Hey, thought I would post a thing that I wrote for a recent non-binary workshop that Non-Binary Scotland did.
I didn’t know I was trans until I was 19 years old, though I had inklings throughout my life that something was wrong—I just didn’t realise how inauthentic I was being until I stepped out of the closet I was in. I just thought it was my turbulent childhood, or feeling British but living in the US. I felt pressured to grow up into a “young lady” at my posh private all-girls high school in Ohio (I was there on a scholarship); when I discovered that I was attracted to other girls, I felt relieved to be able to step out of the straight-jacket (pun intended). It took going back to Britain, and a few difficult life events, to discover what the problem was. I went to university, wrote “transgender” on the housing form even though I had misgivings, and changed the name I went by after a week. There were a couple of metaphors I used to think about this change: I finally found a platform that I could stand on and call “me.” I let the tiger out that had been snarling in its cage, and it started rolling around in the grass.
It was either the first or second time I went home after that, that I came out to my parents(/aunt n' uncle). We were nervous about my aunt's relatives' reaction, as they are very rural and very Lutheran. In the end, nothing too dramatic happened with my extended family—I did get my most religious uncle recommending ex-gay therapy and wanting to have a chat with me, but generally they write their letters and cards to “Andy” and leave the issue alone. My brother, who came out as gay, got a lot more trouble—but, as I pointed out to my Jehovah’s Witness mother, there’s nothing about taking hormones and calling yourself “ze” in the Bible. Jehovah’s Witnesses don’t even think being trans is sinful, just that we’re deluded and probably caused by lack of correct parental influence.
At first I thought, or kind of assumed, that I must identify as male. Non-binary people confused me and I thought their pronouns were strange. I thought they were just being middle-class and PC. I started taking testosterone—a nurse was supposed to show me how to inject it, but refused on the grounds that I didn’t like being outed in the waiting room and therefore must not really be trans—so I asked around, and a local transguy who I’d never met before showed me how. I had to trust that he knew what he was doing. Hormones made me feel better about myself and let me “pass” more to the general public as something other than female, and also made me less interested in feminine people and more interested in masculine/male ones. Weird, I know, right? Even now, my hormone level seems to influence my sexuality to a substantial degree.
About a year after I started taking testosterone, I came out to myself as non-binary. I realised that being male felt narrow and constraining, too; while when I was being too “female,” I felt itchy, angry, and out of control, when I felt too “male,” the world became grey and depressing. Also, I liked having boobs! So I came out, again, I suppose; fortunately, the environment was supportive, at least among the trans people at my university, so it hardly felt like a transition at all.
It took me years to figure out how to live in this new identity, a task I’m still struggling with. At various points, I decided suddenly that I’d been mistaken, that I wasn’t really trans, that I could live as a woman, and stop taking hormones. In each case, it only took a couple of weeks of mental and physical distress to remind me that that wasn’t true. But we as non-binary people purposefully don’t give ourselves roles to fall into. That is a good thing, but it also leaves us kind of adrift when it comes to social relationships that others have a pattern for.
Last summer, I went to Norway to volunteer on organic farms. I made the decision to be in the closet, and allow others to believe I was female, for the entire time I spent there. For one thing, I was visiting elderly distant relatives, and for another, I was so tired of always having to struggle against the binary. In some ways, I felt more relaxed. People assumed they knew how to deal with me. I was a “normal person” who fit into the system of things. Living in someone else’s house, I felt like I could be a role model to younger women who looked up to me, and that is something important. But, of course, longer term, that would never work. It was a holiday, but it wasn’t me.
There are a lot of difficult things about being non-binary; it’s really very isolating having pronouns and a gender that most people don’t get. There are also some really good things, such as, for me, having perspective on what it means to be in different roles. I have moved through society as female and male, and as neither (though mostly that ‘neither’ meant that most strangers and some friends tried to figure out which one I "really" was.) This is my advice to anyone who wanted to make life as a non-binary person easier: Learn the correct pronouns and try to get them right (practice with other people, practice in the mirror, etc.). Try not to use any gendered language with me/us. And relax. I appreciate the effort. That is the most important thing.
