my reasoning continued, for whatever reason(s) and to whatever degree, find some conscious or sub-conscious appeal in identifying more strongly or even completely with the opposite gender to the gender they were assigned. I simply did not know, or – in holding myself hostage to my own interpretation of the Bulter-esque notion of “gender as performance” – I stubbornly refused to accept that some people genuinely feel and believe themselves to be and *are* more boy/man than girl/woman, or more girl/woman than boy/man. I took “gender as performance” to mean gender, of a binary type at least, could *only ever* be some form of performance and not something innate. Which has, sadly, lead to some awfulness, as a cis-feminist, in the form of transmisogny on my part, and I have only recently become aware of my error. It has been quite the earthquake within me to finally and suddenly realise, with the help of some very patient people – friends, acquaintances and even strangers – that just because my personal experience is of being innately agendered, with my gendered ways of being a product of external forces, does not mean that experience is universal. For now, I’m conceptualising it maybe rather like a bell curve, with the binary options labelled either end and an increasingly smaller proportion of people feeling on some profound level, and thus identifying, as male/masculine and exclusively as “a man”; some people as innately female/feminine, and exclusively “a woman”… regardless of social conditioning (truly, this came as a shock to me!). And maybe I will grow to find this is too limiting a conceptualisation, too! I have found the whole experience a bit akin to being areligious/atheist and trying to understand why people align themselves with one religion versus another. Or perhaps someone with Aspergers learning to understand empathy. Totally, mind-bogglingly difficult for me to imagine feeling innately gendered. And this lack of deeper understanding has made trans issues feel somewhat threatening to my own sense of identity, so taking a stance of superiority has been appealing in its comfort. BUT. It got to the point where I recognised that my stance is/was causing psychological harm, to me, as an individual – to continue to hide how I feel on the inside – and to those I love, for allowing dogma to turn me into a hateful person. So I’m gonna stop that now, for the greater good (I believe I can become more effective in the world if I personally feel more coherent). I agree that dismantling the gender binary is so, so important, because the policing of extreme gender norms to the exclusion of other forms of gender expression is harmful and not to the benefit of anyone, really. I just need to remind myself that, conversely, not everyone is innately agendered/non-binary; I’ll repeat it, for my own benefit (because it’s tempting to forget!): some people genuinely feel and believe themselves to be and *are* more male than female, and some to the extreme end(s) of that bell curve. Even if I don’t understand it, deeply, for myself/as it applies to me. I don’t need to understand it to accept that it is okay. There is, or should be, room for everyone. That is what we must fight for. I hope to find the strength to be brave like you – brave enough to walk my truth side by side with those walking theirs.