When I was in middle school, I finally got to play basketball on a team. I was obsessed with basketball and would practice for hours every day. As a home-schooled kid, there wasn’t a team I could join at my own school, so I had never had this opportunity before. Team practices and games were the highlights of my weeks. Despite being an outsider (I had joined another school’s team), I was quickly accepted by my teammates because of my abilities. I was an aggressive rebounder, had a fairly high free-throw percentage, and often scored points on steals during games. But I’m not writing this to share my childhood basketball stories, there was something else that happened during this sports season: my first crush.
Up to this point, my mother had always been fairly open about sex. She made an effort to educate my brother and I about sex, safe practices, and consent. The timeline of my childhood years is pretty fuzzy to me at this point, but I know that I had already learned something about homosexuality because my aunt was in a domestic partnership with a woman and my uncle was gay. At this time in my life, I thought that people could be homosexual or heterosexual and that people were either men or women. In my late teen years (possibly not until college), bisexual was added as a third option. It was much later, when I was closer to 30, when I realized that the gender binary is bullshit and that it is impossible to list out every type of sexual orientation and gender identity.
Just like every attraction I’ve ever had, my first crush was very intense. She was one of the top players on the team, and we played well together, often giving each other assists (when a player passes a ball to another player who then scores a field goal). I admired her physical fitness and talent. I thought her gold hair was beautiful, and her face pretty. I enjoyed watching her and thinking about her. I tried to be near her as much as possible during practices. As the end of the season neared, I was sad to think about never seeing her again (since I wasn’t going to the same school, I would most likely not be placed on the same team again in future seasons). I wanted to find a way to make our connection more permanent but was too shy. The season ended and I was heartbroken but without words. I felt a pain I’d never felt before. I didn’t understand what was wrong with me. In fact, I was angry with myself because I didn’t recognize my pain as heartbreak, but rather something pathological. I didn’t know that I was going through typical teenage feelings of attraction. I had already been put into the heterosexual box because I’d previously thought some boy in a movie was cute.
I imagine that many queer folx have similar memories. At least it’s comforting to think that what I went through at the time was perfectly normal for someone like me. When you’re put into a box that doesn’t fit, or when you can’t find a box that describes you, it’s incredibly confusing. I thought I was dysfunctional. I thought I needed to change myself because I was wrong. I always felt like an outsider because I couldn’t find anywhere to belong. There were also always people in my life who felt the need to tell me who I was supposed to be and that contributed immensely to my confusion. I’m 33 years old, and I’m just now owning my queer identity. I really believe that my life-long battle with depression, anxiety, an eating disorder, and self-harm either wouldn’t have happened or would have been much less severe had I been accepted as I was instead of being forced into categories that never fit.
I’m going to tell another story, one from much farther back. I was very young, I believe around 3 years old. This story always makes me feel embarrassed, but I think it provides insight into how I’ve always felt. I had just learned about the words “penis” and “vagina.” I was strongly compelled to justify to my parents that I did not have a vagina, because I was not a girl, and instead I actually had a penis. I wanted them to know that they must have been mistaken because I was a boy. This was not a one-time incident, I repeatedly tried to convince them of this. My parents thought it was funny and maybe that I was confused. Now I know that I wasn’t confused, they were. I may not have had the external genitalia to justify my gender to them, but I was not, and have never been, a girl or woman. I know this with absolute certainty now.
As I got older, my battle with gender intensified. My mother told me I had to dress like a girl. She made me wear “girls’” clothes when we’d go out for dinner at restaurants. She forced me to shave my legs once, and she shamed me for not shaving after that. She made me carry a purse sometimes too. I was so angry about all of this. I easily identified the unfairness of these practices and asked why I had to do these things when my brother did not have to. I began to hate my body which had betrayed me by causing others to impose these patriarchal standards on me.
Getting my period was one of my worst memories. I just wanted to be treated like one of the boys, and now the adults around me had another way to justify treating me differently. When I was 18, I learned that I could use birth control to stop my period, and I immediately went to Planned Parenthood to obtain a prescription and have never stopped since.
It wasn’t long after puberty that I became desperate to be seen as something else, anything but “woman.” I went through my room and threw out anything visible that would make my room look like a “girl’s room.” I often dressed androgynously, wearing clothes that could be described as punk or goth (I never intentionally tried to be goth, but I liked wearing black because it seemed as far away from feminine as possible). My mother told me that I’d probably gain weight and get curvier because my aunts have curvy bodies and larger breasts. I was terrified of being further betrayed by my body. I became adamant to never let my body get curvier and to control the way my body looked in any way I could. I fantasized about having a mastectomy ever since my “breasts” were pointed out to me by adults in my life at this time. It seems to me that adults in my life had an inappropriate level of interest in various parts of my body.
Thus began my eating disorder. I lacked control in many areas of my life, but at some point around 15, I realized that I could regain some control by not eating. I started leaving dishes in the drying rack every morning so my family would think I’d eaten breakfast. At some point, this extended to lunch too. Whenever possible, when I could hide it, I’d skip meals. The more I deprived myself of food, the more likely it was that I wouldn’t develop the feminine curves my mom had predicted. I also knew that not eating would stop my period, the too-frequent and painful reminder of my incorrect body and my self-hatred. My eating disorder was also a form of self-punishment. I thought I was wrong, aberrant, because that’s the message that the adults around me upheld.
In addition to depriving myself of food, I started working out obsessively. I made an impossible-to-maintain plan of jumping rope for 10-minute intervals six times per day in addition to strength training nearly every day and rollerskating for 1-5 hours per day. Not surprisingly, my eating disorder culminated in me nearly having to be hospitalized. Fortunately, the fear of having to be hospitalized and permanently damaging my body was enough of a wake-up call to make me realize that I needed to do something different. I realized that working out and participating in athletics allowed me to not only appreciate my body for once, but it also allowed me to change the way my body looked, to an extent. I started eating so I could build muscle. I focused on bulking up my arms and back, which continue to be the only parts of my body that I like. My eating disorder isn’t “healed,” but I now have strategies for managing it when I feel compelled to not eat.
While I was navigating my gender dysphoria, I was also struggling to find my place in the world of dating. By the time I was an undergraduate in college, I had added “bisexual” to my list of options. The definition I had first learned was “attracted to both men and women.” This new category didn’t feel right to me at the time. I also was fairly private about my sex life and didn’t feel the need to share much with most people, though I was open about long-term romantic relationships. I recall being asked about my sexual orientation a few times, and I thought I was being clever by saying that I was “non-sexist.”
I often struggled to find people to connect with, romantically and platonically. I know my autism impacted this, but the most common reason others gave me had to do with my appearance. I was often told that if I just presented in a more feminine way, smiled, wore more colors, [add in more patriarchal bullshit], then I’d get a boyfriend. They were so wrong, but it hurt because they were telling me that I had to change who I was to be loved. I’ve internalized that I am innately wrong and continue to struggle with self-confidence. If someone disagrees with me, I often immediately think I must be wrong, they’re right because I’ve been conditioned to think that way. These ubiquitous comments were and still are incredibly harmful to me, and unlearning the unhealthy habits they trained in me will be a lifelong challenge.
It wasn’t until grad school that I found out there were other people like me. I had moved to the bay area for my grad program, and I quickly felt much closer to finding somewhere to belong. When I told someone that I was non-sexist in response to a question about my sexual orientation, they replied, “Are you pansexual?”. I had never heard of this before, but when I looked up the definition it felt like me! Pansexuality was first defined to me as not having a preference for a particular gender (some people define it as an attraction to all genders, but I like to use the former description for myself). I have never understood society’s obsession with categorizing people according to their external genitalia, and I feel the same way about people I’m attracted to. I don’t care at all what genitals they have, I just care about who they are as a person.
There’s another story that was developing during my college years. I had a very close friendship from childhood that turned into something more. She was my best friend and we explored a physical relationship at one point. I knew that I loved her but my confusion with my orientation, and possibly her own confusion, made it impossible for me to understand the type of love I felt for her at the time. I wanted all of her but never knew how to tell her. I didn’t know how she could fit into my life and my mis-classified identity. I also thought my love was unrequited. We both were only open about our long-term romantic relationships with men despite having private intimate encounters with women. I used this to justify to myself that I couldn’t tell her how I felt because she didn’t really want a relationship with someone who wasn’t male. Now I realize she could have said the same about me. We ended up having a falling out. She broke my heart. I often wonder how things would have been different if we’d understood our identities then.
In my late 20’s, I felt overwhelmed. Something wasn’t right in my life. I started talking about my gender dysphoria during late nights of drinking. Finally, I came across the terms “genderqueer” and “nonbinary,” which were introduced to me one night at a bar in SF by a gay, cis-gendered man. Just like when I heard the term “pansexual,” I felt a sense of relief. I felt validated. I felt like maybe I wasn’t all wrong and maybe I could even find a community where I belonged.
It still took me years to talk (more) openly about being nonbinary. It’s been a very slow journey. Many people along the way have also felt the need to tell me that I’m actually cis-gendered, citing various things about my appearance to justify their reasoning. I think this quote by a fellow nonbinary human Alex Campbell really sums up the reason behind how I present myself: “The person that people know is the person that had to be developed in order to stay safe.” I was told that I would never find love, never get a job, never find success, [add in everything in life that someone might want], unless I presented as a woman, and by “woman,” they meant what the patriarchy defines as “woman.” Femininity and masculinity are social constructs, not innate characteristics of vulva-owners and penis-owners. I don’t like using these terms because I think they serve to uphold false ideas about gender and sex. My journey with gender has been challenging and confusing from the start, riddled with lies presented as facts, and I’ve repeatedly been punished for deviating from my assigned gender. If you’re cis-gendered, there are parts of this journey that you simply cannot understand.
At first, I thought I could be happy just keeping my identity to myself and my closest friends. However, my tolerance for being referred to as a “woman,” began to decrease until I just couldn’t take it anymore. I started using they/them pronouns, as a first step. Most people in my life still choose to refer to me as she/her, though, which hurts. If someone just makes a mistake but corrects themselves, that doesn’t bother me (I know I’ve messed up other people’s pronouns unintentionally too before), but some people just seem to not believe my identity. It makes me feel erased. Sometimes it leads to me questioning my mental health and wondering if I’m just losing it. I usually know this can’t be true, but it certainly adds to my confusion.
I hesitated to share my story for a long time. I’ve never publicly “come out.” I never really even came out to my parents, I just told them to stop calling me “daughter.” I suppose they knew me well enough to immediately realize what I was trying to tell them. I also recognize that I often pass as cis-gendered and heterosexual, and I receive privileges from this miscategorization. This point is probably what has delayed my coming out the most, at least after I figured out my identity for myself. I don’t want to take up space in places where there are others who do not have some of the privileges that I have. Overall, I would describe my queer journey as a lonely, internal struggle that most people in my life are completely unaware of.
Recently, I felt myself slipping back into old, negative habits, remnants of my life when I was much less functional. I’ve also been feeling incredibly lonely. Not that I don’t have people to hang out with sometimes, but I don’t have people to talk with about the issues that come up for me, as a queer person, on a daily basis. I want to be in spaces where my identity is validated. I want to talk to other people who are thinking about top surgery. I want to be in a place where it is safe enough for me to really figure out who I am and who I want to be.
So here it is: I am a nonbinary, pansexual human. If you don’t understand, that’s fine, but please keep your confusion to yourself instead of adding to mine. If you’re queer too and want to connect, I’d love to. Thanks in advance for respecting my identity.