Open and Honest

“Gender fluidity is the ability to freely and knowingly become one or many of a limitless number of genders, for any length of time, at any rate of change. Gender fluidity recognizes no borders or rules of gender.”

Kate Bornstein, Gender Outlaw

“um… What’s the name of the word for things not being the same always? You know. I’m sure there is one. Isn’t there? There must be a word for it… the thing that lets you know time is happening. Is there a word?”

“Change.”

Delirium and Dream, Sandman VII, Brief Lives, by Neil Gaiman

I came to Divinity School in tank tops from Victoria’s Secret, skinny girl jeans, always-polished fingernails.

Now, I wear shirts and ties, baggy jeans from Express for Men, sweater vests and men’s dress shoes. I have packed away the girl clothes, and started wearing a binder. I have trimmed my nails and lopped off more than 12 inches of hair.

I sat down this week to define Gender Queer for a speaking engagement that I have coming up, and I realized just how much I have changed.

I also realized just how differently I use words than I used to, and how I use them differently in different situations today. My friends know me as Trans, with an understanding that that doesn’t include the idea that I will do a big T transition some day. I don’t foresee a future in which I start taking testosterone or surgically alter my body.

However, as I prepare for this speaking engagement, I realize that I am not entirely comfortable with the label Transgender, as it is used today, in the circles in which I move.

Here’s how they break down in my head:

Transgender involves feeling like a different gender than your biological casing is. Whether this would lead to surgery or not is not essential to the definition, but a definite feeling of some type of gender and a biology that doesn’t match seems essential.

This is not who I am. This is not how I feel.

Gender Queer is a looser term in my head, including all of us who don’t perform a gender in a specific way. These could be men who are not traditionally “masculine”; butch women; or people like me who don’t wish to identify with one gender or the other. We are the no man’s land of gender. We are the ones who don’t fit into left or right, “masculine” or “feminine”, “he” or “she”.

The problem is, no one knows what you mean when you say you are Gender Queer. No one knows what you mean if you choose to be called ze instead of she or he.

We live in a society that needs to label. We are labeled from birth and continue that way through our entire lives – not only with labels others give us but labels we give ourselves. We are gay, straight, male, female, Christian, Jew.

Frequently, we pick these labels without really thinking about what they mean.

I find that I have done this with Transgender and Gender Queer, with the pronouns that I choose to use. I call myself Trans because it is easier than the constant explanations. I choose he because it is easier than trying to teach people a third set of pronouns, that don’t include gender.

I am getting ready to speak at a university, openly and honestly, about what it means to be who I am – in light of not only gender, but also sexuality and faith. I have been asked to do this because I am vocal and (usually) clear about who I am and how I feel.

As I prepare I find that I am not as clear as I would hope to be, that I am not as honest in fighting for who I am as I thought I was.

I find that I have to struggle for honesty in who I am and what I label myself, and from there I have to push for honesty in what I allow other people to label and call me – even with the repetitive explanations, even with the struggle that it will take to teach people new pronouns.

If we are to live openly and honestly, we must do so by being open and honest about the language we choose to use. Just as we must deeply mean the words of the prayers we speak, we must deeply mean the words we use to describe ourselves. If we wish to deconstruct the labels, it begins with open and honest construction of them.