“No cis guys” – no thank you

I’ve been thinking of the topic of this post for a while, but it all kind of reached a head when I received an invitation to a private party this weekend. Disclaimer: I do believe that individuals and small private groups get to decide their own admissions policy – I frequently hold parties just for my musician friends, because I enjoy sitting round the piano with a bunch of Handel wonks, singing through Messiah. We all have our own biases and sometimes, for better or worse, we just want to roll with them.

 

So this isn’t a rant about exclusion vs. inclusion – but more about what our categories reveal about us – and what kind of an impact they can make on other people.

 

This particular event was open to queer people – all queer people, in fact, apart from cis guys. Trans guys were specifically mentioned as being welcome, and cis guys were specifically named as the only excluded group. And my first thought was “do I know of a single trans guy who would be comfortable accepting this invitation? Do I know a single trans man who wouldn’t be slighted by this distinction?”

 

It reminded me painfully of something I’ve heard again and again over the past couple of years – mostly from queer women, but very occasionally from “straight” men. A contrast to the prevailing reaction I got eight years ago on the London scene, which was mostly “urgh – so what DO you have between your legs?” Maybe this is an improvement – but I think not. Because, now, it seems to be “cis guys are so boring/gross/I’d never be with a real man – but you’re so hot”. An explicit or implicit assumption that if I agree to fuck someone they’d be spared the stigma of being with a man – while still enjoying the experience of being fucked by a masculine person. The image conjured, but never fully articulated – that they could revel in being with someone slim-hipped, flat-chested, muscular, hairy – but lacking the supposed threat/unpleasantness of a natal penis.

 

Not to mention that the people taking this stance seem to take a very narrow view of what constitutes a trans man – because, without looking at medical records, how would you differentiate between a cis man and a trans man who has followed a full hormonal/surgical medical transition? For myself, I’m afraid I’m painfully close to the stereotype of “urban gender non-conforming trans guy”. Undercut? Tattoos? Piercings? Skinny jeans? Oh yes. Surgery – yes. Hormones – sadly, no. But, on the surface, a pretty good match for a type that seems increasingly fetishised by people who see us almost as a separate category of male – or female. Though not the same, redolent of that unpleasant sexualised categorisation of trans women as “chicks with dicks” – when someone tries this line of reasoning with me I feel they see me as a “boobless butch”.

 

The two reasons I’ve heard for this distinction between trans and cis guys are as follows: the socialisation argument, and the bodily argument. I do have a little sympathy for the socialisation argument. Yes, many people in my life tried to tell me that I was a woman, and that I should act accordingly. No matter how painful it was I feel it’s given me an invaluable insight into this grossly misogynistic society, and for that I feel grateful. I think it’s an incredible resource for feminism – to have men/masculine people talk about the category of ‘woman’ society tried to foist upon them, and what that meant. But I don’t think that automatically makes me a better feminist than a cis man. I know many cis guys (I think of my brother in particular) who are as feminist, if not more, than I am. Who have suffered from living in a misogynistic, cissexist society, and who have hurt because of the pain that society has inflicted on people they love. So I can definitely understand someone saying that they wouldn’t be with a man who wasn’t a feminist – I wouldn’t be with a man who wasn’t a feminist. But I don’t care in the slightest if he’s trans or cis – if he gets it then he gets it.

 

The bodily argument – well, it disgusts me. I hope we would all agree that someone refusing, point-blank, to date a trans man because they assume he doesn’t have a flesh and blood penis is a vile thing to do. But, to me, wanting to sleep with him for the same reason is equally as vile. Three main reasons for this:

 

1) Um – different trans guys make different choices about what they want to do about their genitals. The assumption that all trans men are men with pussies – well, I’m shuddering at the stupidity, and the callousness. There are many surgical options available. There are many non-surgical options available. There are some of us with genitalia that fall under the intersex umbrella. Just…random guessing is a stupid thing to do.

2) Having made an assumption about my genitalia, the focus is now turned solely upon my genitalia. So, my personal example (it’s the only one I can adequately give): I’m a huge feminist, but I don’t pretend that I always get it right, and I don’t experience the world as a woman. The same is true for my imaginary cis counterpart. I have a pretty face, but my body is, and always has been, devoid of what is usually assumed to be feminine – for a woman, I’m tall, with very large hands and feet. For a man I’m average. Maybe my imaginary cis twin is the same. Naked, my body is that of a boy’s – well, lots of cis men have fine body hair and slim limbs. The only difference is…you know – THAT one. And if someone would pick me over my hypothetical doppelganger for that reason – well, I wouldn’t want to be picked. I think I have more to bring to even a brief encounter than just that.

3) Having been differentiated from my cis double because of my birth sex – I wonder, do the people fetishising us know how that makes us feel? Or, rather, makes me feel? “Emasculated” is the first word to spring to mind. I think it can be hard to love a trans person – to walk the tightrope between sharing their sorrow at the wrongness they feel with parts of their body and celebrating the beauty you see and love. I know it’s a tall order – to acknowledge  both what is and isn’t there – to see the truth of a person’s being through the veil of their flesh, cognisant of and yet transcending disparities found therein. But I need that, to feel seen by someone, to feel safe with them. And if they couldn’t extend the same courtesy to a cis man – if they put he and I into separate categories of approach – then there could be no relationship. I’ve fought all my life to be counted among men – both to break down sexist barriers of supposed male superiority, but also to prove myself as myself, despite typical sexuated readings of that self. To be cordoned off  - it feels like being named as a fake man, a half man – as a friend once said “the diet coke of men”.

 

Writing this, I want to ask – how do other trans guys feel? I don’t know. I know that friends of mine would be as hurt by that distinction as I was – I couldn’t know about the wider community, but I could guess.

 

Again, in my own life – I know that that cut-off is too much. It makes me feel too much the pain of this body, this set of circumstances. It makes me feel a lack, an absence of verisimilitude – and a lack of respect. I want to be wanted not only for who I am, but also for who I feel I should have been.

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Conversion “therapy” for trans youth – a warning

Yet another update: Just bringing this from the comments to the top of the page:

 

“Hi everyone, as the person who found this/wrote the warning, just to let you know all the stuff I didn’t know when I wrote it: it’s most definitely a hoax, but what is worrying is that this person offered to meet a few of the young people on the website they posted this on. For whatever reasons they want to meet them (and it’s more sinister given that it’s obviously faked), so that’s why I put the warning out there. Please share the message widely but please keep in the part about the University of Leicester not knowing anything about this. The phone number in the ad is their english department. They obviously knew nothing about it but are now aware and are forwarding anyone who calls to Pink Therapy. I emailed the uni in the states yesterday and am awaiting a response.”

 

 

Update: Thanks for the responses and reposting – all the UK trans academics and activists I know are trying to unravel this. At the moment it seems like a  mash-up of different names and works, with a nasty bent to it – there’s a Dr Susan Collins on the GMC register (graduated University of Manchester in 2006), “Dreaming Gender: Restoration and Transformation” is an article by a Vittorio Lingiardi (Studies in Gender and Sexuality, 2007) – there are no links to the universities mentioned. Whoever this person is, they’ve been trying to contact vulnerable young trans people on UK LGBTQ youth forums, and offering to meet them. University of Leicester is forwarding any callers to Pink Therapy - personally, I feel that, regardless of whether this is a hoax or something more sinister, people in the target group deserve to be warned. Thanks again. 

 

I’ve just been alerted to this by a fellow UK activist – please read and share as widely as you can:

 

“I just wanted to make you all aware that there’s someone out there offering young trans people the chance to get involved in a conversion therapy study. I have pasted the message this person has posted on Queer Youth Network’s website at the bottom of this message. It apparently comes from a Dr Susan Collins who claims to have links with the University of Leicester (something I’ve checked with them and they’ve denied) I’m currently awaiting a response from Clarkson University in the USA, who they also claim to be working with.

 

 

Very worrying that they’ve pretty much claimed to offer a cure to transgenderism and “to see the Christ identity restored and embraced” as well as potential funding for surgery.
The university is now investigating so please let me know if you see this anywhere else, and obviously do not respond to it. The number listed is from the University of Leicester’s English department who are aware it’s being used but have no idea why.

 

 

“Are you a post-operative female to male transsexual?
Looking for guidance and potential funding for surgery?

 
Pioneering new research into the advancement of Gender Restoration therapies, psychological and alternative pharmaceutical treatments to unnecessary gender re-assignment might be able to provide you with the answers, and hope in treating your condition.

 
We are particularly keen to hear from females aged 16 to 25 years old, as a primary group who currently identify as suffering from gender dysphoria disorders (FTM).
The research is independent and funded by a partnership of number of educational medical institutions and private medical bodies. We are hoping to recruit a sample group of between 20 and 30 volunteers who will be fully re-reimbursed for their time and all treatments and out-of-pocket expenses will be reimbursed.

 
Interested participants in the United States will be monitored at the facilities based at Clarkson University’s Chemistry and Bimolecular Science department,
in the United Kingdom and Europe we are exploring a partnership with the University of Leicester.

 
If you would like to be part of this ground-breaking study please email Dr Susan Collins – dr.susan.collins@scientist.com – or call (0)116 252 3943

 

Dr Susan Collins is an award winning advocate of the women’s and transsexual rights movement and contributor to numerous social scientific programs including ‘Dreaming Gender: Restoration and Transformation’. Author of ‘Are You Sure? – Female to Male Surgery, the dangers and what you need to know.’ ‘Gender Restoration’ – To study the biblical foundation of manhood and womanhood and how then to restore them from a state of fallenness to their true image in Christ. ‘Identity Restoration’ – To recognise and renounce unreal identities including confusion in gender and sexual identity. To see the Christ identity restored and embraced.”

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Whether the world likes it or not, we’re going to make it better

 

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“Real” Names

It comes up on a fairly regular basis – and maybe it’s time for a little explanation. As is the case for nearly everything in my life, it’s neither as scandalous nor as glamorous as a lot of people assume it to be. So – “what does CN stand for?” – or its unpleasant cousin – “what’s your real name?”

 

Well, it is my real name, thank you very much, unpleasant questioners. On all my legal documents and everything I’ve put out into the world.

 

In terms of what it stands for – it doesn’t stand for anything – it is just itself. It comes from somewhere, but that’s not the same thing.

 

Again, dull dull dull – my parents gave me two names, the first of which began with C and the second of which began with N. If you were bored (or creepy) enough you could look up the relevant pages of The Times and The Telegraph for the birth/death/marriage announcements. They never suited me, and they never felt like my name. But my initials did. So I started using them more and more until it seemed ludicrous to keep a legal name that wasn’t actually my name and never had been. So I got a deed poll and that’s that.

 

I do feel lucky – because I never had to worry about choosing a name to fit my gender. One of the reasons my birth name didn’t suit is, it’s true, because it was girly and pretty and sweet – but it was only one of the reasons. I knew it wasn’t my name long before I could articulate being trans (kind of a hint, I guess). It’s probably a good thing – I only would have ended up with something horrendously over-the-top, with some kind of obscure literary/musical heritage so that I could always start up with, “Actually, I think you’ll find, my name…”

 

It has a lilting sound, looks unusual and feels good in your mouth when you say it. Make of that what you will.

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Trans Beauty: Vocal Edition, Part One

With a huge hats off to Practical Androgyny for their post on androgynous sounds in speech and singing, I thought it was time to roll up my sleeves and tackle the most beautiful of all beautiful things – voices. Maybe the DSM would class it as some kind of musical autogynephilia but, for me, there’s nothing on earth as sexy as the human voice.

 

Before we proceed – I’m not going start with the voices of trans people (that means you have to come back for part two). I thought, rather, to begin with an introduction to the fact that, contrary to what a very foolish society claims, there is no gender binary in the voice. We sing over it all the time. All the time. Do trust me on this – I know whereof I speak. On average the voice of someone who has been through a testosterone-laden puberty will be capable of lower notes than someone who hasn’t – and vice versa. On average. And the size of the chords is only one factor in what gives each each voice its unique flavour.

 

I think nothing illustrates this fact quite so spectacularly as my classical speciality – the high male/androgynous role. Doesn’t matter what sex or gender you are, so long as you can make a convincing poet/god/hero/prince/musician/knight/page (or look soulful for the religious music) whilst keeping your sound spinning over a broad and shining range.

 

So, please enjoy the delights of Marijana Mijanovic…

 

 

Lawrence Zazzo…

 

 

Vivica Genaux…

 

 

And Yuri Minenko.

 

 

And have a lovely long look at the work being done by Vivaldi’s Women - where the talents of female tenors, baritones and basses are celebrated rather than ignored.

 

 

Oh, and a bit of an exciting P.S. – I’m the only openly trans classical singer I know of working professionally at the moment, but I know a handful in training at the moment. Excitement!

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“Why can’t you just be a butch lesbian?”

A question I’m asked on a regular basis. And one, according to my mother (hi mum!), that was asked of a trans man on Radio 4 this morning. Sigh. Radio 4. Leaving aside of questions of desire – who we sleep with, who we love (and why do they disregard our desires and loves?) – the symbol is drawn equating a very butch woman with a very effeminate man. Not a “real” man. So, why not be a butch woman? Here is my simple and easy to follow answer – do with it what you will.

 

The first and most fundamental line of ‘reasoning’ tends to be that I, and those like me, have vaginas. It’s assumed, anyway. God knows we can all tell by a casual glance at a clothed person. So – if the form’s the same, the content must therefore be identical? Close enough, anyway. But, if you’ll allow me to be a little whimsical:

 

I’m going to give myself the title of Person A. A musician. I’m going to pick a profession at random – a biochemist. Person B. Now, you could put person A in a lab coat and safety goggles, position them next to person B and make them look, to the untrained and lazy eye, like a biochemist. Or vice versa – Person B gets to wear a lovely frock coat, stand in front of an orchestra and sing. Except, of  course, they couldn’t. Just as the only thing I could reliable be counted on to do in a lab is drop something valuable and make a horrible mess. The outside trappings don’t determine who the people inside actually are. Only character can do that – and we’re only just on the cusp of working out how that all comes about.

 

And, to take it further. Put Person A and Person B in matching jeans and shirts. Strangely enough, they’re still totally different people. So why is it so hard to understand that, though you assume that I, Person A, have a vagina, and Person B, our theoretical butch lesbian biochemist, has a vagina – well, that it means, oh, absolutely nothing? It probably means something personal to both Person A and Person B but, to the outside world – what does it tell us? How does it let us understand someone? It’s just not the outside world’s business.

 

“But Person A,” these people might say (I’m quite enjoying this, can you tell?), “who’s to say that you wouldn’t have been a brilliant biochemist, if you had been supported in the path of biochemistry, instead of seduced into the sordid world of music?” And here’s where I throw up my hands. Who’s to say why anyone is anything at all? I’m a musician because I’ve always been good at it, I’ve always loved it – it makes an intrinsic sense that nothing else comes close to. It doesn’t make me feel “happy” – it makes me whole. Because of always loving it I’ve given it the very best of me, which has only served to strengthen that love. Because of all that work, that devotion, the very nature of my brain has changed to reflect the fact that I’m musician – which it wouldn’t have done if I hadn’t loved it from the very core of me, loved it enough to devote myself to it and bring about that change. If I had been forced to work another job (and I have worked many other jobs) and been stopped from performing it wouldn’t make me good at that other job – it couldn’t make that job my vocation or my identity. Who we are doesn’t work like that. Pour different coloured water into identical glasses and the blue is still blue and the green is still green – even if their containers are the same.

 

Why do we ask people to justify their gender based on a randomly assigned body, when we wouldn’t (or shouldn’t) ask them to justify their interests, their passions, the rest of what makes them unique?

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My thoughts on “My Transsexual Summer”

Well, the online trans community is all atwitter (couldn’t help myself) about the latest trans documentary, Channel 4′s “My Transsexual Summer”. And, being not only an extremely opinionated creature, but an extremely opinionated creature who was involved in part of Channel 4′s ongoing consultancy work with the trans community, I thought I might as well weigh in. So…

 

Cons out of the way first? There were three crucial ones, for me. In the main it was the narrator: not only the language they used, but their actual redundancy. All the usual linguistic tropes we’ve gotten used to drinking on cue to: “becoming a man/woman”, “changing gender” etc. For a programme with such articulate, well-informed participants, the voiceover felt largely unnecessary. Another problem, as many people have pointed out – it would have been nice to see a more ethnically diverse group – and people of different ages. I don’t feel comfortable commenting on diversity of socioeconomic background/disabilities – who am I to know? Finally – can we call a moratorium on the “applying make-up (with mirror!)” shot? Done to death.

 

The pros, on the other hand – I’m surprised to find myself writing this, but I genuinely enjoyed the programme. Maybe I’m just too idealistic, but, to me, it didn’t feel like just a one-off positive programme – it felt like a game changer. The overall feel of it – of hope, of warmth – that felt totally new to me. And hats off to the seven trans people of screen for putting that across.

 

This was trans people speaking for themselves – showing that we know best when it comes to trans issues – what it feels like, what’s best for us. It was our language, our words – our in-jokes (“You boys can shave, and us girls can…shave”). Our experiences with suicide attempts and self-harm – told not in a sensational way but with understanding and compassion. I saw the make-over scene criticised, but I found it touching – because it reminded me of getting ready to go out with my trans male friends – trying on clothes, styling our hair, choosing between ties – giving back to each other a sense of beauty and dignity that the world so often tries to strip us of.

 

Instead of positing the audience as ‘normal people’ being given a chance to pity the ‘freaks’, this felt like the audience being invited to share the experiences of the trans people on screen – as allies. Particularly when instances of transphobic abuse were shown – not only did they feel (as they should) outrageous attacks on people’s sense of safety and self-worth, but they felt unacceptable – not something to be tolerated as ‘one of those things’, but an insult to be rectified.

 

Coming back to the subject of diversity – there were two points in particular that made my day. Firstly was the fact that the participants did have differing views on what constitutes sex/gender, male/female, and how they fit into and/or challenged those systems. That people have different surgical needs. That some trans people, like Donna, are neither men nor women. That there isn’t a standard, one-size-fits-all trans narrative. Secondly, the natural, unforced way in which Maxwell’s Judaism was shown. Wearing a kippah around the house, reading a book on shtetl life – it was a gentle yet powerful reminder that trans people are far, far more than ‘just’ trans. That we come from different communities, traditions, families – the deep and abiding love and connection that so many of us feel for those communities – and what we stand to lose when we open up about who we truly are.

 

So – not, by any means, perfect. But, at least in my eyes – this felt like a beginning. My fingers are firmly crossed for even better things to come.

 

 

 

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Playing a Woman

 

This last En Travesti concert was awesome and unusual in several different ways. And one of those ways was that it was the first time I’ve ever, as a soloist, played a woman. Well, I say that – and then I stop myself, and realise just what it is that I’m saying, and why the thought frightens me so much.

 

Because, for a concert performance, there was no need to be scared. I didn’t have to wear a costume, a wig, lipstick. The performer, of course, has a duty to inhabit the space created by the character – to feel what they feel, to act as a conduit so that the audience can feel those emotions for themselves. But that was hardly a challenge, with Arianna – someone who’s suffered multiple betrayals and nearly cracked under the strain of a broken heart? Like a hand in a glove. Even if it had been staged, if I had been in full drag – well, this is where my love of costume, of performance, or artificiality, runs head first into the memories of what it was like to live in physical persona crafted through artifice, the pain of having that be what the majority of people wanted from me – and the absolute terror that it would, once again, subsume me.

 

There has been a fair amount written about the ways in which many trans women, before coming out/transitioning, push themselves into stereotypically “masculine” careers, ways of living. What a lot of people don’t realise is that the opposite is also extremely common. And, despite my activist work, and the fact that I was out, I certainly fell into this trap, on and off, for the ten years between coming out and having top surgery.

 

I know that some people feel that the gender they were socialised into has had no bearing on their lives. Despite having a very open-minded, gender-neutral kind of home life, this certainly wasn’t the case for me. At school, church, with family friends – I was marked out for not conforming to gender stereotypes and, finally, bullied very badly – for several reasons, but partly because my incipient masculinity (particularly of the body – low voice, large hands and feet, boyish frame, way of moving) was an easy mark in an all-girls school where hyper-femininity was the expected and favoured way of being. I got so used to thinking of myself as extremely ugly and unloveable (the dysphoria helped with that) – that it was a shock when, at 14, I began to experiment with make-up, and pretty hair and jewellery – and was called beautiful. Frightening, too – the first time I was groped in the street was in full daylight, out to buy some groceries – again, 14 – and a drunk man came up to me, pressed his body into mine and whispered ‘you’re fucking gorgeous’ in my ear. But also exhilarating – flirting with strangers, accepting compliments – one night an older gentleman reached out of a restaurant window as I was passing and gave me a flower, because my face had caught his eye. It was a very simple lesson: doors open for you when society calls you acceptable, desirable. It didn’t stop me from hating my body, from feeling trapped – but, hating my skin so much, and feeling there was no way out – why not let other people enjoy it? And why not use it to make my life easier? Our current beauty standard teaches women to view their own bodies as objects. When you have only a tenuous connection with your physical self I believe that this kind of attitude can almost feel normal.

 

If societal approval had been the only reward then I think I would have thrown off that way of presenting at an earlier age than I did. I was trying. I found I was happier binding, chopping off my hair, going back to wearing men’s clothes (that had started when I was 11 – the benefits of being tall). But when we fall in love with people who want to see us in a certain way – I’m going to steal Lacan’s phrase: “desire is the desire of the other”. Being told by the person you love that you’re beautiful, enticing, irresistible – when they’re words you’ve waited your whole life to hear – I wasn’t able to turn that away. Again, being in drag, some of the time, felt like a price I would inevitably have to pay. And so I kept playing this role of ‘woman’, in public: in dresses, in make-up, in high heels. My body could have been a mannequin – I would watch myself from the outside – but I assumed that was how life was.

 

Back to Arianna – having my heart broken, so badly, did help, in a way. Because I had nothing left to lose – and could finally make myself look the way I wanted. But not without disapproval. From so many people in my life I heard variants on the same theme: “nobody will love you”, “why are you mutilating such a beautiful body?”, “but you’re so pretty”, “why would you throw it away?”, “don’t you know how many people wish they could look like you?”. This is one of the reasons I don’t understand trans men who aren’t feminists – because I feel I’ve had a very thorough education in the way the world bases a person’s worth on their conformity to a narrow idea of what beauty should be – and it disgusts me.

 

I know that some people are going to read this and think “Oh, a whiny bitch complaining about being too pretty.” I’m sorry if it reads that way. But the myth that all trans guys were tomboys growing up – that more masculine behaviour in ‘girls’ is more acceptable to society than femininity in ‘boys’ – well, I don’t know. I remember that aspects of my personality that might be called stereotypically masculine were occasionally lauded – but only so long as I had silky long hair, perfect red lips and waxed, stockinged legs.

 

Even if a cage is gilded it’s still a cage. It might look glamorous on the outside, but no-one deserves to be told that their worth lies in being considered fuckable. Not people raised as women who are women, not people raised as men who are women, or vice versa, or something utterly different – nobody, of whatever background, whatever gender.  I guess this is why I wanted to write this – because I know other people who are still struggling in that place, and I wanted to say ‘it can be done’. Slowly, and arduously – but that it’s not impossible, to prefer your own way of being to the role society carved out for you, to find it more beautiful than they could ever imagine.

 

Confession – I would love, some day, to play some female characters – Dido, in particular. But I don’t feel I’m strong enough for it yet. Not to have the character’s costume confused with my actual self, not to have people tell me how much better I look as a woman, how ‘natural’ it is for me. One step at a time.

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Semantics, semiotics and the use of the term ‘nonbinary’

Finding the right words to describe those, like myself, who don’t fit comfortably into traditional male/female genders and bodies is a bit of a tricky business. How do you contain a multiplicity in a single word? How do you indicate an infinite number of divisions?

 

Increasingly, the term ‘nonbinary’ is used as a catch-all term. I’ve been known to use it myself. I have every sympathy with those who use it – it can be useful, and is certainly a step forward in this gradual evolution of discourse surrounding gender and sexes and being. But the niggling semantic/semiotic worries I’ve been having – well, they’ve stepped up. And I don’t think that I can countenance using this term anymore, not with this attachment.

 

As many more accomplished writers could tell you, language not only reflects our realities but, through providing shape, containment, categorisation, begins to change them. What exists before observation and labelling is not the same as what emerges after. And my problem with the term ‘nonbinary’ is three-fold: its shaping of the overall field of gender, its part in the creation of a new dyad, and its lack of flexibility in accounting for the development/privacy of personalities.

 

A binary gender or sex system can only ever contain two options. We either allow (as ample evidence shows) that there are more than two sexes, and more than two genders, or there are not. To that end, all people that acknowledge that there are more than two sexes and two genders will be positioning their own sex and gender within a nonbinary system. Which doesn’t mean that they can’t be men or women – but they are men and women who understand that men and women aren’t the only flavours available. And, most likely, understand that man is not a single being, cut off from and opposing that single being of woman. If I call myself a nonbinary person I am, in effect, implying that there will be binary people – if there are binary people, there is no nonbinary, because a binary allows for nothing more than two.

 

And, to follow on from that – if my goal is the dissolution of binary categorisation, how can I, in good conscience, use the terms ‘binary’ and ‘nonbinary’ as personal descriptions, creating yet another dyadic system? I wouldn’t use dyadic systems in any other form of critical thought or social philosophy, so why in the realm of gender and sex?

 

Finally and, perhaps of greater interest – I’m uneasy with a system that makes assumptions about internal realities based on external signals. Certainly not every ‘nonbinary’ activist does this, but I have seen it done, frequently: that people who look traditionally androgynous as given an easier ride, and people who look more traditionally ‘male’ or ‘female’ are assumed to be so, without question, and without listening. I know many people who live socially as men or women, or who are read as men or women, who feel that those terms are constrictive and inaccurate. People who know that they will sometimes feel more androgynous, sometimes more genderqueer, sometimes more traditionally feminine or masculine – but who are not often included in this term ‘nonbinary’ because they accept elements of social gender norms for expediency’s sake. Which, if we’re being honest, many of us will do, at least occasionally, when the need is great. Or people who have lived a multiplicity of genders before arriving at ‘man’ or ‘woman’ – but who carry with them the people they were, and understand that they may well continue to change and grow as they, well, change and grow.

 

So, there it is. I’m not entirely sure what word I would put in its place. In all honesty I probably wouldn’t put a word in its place. And, to reiterate – I do understand why the term is useful, and I sympathise with those who use it. But not for me, please.

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