Gender is Cumbersome, But it Keeps me Safe

Hey, my name is Danny. I'm 27 years old and non-binary: not a man nor a woman. Just a person, or an alien attempting to fit in with the rest of the persons. Honestly, that's what it feels like most days. The problem with society is that everything needs to be labeled, and everything that isn't labeled is considered strange and confusing. I never understood this compulsive need of society to put expectations on things. We label clothing, people, media, objects. When I grew up and became more acquainted with life, I realized this need for labels stemmed from the need for control. As a species, we're often scared of things we don't understand. We feel threatened by them, and hesitant to have an opinion. But instead of trying to learn, we stick to what we know, and blame everything else for causing us confusion.

I've always known I wasn't a girl - though, as a small child, it was impossible to put a name to this feeling. Sometimes I think it'd just be easier to be binary: a man or a woman, if you will. When I had my son, I noticed more and more ways that society conforms to labels, and I've despised society since. In a world where everything is gendered, I feel foreign. How can I be ungendered if everything else is one or the other? This insistence of sorting into boy and girl does nothing but force cisnormativity and further oppress the gender diverse community.

Growing up, I found it easier to live as my assigned gender, despite it causing me suffocating anxiety and dysphoria. I never knew what this word meant: dysphoria. Not until I was in college, and I finally put a name to the way I'd felt my whole adolescence. As a kid, I was referred to as a tomboy - though I hate this word, and all that it conveys. I refused to wear dresses, or makeup or nail polish; I liked baggy clothes and muddy puddles and hanging out with boys. As a preteen, I'd dress up in casual clothing and pretend to be a boy, just having fun, I'd say to anyone who questioned. The problem with gender is that it forces humans to choose a box, to live within a constraint like some old-fashioned animal. That isn't where we belong.

In public, I rarely use the restroom. I'm no stranger to standing outside the doors, battling with inner turmoil while attempting to subject myself to labels which don't fit me. In private, I get bombarded with hate over my son's presentation, as though allowing him to be gender non-conforming is abusive and cruel. I think what's cruel is to pressure a child into behaving and living under labels based on things as arbitrary as body parts. There's no correlation between gender and biological sex, and trust me, I've heard all the arguments that say there is.

Living as my assigned gender allows me to get by relatively unquestioned, but it puts me on edge. At twenty seven, I've grown tired of living in my factory default body. I've grown tired of behaving and dressing in ways that are peaceful instead of authentic. I've always thought it important to teach children to be their most authentic, happy selves, but it seems a bit hypocritical to say when I can't do it myself. My child, who was assigned male at birth, is six years old and identifies as a boy and a girl. It's not the 1950's, and gender is made up. There's a lot of strange misconceptions about presentation and clothing. A man who dresses in feminine ways is seen as flamboyant or gay, and not a man who just enjoys expressing himself. A woman who looks masculine is not really looked at as a woman at all.

I am not to be determined by my clothing. I am not a toy, to be sorted into boxes and stifled. The problems with gender, for me, began at a very young age, and becomes reaffirmed every time my child is treated badly for not being boyish. What does it mean to be boyish, anyway? His favourite book, which we read every night before bed, is called Jacob's New Dress. As a little boy who loves dresses, my son is sometimes pointed out in public, and this makes him sad. It's hard to explain to a child why society is so ruined, and truthfully, I've sheltered him a little. When I was a kid, I was sheltered too.

Recently, I finally got an okay from a doctor to begin hormone therapy, a process which will both reaffirm my gender and comfort me. Even with this, there will be confusion. Even now, people holler to me on the streets, demanding to know if I'm a man or a woman, and finding it impossible to fathom the possibility of being anything else. Sometimes I try to educate, but humans are stubborn, and sometimes unwilling to open their minds to things they've never experienced. Kids are not born bullies, or racist, or entitled. They learn from what they see and hear at home.

I'm excited to begin my hormone journey, and I know what I wish to achieve. As a person who was assigned female at birth, I don't want to look like a woman. I've grown exhausted and sad by the girly's and miss's and girlfriend's. I think it's silly and exclusionary to think of gender in terms of binary, or to say that someone looks like a man or looks like a woman. The truth is that a man can look exactly the way he pleases, and a woman can look exactly the way she pleases.

There's a lot to look forward to: subtle changes, more self-esteem, finding myself. But there's also a lot to fear, because those changes won't just involve me. After starting hormones, I know there will be backlash, and I know it will frustrate me. I'm beginning to learn that those who do not accept me are not obligated to a relationship with me. I don't have to speak to my grandmother, who refuses to call me by my chosen name, or to my aunt, who insists she's disrespectful to everyone, and not just me. I have spent enough years hiding in the shadow of my true form, and now I'm ready to shapeshift.

As a person with chronic anxiety, I feel I have a lot to worry about. I worry that my partner, who isn't attracted to men, will decide I look too much like one, and withdraw his attraction to me. I worry that my son, who already feels self-conscious, will be picked on for having a parent that looks like me. I worry that my family, who are bigoted and conservative, will decide they don't agree with my ways of raising my child, and try to take him from me. Most of the time, I know that my anxiety is irrational, that there will always be bullies and we will always for ostracized for something, be it our clothes, personality, gender. I know that my happiness is worth more than the comfort of anyone else.

The point is that there is so much more beyond the binary, beyond man and woman, and all are valid. I wish society, as a whole, would stop forcing their meaningless standards onto those who are different and learn to acknowledge and accept.