Tag Archives: nonbinary

LGBTQIA, Trans

Some good news for non-binary folks

[Image: A sign with multiple gender symbols and the words “Inclusive restroom.”]

Here in the state of California, a couple of positive legal developments emerged recently that are of particular interest to people with non-binary gender identities like myself.

The first bit of good news is about restroom access. On September 29, Governor Jerry Brown signed what is known as the “All Gender” Restroom Bill, requiring single-occupancy restrooms to be accessible to people of all gender identities. This development is long overdue. While I’d personally prefer that all restrooms be gender-neutral, there is no reasonable argument for gendering single-occupancy facilities.

Opening up these restrooms will benefit not only non-binary people, but many others as well. Some examples: Binary trans people who do not “pass” as cisgender; cisgender people who are often misgendered due to their appearance (butch women, for example); and caretakers of people of a different gender (children, elderly, disabled) who require assistance to use a restroom.

While no one should be policed for using facilities that most closely match their gender identity, offering gender-neutral spaces provides an additional measure of safety and comfort. I look forward to a time when people in all states (and countries) realize that we all just need to pee.

The second bit of good news is about legal identification. On September 26, Sara Kelly Keenan became the second U.S. citizen and first California resident to obtain legal non-binary status. Keenan, who uses she/her pronouns and identifies as intersex “both as my medical reality and as my gender identification,” followed a precedent set in Oregon this June by Jamie Shupe, a non-binary transgender person. Keenan was represented by an attorney from the Intersex & Genderqueer Recognition Project, which is working to get non-binary adults the right to self-identify on legal documents.

A couple of things are important to note here. Most intersex people identify as male or female, not non-binary. Including intersex in the LGBTQIA or similar acronyms is controversial. Some intersex people want nothing to do with the trans liberation movement; they simply want to end nonconsensual infant surgeries and other damaging practices. Also, many non-binary people, including Jamie Shupe and myself, do not identify as genderqueer. (Shupe prefers not to be referred to with any pronouns, but will accept singular they.)

For Keenan, Shupe, and other non-binary people, there’s still a long way to go; it is not currently possible to get a non-binary driver’s license or passport in the U.S., for example. For this and other reasons, I will not be seeking to change my own legal identification from male to non-binary anytime soon. Even if I do ultimately gain legal recognition as agender, that won’t stop me from being misgendered constantly on the street. As with my birth certificate, a court order is a government-issued piece of paper that has limited use in an everyday context.

Regardless, these are positive developments, and a nice break from depressing election coverage. I look forward to more progress in non-binary gender recognition. Reminder: I will be speaking about trans and non-binary issues this weekend at WikiConference North America.

LGBTQIA, Veganism

Prince: Not vegan, still awesome.

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I was as shocked as everyone else yesterday to learn of the death of the legendary musician Prince, at the untimely age of 57. While I was growing up in the 80s, Prince’s music and music videos were in constant rotation on the radio and MTV. Although I only bought a couple of his albums myself,  I appreciated his amazing musicianship and fierce individuality.

So it is with some trepidation that I must point out one “fact” about Prince that many of my friends on social media are sharing is actually false. Prince was not a vegan. He was a vegetarian. Hear the man say this in his own words in a 2011 interview with George Lopez:

Despite not being vegan, there’s no doubt that Prince definitely spoke up for non-human animals. As the link notes, he openly shunned wool and leather in addition to flesh and cheese. But he was not opposed to all dairy products; he drank yak milk with the reasoning that “It is given freely by the yak, so U can truly enjoy it.” He also enjoyed snacking on cookies that contained milk and honey. [Update: See note on this below, under Edit, 4/24.]

Some will decry my words as excessive “vegan purity,” but I feel it’s important to point out that drinking animal milk isn’t vegan regardless of what animal it comes from (with the exception of human breast milk for human children, which can indeed be “given freely”). Besides, as shown above, Prince didn’t even describe himself as vegan, so it really isn’t appropriate to put that label on him, post-mortem.

Another danger of describing someone as vegan when they aren’t is that people who are convinced vegan diets are deficient or dangerous will latch onto any disease or early death as an excuse to bash veganism, independent of the actual composition of the diet or other factors. (See also: Steve Jobs.) Veganism is not a diet, and vegans can and do get sick. But most people in the USA do see veganism as just another dietary choice at this time, so it is not helpful to give conflicting information regarding what vegans eat.

Again, being non-vegan does not diminish Prince’s legacy, either as a musician or as a spokesman for the animals. Regardless, we should not be looking to celebrities as role models for veganism anyway, even in the black community. There are plenty of black vegans from all walks of life to connect with, including struggling artists who could use your support. We don’t need to falsely or mistakenly attribute veganism to black folks like Prince or Alice Walker (whose oft-repeated quote about animal rights is taken out of context) to convince others to go vegan.

As an aside, Prince also did not publicly label himself as genderqueer, genderfluid, or otherwise non-binary. By all accounts, he never openly identified as anything but a straight cisgender man. A man who gave no fucks about conventional masculinity (whatever that is), but a man nonetheless, song lyrics and clothing style notwithstanding. (Non-binary bloggers on The Orbit and Medium also wrote on this subject.)

Let’s celebrate Prince for what he was: An amazingly talented, passionate, groundbreaking musician, who deeply cared about animals in his own way.

Edit, 4/24: A commenter pointed out what I failed to notice, that the “What’s in Prince’s Fridge?” article linked to in the paragraph about yak milk was posted on April 1. Whether that was an April Fool or not, my point still stands based on the 2011 video of Prince being asked “You’re a vegan?” and responding “Vegetarian.” As I noted in response to comments below, if anyone finds a more recent statement from Prince himself saying that he is a vegan, please post a link to it here.

Edit, 6/3: Since this post keeps getting hits: Prince did describe himself as a “complete vegan” in a 1997 Vegetarian Times interview. So as I suspected, it appears that he was indeed vegan for part of his life, but not in the years immediately prior to his death.

Trans

Gender-neutral shopping fantasy

Today, artist Sophie Labelle, the author of Assigned Male who I featured in my International Women’s Day round-up, posted a link to a Manic Pixie Nightmare Girls comic which  perfectly illustrates what’s wrong with so-called gender-neutral fashion. In short, gender-neutrality and androgyny are typically associated with female-assigned people wearing conventionally masculine clothing. Some formalwear shops have launched that cater to transmasculine people, but non-binary femmes are pretty much invisible.

As for me being agender has nothing to do with fashion, the discussion on Labelle’s page got me thinking about what kind of clothing or department store would make me feel welcome. As I’ve mentioned I absolutely hate going shopping, especially now that I’m faced with exclusion and erasure everywhere I go, so a truly gender-neutral shopping environment would be a welcoming space for people like me.

Such a store might feature:

  • Clothing separated into categories, not genders. i.e., pants, skirts, dresses, shoes, underwear, casual/formal, kids/adults
  • Handy size conversion charts (i.e., U.S. women’s shoe size 8 = men’s size 6.5 = European size 39)
  • Model photos and mannequins representing diverse body shapes and races
  • Gender-neutral single-occupancy restrooms and dressing rooms
  • Staff trained to say “May I help you?” and “Thank you, have a good day” without adding “Ma’am,” “Miss,” or “Sir” to these sentences
  • Staff trained not to read a customer’s name out loud off of their credit card or ID at checkout (important to respect privacy and avoid outing stealth trans people)
  • Bulletin board or table spotlighting local resources for trans people

You get the general idea. It would be so nice to walk into a clothing store that didn’t segregate merchandise into Men’s and Women’s, with no acknowledgement that non-binary people also exist.

Cissexism, Trans

Climate of hatred and fear

I have witnessed or read of a number of cissexist micro- (and macro-) aggressions lately that have bothered me to the point that I’m just going to spill them all out.

  • Since Caitlyn Jenner – a rich white conservative Republican woman – has made statements that she likes Ted Cruz and that Donald Trump would be “very good for women’s issues,” cissexist people who (understandably) hate her views have misgendered and deadnamed her in response. Many of these people likely consider themselves to be liberal or even progressive, yet think it’s OK to strip someone they don’t like of their authentic identity.
  • Since filmmaker Lilly Wachowski was harassed into outing by The Daily Mail, Chelsea Manning has come forward to say that she too was outed without her permission. This hit me especially hard as I announced my own transition the day after I learned about Manning’s, and didn’t realize at the time that she was not consulted about the timing of her own revelation.
  • In a recent conversation with a US-American woman who had lived in India for several years, I mentioned that the country was the first to grant legal recognition to non-binary people: The hijra. (Though I noted the sad irony of a country being progressive on trans issues while still criminalizing homosexuality.) The woman spoke of hijras positively, but referred to them as “men dressed as women.” I explained that they are not men, they are hijras; that was, in fact, the point of the law recognizing them as a “third gender.” She said that she meant “genitally.” I knew she didn’t mean any harm, but I was very upset by this all-too-common statement of biological essentialism.

During the question period of the talk with Julia Serano this week, I asked her how we could best counter transphobic bathroom bills. I mentioned that I used the word “transphobic” rather than “cissexist” here consciously, because these legislators are creating a climate of hatred and fear, specifically to paint trans women as sexual predators. She seemed optimistic, especially in the wake of the South Dakota veto, that cis people are starting to “get” trans people, and push back against this discrimination. I am not so sure.

Since the year 2013, not a day has gone by that the gender binary has not been foremost on my mind.  If you’re cis, I hope you appreciate what a privilege it is to be able to ignore it.

Cissexism, Trans

Non-binary erasure at the Oscars

[Image: Side view from the seats of an empty Paramount Theatre, Oakland.]

I’ll admit it: I love having on-demand access to hundreds of movies and TV shows through Netflix and Amazon Prime. Thanks to these services and my increasingly introverted nature, I haven’t set foot in a movie theater in over a year. But as much as I enjoy watching and re-watching old favorites, I haven’t been particularly interested in new productions, so I haven’t watched any award shows in quite some time.

I have been keeping up with social media, however, so I’m well aware of the controversy surrounding the inadequate representation of black and trans people like myself at the Academy Awards. The predominance of white Oscar nominees, and the awarding of transgender roles to cisgender actors, are important issues. But another concern of mine as a non-binary person is the continued insistence that acting categories be divided into “male” and “female.” This division erases non-binary people who do not identify as either of those categories.

A recent article by Claire Fallon in the Hufffington Post addresses this issue, though more from a standpoint of male/female gender equality than non-binary advocacy. Non-binary people are mentioned, with one example being Ruby Rose, a cast member of Orange is the New Black (one of the few current shows I watch and enjoy). While Rose (who uses she/her pronouns) is genderfluid, I would hazard a guess that she would not currently object to being categorized as female for the purposes of an acting award. Other actors may not be so accommodating.

In Fallon’s article, gender writer Vanessa Vitiello Urquhart makes a case for eliminating gendered award categories, but also notes that there aren’t many non-binary roles to play. The fact that most characters are written as men or women should also be addressed, but isn’t really the primary concern here. Non-binary people can play the parts of men and women even if they don’t identify as men or women themselves. In fact, most of us do this all the time, just to get by in a world that doesn’t acknowledge our existence.

As a Wikipedia editor, I encountered an example of this enforced gendering of acting categories shortly after my own gender transition in the summer of 2013. I noticed another editor was assigning “Male actor” and “Actress” categories to numerous pages, including one that I had edited. I asked why this was necessary, and he pointed me to a discussion on the issue. The argument here was that as many women now prefer referring to themselves as actors rather than actresses, there was a need to create a specifically “male actor” category. Commenters noted that acting is an inherently gendered profession, as men play male characters, and women play female characters (though of course, we’ve seen this repeatedly thrown out the window when cis male actors are cast as trans women). Again, the thought that an actor might be neither male nor female was not seriously considered.

Whenever this subject has come up, some people have argued that if gendered categories were eliminated, men would dominate the awards. While sexism is very real and this is a legitimate concern, it doesn’t change the fact that non-binary people are still being erased. As awareness of our existence grows, it’s only a matter of time before a non-binary actor is cast in a role that receives enough attention to merit a major award nomination. If that person is someone like Tyler Ford, who is agender and quite adamantly neither a man nor a woman, Hollywood is going to have to confront this issue. It isn’t fair to make us either bury our authentic selves or face exclusion.

Coping with constant erasure in a relentlessly gendered world really wears me down. While legal recognition of non-binary people may be a long way off, de-gendering acting awards would be a small step toward recognizing that not all of us fit into our assigned categories.

Edited to add: Shortly after publishing this essay, I realized that some might object that my statement that non-binary actors can play binary characters is hypocritical, considering my criticism of cis actors being cast in trans roles. However, I believe there is a significant difference between these scenarios for several reasons. First: Casting cis male actors as trans women – the most typical example – plays up on the transmisogynist “man in a dress”  stereotype. Second: While writers have created countless binary male and female characters, few specifically non-binary roles exist at this time, so it would be unfair to limit non-binary people to playing only those parts. Third: Non-binary people, like all trans people, are underemployed. Casting more openly non-binary actors in roles, even portraying binary characters, brings needed work and visibility to the community.

Cissexism, LGBTQIA, Trans

Some positive gender news

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[Image: A transgender symbol with the word “they” underneath.]

Maintaining a social justice blog entails writing about a lot of heavy, painful topics on a regular basis. So it’s nice to acknowledge positive progress from time to time, even if the victories are small. Here’s some good news for trans and non-binary* people regarding “singular they” and all-gender restrooms.

Singular they

Last week, “singular they” was named the “Word of the Year” by the American Dialect Society. I’m often cynical about these kinds of announcements, but this is a positive development, as it will bring more attention to the growing acceptance of this preferred pronoun for (some) non-binary people (including myself).

Singular they has been in standard usage since Shakespeare’s time, but telling people that hasn’t stopped them from insisting that it’s not grammatical to use when speaking about a single known person. Hopefully these people will eventually stop complaining and start accepting our choice of pronouns.

Restroom equality

This week, the Transgender Law Center and San Francisco Board of Supervisors announced legislation to require that city businesses and buildings designate all single-stall restrooms as all-gender. This development is long overdue. Having gendered signs on single-occupancy restrooms makes absolutely no sense.

I’ve written frequently about the harassment trans people face when using gendered restrooms, even in places like SF where we already have the right to use facilities corresponding with our gender identities. And many of us non-binary people misgender ourselves whenever we go into either a “Mens” or “Womens” restroom. Opening up access will improve safety and quality of life for trans and non-binary people.

Other cities that have enacted similar legislation include Washington D.C., Philadelphia, Austin, West Hollywood, Berkeley, and New York. I hope that more cities soon follow suit, and I look forward to a time when gender policing becomes a thing of the past.

* I state these terms separately because not all non-binary people identify as trans.

Cissexism, Heterosexism, LGBTQIA, Sexism, Trans

Men in skirts

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[Image: Ziggy reclines on a sculpture in a park, wearing a purple shirt and blue -and-purple tie-dyed skirt. The Seattle skyline is in the background.]

There’s a great piece in Black Girl Dangerous today about femme clothing, gender expression and identity. In their article, non-binary femme author Jack Qu’emi Gutiérrez talks about Jaden Smith’s appearance in a womenswear campaign making the news, and explains that unless he states otherwise, Jaden is still a young cisgender man. He should be celebrated for showing that it’s OK for men – especially black men – to express femininity, but he’s not a “non-binary icon,” and he’s not mocking or taking anything away from trans people.

I’ve posted about this subject before, and agree with the author’s assessment. People of all genders – as well as agender people like myself – should be free to present themselves in whatever way feels comfortable and appropriate for them, without being hemmed in by binary gender assumptions. A male-assigned person wearing a skirt is not necessarily making a statement about their gender identity or sexual orientation. It is only because of our patriarchal society that casts masculinity and heterosexuality as the default that a man wearing a skirt is a more transgressive act than a woman wearing pants.

When I met my partner Ziggy, pictured at the top of this post, we were in those roles; I was living (pre-transition) as a woman, fairly ignorant about gender issues, who strongly preferred wearing pants, and he was living as a man who strongly preferred wearing skirts. I’ll admit that his skirt-wearing really bothered me at first, as I was prejudiced against femme presentations. But love conquers all, as they say, and soon his clothing was no more remarkable to me than any other man’s, even though I hardly ever saw another man wearing a skirt (even in the San Francisco Bay Area).

I’ve since transitioned to male, and Ziggy now identifies as genderqueer but cissexual; he has no desire to go through a physical gender transition. Our subconscious sexes are both male, independent of the clothes we wear or the pronouns we prefer (Ziggy still uses he/him/his; I prefer they/them/their for myself).

While Ziggy has been fortunate not to experience much harassment for his clothing choices, others have not been so lucky. Agender teen Sasha Fleischman had their skirt set on fire by another teenager who thought Sasha was a gay man. Other trans and non-binary people have told stories of what they wanted to wear but did not for fear of violence.

If anyone can wear skirts, what are the implications for male-assigned, femme-presenting people who actually are women? Trans women get the worst of gender policing; if they present as femme, they’re accused of parodying women, but if they present as masculine or androgynous (which in our patriarchal society is basically masculine), they are seen as men and treated accordingly.

My advice is to always assume that an individual knows their own gender better than you do. In other words, if someone is walking into a women’s restroom, assume that they belong there. If you misgender someone and they correct you, apologize and move on. Use gender-neutral language whenever possible. And stop using biological essentialism to justify bigotry.

Skirts are just fabric. Clothing has no gender. Celebrate diversity.

Addendum: Just after publishing this article, I read about the death of David Bowie, another gender “transgressor”. Check out this article by another non-binary blogger on Bowie’s legacy.

Ableism, Cissexism, LGBTQIA, Trans

My identity is not up for debate

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Content warning: Cissexist, trans-antagonistic, and ableist language ahead.

  • PLEASE NOTE: THIS IS A FICTION ARTICLE
  • NONE OF THIS IS TRUE!!
  • Genderqueer=Tomboy
  • also termed “autism”
  • a fake Tumblr made category for gender identities that are not real and stupid beyond belief
  • “genderqueer” can be seen as a synonym for the term “freak of nature”
  • Other people refer to this behaviour as “fuckery”, and this behaviour is symptomatic of dementia and mental disorders
  • mental illness
  • these definitions were [c]reated by pissy teenage girls who want attention and are by no means legitimate

These are some of the edits that have been made to the Genderqueer page on Wikipedia just over the last three months. All of them were reverted, but I read each one of these attempts at bullying, belittling, and erasing non-binary people.* After enduring this continued vandalism for many months, I finally reported the page to the the administrator noticeboard, and got it placed under protection (at least for now).

As a Wikipedia editor on the LGBT Studies task force, I monitor a number of gender-related pages, and am thus exposed to this kind of language on a daily basis. Occasionally I need to take a break from it, but I do feel a responsibility, especially since I’m rarely leaving home nowadays, to do something to help the queer community.

The most disturbing thing about this kind of vandalism is that it isn’t simply use of crude and obvious slurs (though one vandal about four months ago replaced the entire page’s content with “Trannies suck lol”). A fair amount of this pushback coming from within the community. As trans blogger and activist Sam Dylan Finch wrote recently, transmedicalists or “truscum” harass non-binary people quite a bit, as they don’t consider us to be legitimately trans.

The other troubling issue is the amount that non-binary identities are conflated with autism, mental illness, or other neurodivergence. Some non-binary people do have these conditions, of course, just as some binary trans and cis people do. But there’s no indication that being non-binary is itself an indication of autism or any other mental state, nor that being autistic or otherwise neurodivergent is a negative or shameful thing. As I posted previously, many non-binary people may feel safer speaking out online than in public, and this is likely true of autistic people as well. This can lead to the false impression that all or most non-binary people are autistic.

What it comes down to is that my identity is not up for debate. The only person who can define my gender is me. People can have their opinions on it, but that’s all they are: Opinions. And “free speech” does not guarantee the right to state one’s opinion anywhere one chooses. Wikipedia has rules for a reason.

For oppressed people, wanting to avoid triggering language isn’t a matter of wanting to be in an echo chamber; it’s a matter of survival. Words trigger action; words have impact. Choose your words carefully.

* I prefer non-binary as an umbrella term rather than genderqueer. This is an ongoing discussion I’m having with other Wikipedia editors on the Genderqueer talk page.

Trans

Be a Man

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It’s now been nearly two years since I began my physical transition with an injection of testosterone.  Since then, I’ve changed my legal identification to male. In the eyes of the state government, the Social Security Administration, and my doctor, I am a man.

This would be all well and good, except that I am not a man. I am agender.

I transitioned to male because I came to know that I’m not female or a woman, with the same conviction that I know I don’t have blue eyes. There’s nothing wrong with having blue eyes, but my eyes are brown. This is obvious to the vast majority of sighted people, and if there were an English word meaning “blue-eyed person” no one would address me with it.

Unfortunately, being agender is not only invisible but impossible for me to communicate with any visual cues (short of wearing a sign around my neck). And regardless, having a non-binary gender is unacceptable in the USA at this time, where folks like me are curiosities at best and, to many, people to be pitied, belittled, or bullied.

While the physical benefits of having a body fueled by testosterone rather than estrogen are enormous to me, “passing” as a man is a reluctant compromise in a world that refuses to take my existence seriously. In an interview at my doctor’s office prior to starting hormone therapy, I was asked the question, “What is a man?” It’s a good thing that my hormones were prescribed on an informed consent basis and that all responses were optional, because I truly could not come up with an answer to that question.

Here are some men of various ages on what it means to “Be a Man”:

I cannot “Be a Man.” I can play the part of a man in public, when it’s too exhausting to explain why my preferred pronoun is “they,” not “he,” or why I don’t want to be called “Sir” or “Mister” even though those words are preferable to “Ma’am” or “Miss.” Online is the only place I feel that I can be my authentic self, and I know I’m not the only one who feels that way. This is likely why so many people seem to think that non-binary identities are limited to confused teenagers on Tumblr.

Fortunately, more non-binary people of all ages are speaking out, being visible, being heard. I take heart in people like Tyler Ford, Jacob Tobia, Justin Vivian Bond, S. Bear Bergman, Sam Dylan Finch, and others who have the strength and conviction to live as their authentic selves, despite society’s insistence that they “pick a side.” The gender binary has been the bane of my existence for the last three years, and the only thing that gives me a sliver of hope is knowing that there are others like me, struggling to be taken seriously.

Cissexism, Trans

Nonbinary erasure – quick follow-up

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In my blog entry on nonbinary erasure a couple weeks back, I mentioned that when I tried to comment on an article on MTV.com,  I found that they only had “female” and “male” gender options on their account creation form. I sent a quick note to customer support, asking that they add a fill-in-the-blank or “Other” option for nonbinary people.

Today, they replied!

In reply to your inquiry “Gender options for accounts”:

Thank you for your note regarding our sign-up process. We have made changes to include additional sign-up options.

Thank you,

MTV.com

I went back to the site to confirm:

MTV account creation form

[Image: A  web form with the heading “Create an Account to Comment.” Circled in red is the Gender section with the options Female, Male, and Other.]

Hooray for small victories! Also, check out this new Everyday Feminism article on nonbinary erasure and what you can do about it.