Un-learning the Gender Binary

Identity is a funny thing. It was not something that I had thought about very much until recently, and now it seems to be pulled to the front of my brain on a daily basis. In some ways I think identity is something that everyone is constantly trying to figure out, and I think it has been something resting in the back of my mind for much of my life. There is nothing quite like dating somebody whose identity challenges what most people know and accept to shake up your own sense of identity.

The past few months my brain has been in turmoil to try and figure out what is going on with myself. I considered there to be two central issues to deal with: how I feel to be dating somebody who is genderqueer and how I feel my own identity and sexuality have started to be redefined. All along it has been much easier for me to talk about the first one. After much research and processing, I realized that I could learn to understand enough about Devin’s identity to be comfortable with it, and could care less what other people thought about her, or us. I happily answer questions about what it means to be trans* or about our relationship. When the time comes to talk about myself I often leave it in really general terms or tell people I am still figuring it out and don’t want to talk about it.

I was starting to become comfortable with the idea that I don’t know what is going on with my brain, until I realized that I really do know more than I thought, and know just need to admit that to myself. A couple of specific events in the last week really pointed this fact out to me.

First, Devin asked me how I see my own gender presentation. I was very surprised by this question. For a queer couple, which often talks about gender and sexuality, it took me by surprise that my own gender would be called into question. Even six months ago I would probably be slightly offended by this question, and most likely not understand. My mind was stuck in the gender binary. I considered myself female and did not see it as any more complicated as that. I also assumed myself straight because up to that point I had only had full on crushes on boys and did not find myself sexually attracted to my favorite actresses.

After thinking about it, I realized that I no longer see myself in a purely straight-forward cis-femme way. I see myself as somewhat queer in the gender as well as the sexuality department I suppose. I am trying to allow my appearance to be whatever feels best to me at the moment, which is becoming increasingly butch. I allow my hair to be more natural and wave whatever way it wants to, or often throw on a trucker hat to cover it up. My makeup style has changed, where I no longer feel like I am attempting to paint an attractive woman’s face on my own, but rather touch up my own face. As Devin has put it, my clothing is generally feminine, but the way I put it together becomes almost butch. I like to wear low-cut shirts with suspenders, or baggy men’s sweaters with leggings and boots. I wear my dad’s old brown leather jacket everywhere and have just discovered how much I like lip-stick.

I didn’t find my style to be too much out of the ordinary or even too far from who I had been a few years ago. I had thought of it as a slow evolution of me developing my sense of self and coming more comfortable in my own skin. That was until last weekend. My mom, sister, and some acquaintances from my high school days down in my city and I had gone to see them. An old friend came outside to great me and led me to the room where everyone was. As soon as he saw me, he did a double take and said, “wow, you sure have changed.” Later he again questioned my appearance, asking when my hair had changed and pointed out that my sister had not changed at all. A little while later a former teacher asked if I was wearing a costume (black pants, baggy sweater, and backwards trucker hat) so that my sister would be surprised and not recognize me. Nope, not a costume….just the way I dress.

It was a little bit of a shock to realize how quickly I had changed and how ignorant my own self-perception was. While it still seems like a big and scary new thing, I am really excited to keep exploring this new side of me, and hopefully shock a few more family members along the way. 

Lets talk about sex: consent is sexy

A friend posted this article today and it got me thinking about sex. Granted I think about sex a lot. Sex is awesome. This article, however made me think a little more deeply about just how I feel about sex.

http://queerguesscode.wordpress.com/2013/03/22/un-memorizing-the-silence-is-sexy-date-script/

           This article talks about how it is important to have positive communication about sex. Rather than relying one the girl to say no, she should instead be saying yes. It can be incredibly sexy to ask for consent.

            As I was reading this I kept thinking damn, I get asked for consent all the time….my girlfriend is pretty awesome. Now at this point we both know each other pretty well, know what each other like, and know each other’s boundaries. However throughout our relationship, as we were exploring each other’s boundaries and trying new things we talked about what was okay all the time. If we were in the middle of something she might ask is it all right for me to [….] or if we were just talking she might say I was wondering how you felt about [….]. This gave me the chance to define my limits, let me say no with confidence and think through my answer. By having open communication and asking for consent, whether the answer was yes, maybe later, or no, I feel incredibly respected and most definitely sexy.

            Going into this relationship my girlfriend was much more experienced than I was, and I initially was worried that I would feel uncomfortable or like I was constantly trying to pretend that I knew what I was doing. Since the beginning though we have been able to have open communication about sex and I have never once felt like we did something I wasn’t comfortable with. I was upfront about my inexperience, and she asked me for consent for each new thing. There was quite a few times where I said I wasn’t ready. Once I even said I would try, and then asked to stop when I realized I did not like it. I never once felt pressured; instead it felt incredibly sexy that she wanted to be trying new things with me, but that she was respecting me completely. CONSENT IS SEXY.

            As our relationship has gone on, communication about sex has only got better. During sex we often will direct each other, or ask if the other likes something. Both of us feel comfortable introducing new things to each other, and think about how the other is feeling. Outside of sexy time we will ask about preferences and desires. We joke about sex and can have casual conversations about masturbation and sex toys.

            I do not think my relationship is anything special, in fact I hope it is not. Everyone should get the chance to be in a relationship where they respect, and are respected; because sex should be fun and consent is sexy.

Learning what the hell this "queer" word means

Talking about my own misconceptions about the queer community, what it really means to be queer, and why I am proud to use the word queer to describe myself

Three years ago when I entered college I was incredibly ignorant. Mostly I was ignorant by not recognizing my own ignorance. I come from a liberal suburban city, have a well-educated family, and strive to be well informed myself. However comparing what I now know versus what I knew then, there is no doubt about it, I had no goddamned clue. Of course, I still probably don’t, but one thing I do know now is what it means it be queer.

            At my high school there were certainly gay people, and generally I would say that they were respected and accepted. However, I have come to realize that there was little space for people with other identities at my school. Few people fell outside the gender binary, identified as trans*, or identified as anything beyond the most straightforward definition of the L, G or B. At least that was my impression. Still I thought I was an informed person, I thought I was accepting. Even though I did not have very much person exposure to it, I had learned the basics of what it meant to be transgendered, was in support of gay rights and was happy to say that I was an ally.

            I remember filling out this online form  and being confused by the gender box. I recognized that T meant transgender, and that it was cool that they gave that option, however I did not understand it. I remember questioning why it would even be there, thinking that someone who is trans would naturally just choose F or M based what their preferred gender is. Now of course I realize that some trans* people simply do identify as their preferred gender, but that they might  identify as a trans, queer, androgynous, non-binary or countless different distinct self defined gender identities. Now I realize that those three choices still aren’t enough.

I had many other misconceptions about the queer community as well. One thing I did not understand were bisexuals. I was under the impression that if someone was bi it meant they were gay and just hadn’t admitted it yet. Also, I thought that if someone were gay that they would be absolutely certain of it, and have known their entire life. I thought that to like the same sex meant that someone would automatically be attracted to the stereotypically beautiful actor/actress type, and didn’t consider that attraction could be to a variety of different gender presentations. One of the biggest misconceptions I had though was that queer was a bad word. Even writing down each of these misconceptions makes me feel incredibly silly. Each one of these misconceptions I had disproven in some capacity simply through my own experience.

My first experience with the word queer was talking with a girl freshman year who self identified as queer. It was a word I seldom heard, and thought of as a somewhat derogatory term, so I was a little confused when she used that word to describe herself. She was dating a girl and so I automatically assigned the label lesbian to her, and questioned the fact that she had not done so herself. As it turns out her girlfriend (now boyfriend) is trans*, it absolutely makes sense to me why she would chose to identify as queer rather than chose a most restrictive term such as lesbian, as well as the fact that people should be able to identify themselves however they should chose for whatever reasons.

I too have found myself in a place where none of the labels that society seems to deem acceptable, or at least understandable seem to fit the way that I see myself. I would say that I am confident in my identity as a cis-female, but still find myself questioning gender roles and societal gender norms. I have a girlfriend, who I absolutely see as a girl, but who society still sees as male. Neither heterosexual nor homosexual seem to quite capture our relationship. I have a history of identifying as straight, and being attracted to men, however I am now finding myself attracted to certain women as well. The term bisexual seems to imply that there are two genders, and that one is attracted to both, however there are people who fall outside of the gender-binary, some of whom I am also attracted to.

The more I come into the queer community the more I see that gender and sexuality are much more complex than male and female and gay or straight. I have seen people deal with this issue in various ways, refusing to use labels, using whatever label suits the situation, or listing off a long string of terms to try and define each facet of their identity. Personally I have come to settle on the term queer.

I love the word queer. I love that it has been reclaimed from the hands of bigotry to become a beautiful term of self-identity. I love that it can mean countless different things, and could even be used by the same person in different ways should they chose. I love that it is a positive umbrella term for everyone in the LGBTQ community, which anyone can put himself or herself under if they chose to identify that way. It is such a wonderfully ambiguous word, and I just love it. Each day I can wake up with a new idea of what my identity is, and queer still has me covered. If people question my identity or my relationship I can simply call it queer, and then chose if I want to fill them in more or not. 

My relationship is just that, a relationship
is is weird, difficult and beautiful
not because she is trans*, or we are queer
but simply because it is a relationship

Telling Someone You're Trans*: A How-to Guide

The story of how my girlfriend told me that she is trans*

           I get asked all the time how my girlfriend told me that she is trans*. The simple answer: she just told me, I processed it, and I realized that her gender identity didn’t change the fact that I had a huge thing for this PERSON.

The full story of how we met is in in another post, but the gist is that I had met her, and gotten to know her for a couple of months as a guy, we had kissed, but we were still in the early stages of starting a relationship. She had come to a party that my housemates and I had thrown in celebration of the end of the semester. All night we had been acting like giddy little kids, smitten with each other, holding hands, sneaking looks and smiles from across the room, and finding any reason to touch each other. Eventually we found a chance to go to my room to hang out alone. We start kissing, but she pulls back, looks at me and says “hey, I just want to make sure that you know something about me…..I’m genderqueer.”

 Now at this point my head is spinning slightly. Luckily I am a fairly informed person and knew what this meant, knew many of the basics, and was comfortable with the idea of someone being trans*, however it was not really what I expected in the moment. I think my first response was something along the lines of “I didn’t know that, although I kind of suspected a little”. Then I used kissing as a distraction for a second so I could figure out what the hell I was even thinking. Then I said, “just to make sure I know what you are even saying can I clarify? You are physically male, but see yourself as female?” she responded in the affirmative and asked me what I thought.

I said that “I have never been attracted to a girl before (not strictly true, but that’s a whole different story), and I don’t know what this will mean in the future, but for right now what I do know is that I like YOU, and want to keep seeing where this is going.”

            We left it there for the night, while there were lots of questions to come, we had established a good starting place, and were happy to cuddle the night away. In the morning I think a lot more of the implications had hit me, and I was a little more concerned that there were in fact a few things that were clouding the simple we like each other so what’s the problem concept that we had seemed to be okay with the night before. That morning we talked more about what it meant for her to be genderqueer, and where she thought she was headed with her transition.

At this point I was fairly overwhelmed with the situation I had been thrown into. Later that day my housemate came to my room, and one of the first things she asked was “Is Devin gay or Bi or something?” which opened the door for me to spill everything, and putting it into words made it even more real. I went home the next day for Christmas break and I had a whole week with minimal obligations or distractions where I could process what had been thrown at me, do some research on trans* issues and figure out how I felt about it.

          Throughout this whole process I have considered there to be two main issues related to my girlfriend being trans*. The first issue I have dealt with is learning what it means to be in a relationship with someone who is transgender. It is a long and difficult process for the transgender individual, but there is also a set of corresponding difficulties when it comes being the partner of someone who is trans*. We watch them struggle with dysphoria, discrimination, and transitioning, and experience with them some of the same social stigmas. It is incredibly hard to watch someone you care about experience hardship, and want to change the world for them, but ultimately not being able to do any more than be an open ear. The other side of the issue for me is the way this relationship has forced me to challenge my own sexuality and gender identity. As someone who previously considered herself a straight, cis-female, it was a huge step to start a relationship with a girl who forced me to think about what it means to be outside of the gender binary and sexual orientation norm.

          After Devin told me that she is trans I went through a period where both of these issues (the fact that my girlfriend is trans, and my own identity) were constantly rolling around in my head and I was desperate to find some resolution about them. I did lots of exploring online, read books, and most of all, talked about it a lot. Luckily I have a friend who had just gone through his own process of coming out as gay a few months before, so I was able to talk with him about every concern and new discovery. He was the one who got hysterical phone calls and frantic facebook messages. He heard about all of the new things that were happening to me, and all of the freak outs as little pieces of my personal world crumbled apart.

          In the four months since Devin told me she is trans I have largely reconciled these issues in my head. I at a point where I see Devin as a person, and the fact that she is trans only adds to her wonderfully unique personality. The closer we become the more I see her true self and the more I delve into the brain of this beautiful girl’s struggles and triumphs. I still am very confused about the journey that my own identity is taking, but have come to a point where I am okay not knowing and continuing to discover it.

Such a little thing, such a big thing to be correctly gendered

My girlfriend was gendered correctly by someone who doesn't know us.
I don't think people realize how often gender comes into play. The smallest comment or pronoun can make such a huge impact. I chose to highlight the positive.

Such a simple thing,

...but it made both of our days.