Me, Myself, They

by Joshua M. Ferguson

  Leslie Feinberg’s Transgender Warriors: Making History from Joan of Arc to Dennis Rodman contained another key to unlock the meaning of being a possible subject beyond the binary. The book showcased a wealth of historical and cultural examples of trans men, trans women, and gender-­nonconforming people (who, if the language had existed then, might have been understood as having non-binary gender expression or identity). Bornstein and Feinberg helped me find the inclusive “they” language that contributed to making the articulation of our identity possible, even if these authors weren’t using “they” at the time they both wrote their books. Jack Halberstam’s Female Masculinity was another source of wonderful knowledge containing proof of gender diversity and illustrating the wide array of possible gender expressions then categorized as “female masculinity.”

  Non-binary people were mostly invisible to me before I found their stories shared in books. Many non-binary people still feel invisible to themselves. Anyone can feel invisible when it comes to parts of who you are; that doesn’t have to be related to gender identity and expression. From the debates raging about gender dysphoria in childhood, and the gender-affirmative care of children, to trans women being recognized as women with the same rights and access to cis women’s spaces and gender-neutral pronouns; to the blue-in-the-face insisting that “there are only two genders” bullshit, we are constantly being juggled and judged by people who act to delegitimize our right to exist and self-identify as we are. We are, in fact, hated by some simply for being who we are. And the cause of this hatred is bigotry because the rationale people use for delegitimizing members of our community just doesn’t hold up to facts, lived experience, and yes, science.

  We all have a right to express our opinions. This book is full of my opinions, housed within my personal stories. But don’t we also deserve basic human dignity and respect?

  I see through the lens of my perspective and my experiences, fully situated in my stories, just as your opinions are viewed through your own lens. Being born in 1982, at roughly the beginning of the “Millennial” generation, has helped me to speak from the edge of this generational perspective while also being aware of how the next cohort, “Generation Z,” is accelerating the conversation around non-binary gender identity and expression.

  Trans people, non-binary people, and gender-nonconforming people are more common than most people think. In 2015, the National Center for Transgender Equality, an advocacy organization for trans people in the United States, published a significant report after surveying almost twenty-eight thousand members of the trans community across America. According to their study, a large component of the trans community (36 percent) identifies as non-binary. In 2017, GLAAD (the organization originally known as the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation), published a study showing that as many as 12 percent of Millennials identify as trans or gender-nonconforming. Another study, from 2016, conducted by one of the leading trend forecasting agencies in the United States, J. Walter Thompson Innovation Group, emphasizes the generational shift that I’ve alluded to among the Millennial generation and Generation Z: the Thompson report showed that 56 percent of the people in Generation Z (known as “Gen Zers”) knew someone who used they/them pronouns, compared to 43 percent of Millennials. Almost half of the Gen Z respondents and about a third of Millennials self-identified as a sexuality other than heterosexual. These respondents identified in the middle range (1–5) on a spectrum of sexuality with heterosexual and homosexual at opposite ends of a scale ranging from 0 to 6 (0 being completely heterosexual and 6 completely homosexual).

  If that’s not enough to highlight the generational shift with respect to gender and sexuality beyond the binary, the University of California, Los Angeles, conducted a state-wide survey from 2015 to 2016 which indicated that 27 percent of people between the ages of twelve and seventeen are viewed as gender-nonconforming by their classmates. This suggests that 27 percent of youth in California (or 796,000) have a gender-nonconforming expression or are viewed to have a gender-nonconforming expression.

  The statistics show that non-binary identity and expression are actually more “normal” and “natural” than we think. But what is “normal” and “natural” anyway? I’ve been taught to stay away from using “normal” or “natural” to describe anything, but I want to turn these words on their head to delve deeper. I want to think about these words in a non-binary way. After all, these words are not universally understood. We have such a simplistic picture when it comes to sex and gender, and what’s “normal” or “natural” is fixed by culture. The boundaries of our humanity are much more complex than what is suggested by the cultural binary of normal versus abnormal.

  What is deemed socially acceptable and typically practised by the majority of people is considered normal by most. Normal is subjective. We don’t all agree on what is normal. It’s up for debate, open to opinion, and it changes over time. How we understand the normal may change, just as our concept of gender changes over time. Normal is a commonality shared among many people that we expect all people to follow. But how we understand normal for human beings is changing. “Normal” marriage used to be straight marriage. Not any more. The “normal” nuclear family structure used to be a man, a woman, and children. Not any more. “Normal” voting rights in North America excluded Indigenous people, black people, and women for centuries. Not any more. What is normal changes, and it should change as society shifts and as we evolve as human beings. The normal is not set in stone.

  “Natural,” on the other hand, is a tricky word. Many would argue that the state of our bodies at birth is “natural.” How we are determined by our essential biological traits is thought of as our most “natural” state. In fact, the transphobic argument that sex and gender are “immutable biological facts” has been used as political agency against our community.

  The way we think about the natural stems from our understanding of nature, but we rarely think about nature beyond the simplistic notion of it that has been constructed for us by our culture. Culture aims to reduce the natural world to understandable terms — to know all there is to know. But nature is much more complex, wild, and free than this. In fact, it is in nature that we find aberrations of the natural, adaptations over time that challenge nature’s supposed “fixedness” — diversity in nature dominates the natural order. Biodiversity provides the evidence for impermanence and species in flux. Evolutionary biologists like Dr. Bruce Bagemihl and Dr. Joan Roughgarden study this idea. Bagemihl argues for the diversity of sexual behaviour in nature in Biological Exuberance, and Roughgarden expanded this work to highlight the ways in which the concept of diversity extends to sex and gender in nature. What I believe is key here is to understand that what we often think is natural (stemming from nature) and normal (from culture) is much more complex and diverse than what we’re taught to believe.

  Culture creates the illusion that we know everything there is to know about the natural world. Culture makes us think about nature in simplistic terms: we are taught to think that “right” and “natural” behaviour is opposed to “wrong” and “unnatural” behaviour. But we can’t possibly know everything about nature based on the categories devised in culture.

  My non-binary identity is a hybrid of culture and nature. The term is excavated from language (culture) coming into being through human subjects, yet I believe its fluidity relates to what exists in nature. The state of being non-binary is just as “natural” and “normal” as not being non-binary. In other words, gender beyond the binary is just as natural and normal as the rigid and narrow gender system of “man” and “woman” that exists in culture around the world. It is culture that has cemented the concepts of “man” and “woman,” which do not exist in nature; “male” and “female” exist in nature because scientists developed this language to make a clear distinction between the external and internal morphology (genitalia) of non-human species. Yet, scientists have made it abundantly clear tha
t sex and gender cannot be understood as a binary.

  In October 2018, 2,617 scientists around the world (including 1,100+ biologists, 180+ geneticists, and 9 Nobel laureates) collectively signed a powerful statement in opposition to any government that intends to define gender identity, sex, or gender in terms of an immutable biological fact or according to a binary. The proposal states, “It is clear that many factors, known and unknown, mediate the complex links between identity, genes, and anatomy.” Further, the scientists note that “legally defining gender as a binary condition determined at birth, based on genitalia [is] fundamentally inconsistent not only with science, but also with ethical practices, human rights, and basic dignity.” Trans, non-binary, and gender-nonconforming people don’t need science to validate our identities; however, when science stands on our side it reaffirms the validity of our existence.

  It is culture, not nature, that bangs the drum of “normal” to make us comfortable, make us the same. But we are not all the same. And, ironically, it is in culture, by drawing from nature, that we are finding ways to resist and reclaim our truth about what is normal and natural. We need to return to nature to reclaim this space.

  I exist in concordance with the wild and the free. I am most comfortable when I’m in natural environments — the earth, the trees, the birds, and the bacteria do not judge me. My hybridity stems from the nature that created me, from the cosmic dust and the micro-organisms that exist in all of us. That is the magic of humanity. We are so much more than the definitions that have been created to define and limit us. That is why non-binary offers such power and potential for us to be free when it comes to gender, sex, and even sexuality.

  I want to offer non-binary as a philosophy that embraces the impermanence that governs our lives. Instead of relying on the stable, we should turn to the wild and free. Nature evolves; it doesn’t remain the same, so why should we? The seasons pass and the cycles repeat with everlasting variation and adaptation. I like to think of non-binary identity and expression as being closely linked with the fluidity and impermanence that can be found in nature. The natural world never stops, it always moves forward. Why should humanity stagnate in terms of how we understand sex, gender, and sexuality? My reconnection with nature paralleled the reclamation of my identity, hidden at my very core — a combination of my body, spirit, and mind.

  How many people abide by a perfect alignment of sex, gender identity, and gender expression according to normative expectations on a daily basis? Most of the people in my life who are cis men and cis women do not perfectly line up with sex and gender in a tidy way. If we truly looked, there would be very few people who, every single day of their lives, continually express and identify with the perfect alignment of masculine/male/man or feminine/female/woman. There are actually infinite variations of these combinations. This is the real natural way.

  Ask yourself: Do you always abide by the very narrow way of presenting yourself as dictated by your gender? Do you behave and identify every day of your life in a way that perfectly lines up with the binary? Upon reflection, has your gender expression or identity shifted at all throughout your life? Some people certainly resonate with a very stable and consistent feeling about their gender, but many people don’t. This doesn’t mean that someone is trans, because being trans is an identity, but it can mean that a person’s gender expression might fall within the realm of non-binary.

  There are absolutely no rules or limits to being non-binary. It is a common misconception that non-binary is a label. Why create another label when there are enough labels? Non-binary isn’t a label but rather an identity that is open and inclusive. The diversity of gender rests on an infinite spectrum rather than either-or categories. So why are non-binary people considered to be a “tiny minority” if the phenomenon of gender diversity, the very plurality and multiplicity of sex and gender, is actually more normal than we think? What will it take for people to understand that sex and gender are more complex and more personal than we have been led to believe?

  Gender is what we make for ourselves, not for other people. Gender is our own. Our humanity is valid in whatever form we assume, so long as we adhere to principles of respect and compassion.

  We don’t have to be or look like everybody to exist; any body is valid.

  The fixed identity categories of “man” and “woman” will never disappear from our society. These identities are valid. Your identity won’t suddenly vanish or dissipate if you open yourself up to the idea that non-binary people exist. Each and every person has a right to identify as a man or woman, just as non-binary people have every right to be who they are.

  Millennials and Gen Zers are increasingly adopting a diverse approach to gender identity and expression and sexuality. Language will always shift and evolve. We find language as we find ourselves. The evolution of our language, and the adoption of terms like transgender or non-binary, opens the space for people to be who they are.

  The number of parents who give their children freedom to identify as they are is increasing. It is a common and rather harmful misconception that these parents are indoctrinating their children into an “ideology.” No parent is telling their child to be trans or non-binary. They are simply allowing their children to come to terms with their own identities rather than telling them who they should be. How is this any different from parents who gender their children in line with the sex they are assigned at birth? How is it different from parents who host gender-reveal parties and begin to socialize children with a gender-designed room in blue or pink and all the toys and clothes that go along with this system of binary-based gender expression? Many parents now are simply acknowledging that gendering at birth, and enforcing the gender that follows the sex assigned at birth, can present children with a significant amount of confusion, challenges, and pain in life. Being born into a gender assignment that was presented to me as the only option opened me up to decades of suffering, so I know very well how important it is to let children be who they are. All you need to do is read my story to realize how much pain is introduced to a child’s life when they are told who to be instead of by who they are.

  When I was born, a gender revolution was already underway in popular culture. David Bowie, Boy George, Prince, and Grace Jones, to name just a few important figures, were all visually deconstructing the gender binary. People framed this gender deconstruction in terms of androgyny. I don’t mind the word “androgynous,” but I reject it when it defines a type of gender-neutrality. My gender is loud, visible, and more complex than anything the term “androgyny” can tell us. But I was born during this cultural moment when androgyny was tolerated and even celebrated on the level of expression and performance.

  The gender conversion therapy with Dr. Turner that I experienced when I was eight was meant to find ways to “correct” me rather than allow me to just be me. When treating trans children today, the medical practice pays a lot of careful attention to a contextual analysis of the child, their symptoms, and their distress. Medical practitioners save lives by providing medical intervention in whatever form of gender confirmation it might take for each individual patient. It is undeniable that children who cannot access this medical care are at an increased risk of mental health problems, self-harm, and possibly even suicide. Suicide is a critical issue for trans youth and adults. Medicine is a lifesaver for some trans kids, and hormone replacement therapy has certainly helped me. But medical intervention may not hold the same answer for all trans and gender-nonconforming kids. Some trans kids need support in other forms, like therapy, supportive mechanisms in their schools, and an environment where their gender diversity is given the space to be explored, where they are celebrated and accepted. If there is one hope I have for this book, deep within the heart of opening my stories, it is this: that no child — cis, trans, non-binary, or gender-nonconforming — will ever be treated inhumanely for being their authentic self. Ever.

  Writing this book has given me space t
o relive my stories. They’ve taken on new life. My stories are more than the traumatic reminders that have haunted me throughout my life. The void of trauma beckoned me beyond what I could remember at first. My trauma is a collection of painful memories across decades. I had to feel the memories once more in my present, at times even remembering events that were not at all accessible to me until I began to write this book. And my writing wasn’t just about remembering; it was also about the need to feel again. Surviving became my priority. But opening myself to the entirety of my feelings, delving into the spirit hidden deep beneath a heart conditioned by dehumanization, was the hardest part of my journey.

  Rediscovering and revisiting the feelings attached to the core of my memories was vital to my storytelling. The many years of suffering made me who I am today. Some of these stories flowed freely from the epicentre of my soul, where I kept everything hidden and safe. And some of my remembering had to come from a careful dissection of my subjectivity from an objective point of view that I found odd. Some of my stories denied that excavation; sharing them was too much to bear. I found myself crying many tears, laughing, and even feeling angry at times. The stories took shape and opened me up to reliving the past as my memories and feelings found space again, morphing into the very words and pages in this book, for once being allowed to exist as a part of my life transformed anew.

  It is a deeply painful practice, indeed, to excavate suffering. I never wanted to live it all again, and it’s no wonder that this exercise met with some resistance. But I had to go back to all the life-changing and life-making moments to share what I believe shaped me as a person. And then, of course, there were the intimate parts that I had kept to myself until now. This was a conscious choice. There are still some stories to tell, but I am not ready to share them yet.