Multigendered
The trouble with labels is they are a one-size-fits-all approach to what is often a more nuanced and complex matter.
Over the years as the language of gender identity has come out into the open, I have struggled to find the right explanation for how I experience gender. A question I often get is, “What are you?”
A lot of people assume I am transgendered — that I am a woman trapped in a man’s body, but I am not that. I’m far from that.
But what am I?
I haven’t really felt the need to provide the world or myself with that answer. People see my confidence now without realizing the price I paid to get here. I make it look easy. It is not. But I have learned to just be. My human experience does not require permission or explanation or validation for what it is or even what it is not. It just is.
Which brings us back to labels. The label “non-binary” seemed to be the closest match for me, but it always felt a bit off — like a glass slipper that didn’t quite fit. The problem with it, for me, was that while it declared what it was not (not male, not female) it seems to not know what it is (which is valid, which is fine) and I’ve never had any confusion about my gender. I’ve never felt any kind of gender dysphoria.
I am male. But I am more.
I recently had a friend come out to me as transgender and as we talked about where I fit on the gender spectrum, I realized, I’m not non-anything. I am many, and they all live very happily with each other. They get along. They don’t fight (anymore). They have gotten to know one another.
The only conflict I have experienced has come from the outside, telling me who and what I am, yelling at me for not fitting into the mold, and condemning me for breaking their precious rules.
This is what I have to say to everyone who tried and still tries to put me in a box: “Me being more doesn’t make you any less.”
We are continuously learning about the natural world around us — discovering new species almost as fast as they are disappearing due to our destructive behavior as a species.
Will we discover ourselves and have a chance to appreciate each other and express our true selves in all of our beautiful, flawed, human complexity or are we hell-bent in turning everyone into robots? Clones.
There is only one me. There is only one you. And there are so many ways to be — ways that we haven’t believed possible simply because we haven’t seen it before (visibility) and because it has been very dangerous to be different. People hurt and kill each other all the time, all over the world for this.
Let’s be more. More open-minded. More open-hearted. More willing to listen. More willing to try to understand each other.
“If free in the first place, what would the world look like?” — kenshi
