On Gender

Last week, I was in a school in western Maryland, and I was bullied by a group of five high school boys for my gender expression. They called me “sir” loudly and offensively, said some rude comments about my clothes, and nudged their buddies to laugh, thinking they would make me feel powerless.

That day, they did not succeed. I brushed off their comments, asked them about the math they were working on, and flew back to my home in Connecticut before thinking about the experience again.

And that is when I began to feel powerless.

I don’t care that they called me sir. I get it all the time, and honestly, I like it. If I didn’t, I wouldn’t dress, act, and do my hair the way I do.

I don’t care that they didn’t understand my gender presentation. They are growing up hours from a big city, in a place that lacks diversity in many forms, and they may not have ever seen anyone like me in their community.

What I care about is that they made fun of a piece of my identity that I myself am still struggling to understand. Their five minutes of joking about the way I looked amplified a gender crisis that I’ve been having my whole life.

So today, on National Coming Out Day, I want to come out to those students, to the people who have felt uncomfortable after calling me “sir,” to the people who have told me that I was in the wrong restroom, to the people who have questions about my gender that they are too scared to ask, and to people who love me but still don’t quite understand my identity. Today, I want to give you all a little more context as to what it means to be Anne Marie.

First, a definition:

Gender: A social combination of identity, expression, and social elements related to masculinity and femininity. Includes gender identity (self-identification), gender expression (self-expression), social gender (social expectations), gender roles (socialized actions), and gender attribution (social perception).

My whole life, I have been uncomfortable with society’s requirement that people fit into one gender or the other (in other words, the concept of gender as a binary). As a four year old, I insisted on dressing in boy clothes and having a bowl cut. But yet I complained to my mom when people said to her about me, “You have such a cute son.” As a teenager, I wore t-shirts, baggy Dickies, and boxers one day and spaghetti strap shirts over short shorts the next. As a high schooler, I had crying fits when I had to dress up for school events because I desperately wanted to “fit in” and look like the rest of the girls (who would wear skirts and blouses), but I was unwilling to shop for girl clothes. As a college student, I wore make up and straightened my hair when I went out with one group of friends, but I donned basketball shorts and ribbed tanks when I went out with another group. When I lived in Washington, DC, I dated women, but I was more interested in dating people whose gender was harder to define because I wanted to learn how to be more like them.

This year, when I moved to Connecticut, I dressed more androgynous than ever, told people it was fine to call me “sir” when they tried to correct themselves, and started attending transgender support groups. I started reading about gender, talking about gender, and exploring gender and how it applies (or doesn’t apply) to me.

What I’ve discovered in all this exploring is that I feel the same way now that I’ve felt my whole life: I don’t feel comfortable as a female, I don’t feel comfortable as a male, and I don’t feel comfortable as both female and male. But I do feel comfortable as something in between. What I have discovered that I didn’t know before is that there are many ways to describe this feeling, and I want to list some of those words (and their definitions) here:

Agender (Also Non-gender): not identifying with any gender, the feeling of having no gender.

Androgyne: 1) A person whose biological sex is not readily apparent; 2) A person who is intermediate between the two binary genders; 3) A person who rejects binary gender roles entirely.

Androgynous: A person who may appear as and exhibit traits traditionally associated as both male and female, or as neither male nor female, or as in between male and female.

Gender Non-Conforming: 1) Gender expression or identity that is outside or beyond a specific culture or society’s gender expectations; 2) A term used to refer to individuals or communities who may not identify as transgender, but who do not conform to traditional gender norms. May be used in tandem with other identities. See also Gender Variant.

Gender Outlaw: An individual who transgresses or violates the “law” of gender (i.e. one who challenges the rigidly enforced gender roles) in a transphobic, heterosexist and patriarchal society. Coined by trans activists Kate Bornstein and Leslie Feinberg in the early 1990s.

Genderqueer: An umbrella term for people whose gender identity is outside of, not included within, or beyond the binary of female and male; 2) Gender non-conformity through expression, behavior, social roles, and/or identity; See also Fluid, Non-Binary.

Gender Variant: People whose gender identity and/or expressions are different from the societal norms; 2) Broad term used to describe or denote people who are outside or beyond culturally expected or required identities or expressions.

Intergender: A person whose gender identity is between genders or a combination of genders.

Non-Binary: Describes a gender identity that is neither female nor male; 2) Gender identities that are outside of or beyond two traditional concepts of male or female. See also: Genderqueer, Fluid, Polygender.

Non-gendered: See Agender.

Queer: An umbrella term representative of the vast matrix of identities outside of the gender normative and heterosexual or monogamous majority. Reclaimed after a history of pejorative use, starting in the 1980s; 2) An umbrella term denoting a lack of normalcy in terms of one’s sexuality, gender, or political ideologies in direct relation to sex, sexuality, and gender.

Questioning: A person is in the process of questioning or analyzing their sexual orientation, gender identity, or gender expression.

Trans*: Umbrella term, originated from Transgender (see below). Used to denote the increasingly wide spectrum of identities within the gender variant spectrum. The asterisk is representative of the widest notation of possible trans* identities. Aimed at promoting unification among gender variant communities by placing focus on gender transgression over specific identity labels, genders, or bodies.

Transgender (TG): An umbrella term describing a diverse community of people whose gender identity differs from that which they were designated at birth; 2) Expressions and identities that challenge the binary male/female gender system in a given culture; 3) Anyone who transcends the conventional definitions of man and woman and whose self-identification or expression challenges traditional notions of male and female.

Lastly, I want to define two more terms. One is transition. Everyone is transitioning all the time. We are never the same as we were a moment before. But for me, transition means something more. Right now, I am transitioning to become more like I feel on the inside, as identified by the words above.

Transition: 1) The coming out process of a trans* person; may be continual or deemed to be a set period of time or series of events; 2) To physically change one’s appearance, body, self-describing language, and/or behaviors in accordance with their gender identity. May be broken down in parts; social transition (language, clothing, behavior, legal documents) and physical transition (medical care such as hormones, and/or surgery).

And last but not least, I want to define the term ally because above all, I am an ally, and I am constantly working to get better at standing up for people who are misunderstood or harassed for their gender identity, sexual orientation, or any other non-normative identities they have.

Ally: 1) Someone who confronts heterosexism, homophobia, biphobia, transphobia, heterosexual and cisgender privilege in themselves and others; 2) A concern for the well being of lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans*, and intersex people; 3) A person who believes that heterosexism, homophobia, biphobia and transphobia are social justice issues.

So today, on National Coming Out Day, I want to come out as agender, androgynous, gender non-conforming, a gender outlaw, genderqueer, gender variant, intergender, non-binary, non-gendered, queer, questioning, trans*, transgender, and as an ally.

I don’t fit into the gender binary, and as a result, my whole life I have been enduring daily microaggressions that have made me feel like I’m not good enough. So if you can do anything on this National Coming Out Day, I ask you for one thing: Please respect me for being me. Even better, educate yourself on how to support, talk to, and interact with people like me. Because we’re not going anywhere, and we need support if we are going to make this world a better place.

Thank you for reading this whole post.

Love and hugs,

Anne Marie