Bee

I really like being non-binary. And I really think it’s an important kind of valuable kind of position isn’t quite the right word, but kind of space to inhabit within the world and to kind of be able to like recognise that there’s quite a big community of non-binary people throughout the world, and also obviously throughout history. But having that kind of, having that kind of, for me it’s a bit of a chink of light coming through the horrible toxic restrictive and quite violent systems of kind of binary sex and gender that have been built around, around us by kind of white supremacist patriarchal society, clinging onto power, and I feel like it’s a place where I can be myself and be comfortable and try to look at the world differently, and understand how things can be different or could be changed and to imagine a more interesting future where all of these kind of binaries between all sorts of different categories and disciplines and areas of life, are less important. And kind of, that’s kind of like the utopian side of it, and that’s kind of, yeah that’s why I kind of identify with it I suppose. It kind of feels like a way that feels like it’s what I’ve, it was, I was like, ‘Oh this is a concept kind of feel at home in,’ after not having, not having a word for it for all that time to. Yeah and then I suppose in terms of making that be visible and how other people see me, is a slightly different prospect, which I think isn’t uncommon for a lot of people, I guess.

Being in a body is always kind of fraught with so many decisions and feelings and kind of things can either be great, or things can be not, kind of, kind of failing you in some way, or whatever, but mostly I’ve kind of reached a place in the last few years where I’m generally quite comfortable in my skin, and I’m just like, “Well this is, this is me as I am at the minute, and you know my body doesn’t define me.” So and I think, I don’t know as well, cos of my area of research being menstruation and people tend to think that the materiality and essen- like essentialist notions of the body are kind of at the forefront of that, but actually kind of, I suppose my, well the way I articulate is that you know we have to recognise that bodies come in all sorts of shapes and sizes, and belong to all sorts of different peoples genders. So, having you know this body doesn’t mean anything, like doesn’t change the way that I feel about my gender, necessarily, apart from the days when it does, but that’s not every day. Yeah it’s a fluctuating thing I think and I guess, though sometimes like on the days where it’s worse, and I feel more uncomfortable or I don’t know it feels like being a teenager again, you know when you’re like oh what’s happened here? I don’t know what this new bump is, or why have I got, yeah? So that’s kind of how I, I guess it is, it’s of, so now I feel like I swing between being quite happy and comfortable, and then being like, “Oh God, does this make me look awkward?” But or sometimes like, “Oh if I wear this to this event, will I look too feminine slash masculine slash, and then I might go hang on I don’t owe anyone a portrayal of being non-binary. I should just do what I want. So yeah, I guess it’s complicated.

So yeah I don’t know, sometimes I have that “are you trans enough” voice in your head, like “am I non-binary enough,” and I’m like, I don’t know what that means. But I guess because I don’t fit into a narrative and I’m not you know, I’m not kind of at the point where I’m considering any kind of more medicalised intervention, and I’m kind of just sitting where I am and figuring it out and being, you know trying to be me as I exist, that that’s not like the, the big switch, the big switcherroo that people expect people to do when they’re transitioning. You know it’s like I was already you know, I already looked like this, I already did these things so there’s no change, it’s just that I’m, so I guess that maybe makes people struggle to grasp my gender identity somewhat, because it’s like I haven’t, it’s not actually any different to how I was before, it’s just that I’m like, you know all these things that I did, they were because of this, and I’ve only just figured that out.

It’s really obvious to me and even though I’m aware of it, and I know that I know what I’m talking about, and I’m confident to you know, in what’s kind of what I need to get out of an appointment, I still find that it can be really intimidating, and there’s a certain, there’s a certain kind of don’t know, mannerism that a lot of doctors seem to have that, and I understand that they’re probably super busy and they’ve seen like twenty patients before you in the morning, but where they’re so business-like and brisk that they often don’t, they’re, they can be quite dismissive of anything that you say, or anything that you ask. Which immediately makes you feel like you’re like five years old getting told off by your schoolteacher, or something. And I’ve found, like when I, when I saw the consultant last, it was really disempowering, cos I knew what was, what I needed to get out of the out of the meeting, but I was kind of ignored, and kind of not, I was kind of, I felt like they were specifically trying to fob me off, and I could feel that in like their, the type of questions they were asking, and the fact that they hadn’t read my notes properly, so I had to query them on things, and I just thought after I walked out, you know, they’re trying to like discharge me completely from the clinic, and I was like if I hadn’t stood up for myself I would have ended up discharged and back at square one, whereas they’ve tried, they sort of half didn’t discharge me and sent me for some more scans and stuff.

She’s been super supportive, and just yeah I mean we discussed it on multiple occasions, and kind of yeah it was discussed in a way that was just completely accepting and part of the conversation. And like there was no kind of, no hint of kind of trying to pry or push me to do anything else, or to kind of pathologize it at all, just like, “Do you want to talk about this? How do you feel?” “Do you want,” you know cos I was talking about, you know, the thing of like I don’t really want to have this like big like party popper going off, coming out thing, can’t everyone just be cool about it? I’ve sent them a memo. Which I guess was a bit unfair maybe, but and she was like, “Well that’s okay, that’s your decision.” And I was like, “Yeah thanks, I thought it was,” So it was, it was nice and she just like gave me the space to talk about it without there ever being a need for it to be any bigger or attached to anything else, or kind of pushed into any other directions. But knowing that if I needed to talk about it more then I could. So, I’ve been quite fortunate with my kind of engagement with, with that.

I guess I would identify as pansexual or bi, cos sometimes when you say pansexual you don’t know what you mean. But then also because I’ve been in a long-term relationship with a cis man, everyone assumes that you’re heterosexual. So yeah it’s a weird one, and this is like a, a kind of an internal conversation that I have and I’m like, well I’m not straight, but everyone will read me as straight so I’m kind of, not in a same sex relationship, but so yeah I guess it kind of, it complicates things slightly, but I’m just like well, I’m with the person I’m with at the moment, not that I’m planning to leave him any day soon, if he’s listening outside this room, but that would be highly unethical, [laughs] but you know I don’t, yeah I guess I don’t, I do recognise that like bi doesn’t just mean binary and bisexual, only that but also I feel like having a broadened term like pansexual is really useful, especially when you’re talking about wanting to broaden out, kind of gender identities and sexualities comes along with that. So yeah just looking at new terms, and then also yeah, figuring out, where you sit, and how you’re read versus like in your context is the thing I suppose.

I’ve found them endlessly infuriating, and in the kind of the way that it’s filtered into different spaces, and debates that I’ve kind of been engaged with, at various points it’s been really, really annoying, which is to put it like as an understatement, where just the constant flow of misinformation, and kind of vitriolic hateful, hurtful kind of discourse, that people, that because the media, and social media, and they’re kind of so intertwined now it’s hard to pull it apart, but you know the, the way that trans healthcare particularly for young people is represented in the media, which then spirals into social media, and spirals into people’s every day conversations, is just so filled with like dog whistles, and factual inaccuracies that I just, I find it so, that they put in enough words that sound, it’s the classic kind of populist tactic isn’t it, putting in nothing, something that sounds like it has a kernel of being reasonable, which it doesn’t, but you know as soon as you go, “We have to protect women,” then it’s like, [gasp] “Do we? Why?” And even though the things that they actually say around that, it’s like of course, no-one wants women to be actually you know in danger, but they’re not.

That it’s okay to not know everything about yourself. And that you might, you might know that you’re trans &/or non-binary, but you might not know all the things that that means for you, and that that’s okay. That you will probably go on quite a long kind of, well I think everybody, like life shouldn’t, life is seen, I don’t know we always frame life as something that we all like get to adulthood, we know what we’re doing, we’re a fully formed person, and we get on with life as an adult.

But actually, we are always in the process of learning who we are, and gender is one of the parts of that that for some people they never question it, but people like us do. And it’s okay to explore that and grow and change and figure out what feels right for you. And it’s okay if you don’t know that, all of that all the time, it’ll come to you.