["I finally realized that confusion and embarrassment are onramps for fear— fear that we don't know what's going on, fear that others will mock us for that ignorance, fear that we'll embarrass ourselves by incorrectly gendering someone and have to deal with their anger or the derision of our peers. My androgyny didn't threaten them physically, but the confusion it caused translated into an emotional threat. For people who cling to their worldviews like life rafts, having that world view challenged is a threat. And I have found that people who cling to biology-based binary gender are very threatened by those of us who cross gender lines or don't believe in those lines at all.
Fear is a strong emotion and it does a good job of keeping us out of mortal danger. It also does a fine job of directing us to avoid discomfort, confusion, embarrassment, and a host of other nonfatal outcomes. I wonder where I'd be now if my mother hadn't been fearful of my masculinity, or if I hadn't been fearful of rejection. Where would I be now if I'd responded to my desires rather than my fears?
It's easy to fall into second-guessing about what I would do if I could go back in time. I now have a vocabulary and understanding that were nonexistent when I was a child. Back then, I was marooned on an island of misfit gender with nowhere to turn for validation or support. Certainly, if I were experiencing my childhood now, in the age of trans activism, Gender Odyssey, and the Internet, things would be different. I do sometimes imagine what it would be like if I had taken hormone blockers to keep my breasts from growing and if my parents had called me "son" and used he/him pronouns. What would my body feel like if I had taken testosterone earlier, when it could influence my skeletal structure as well as my muscles? Where would I be mentally and emotionally if I wasn't still battling the demons who were born during the years when I had to masquerade as a girl in order to survive?
As appealing as that fantasy is, I can't rewrite my story at this point and I'm not sure I would— at fifty-three, I know I've benefited from the whole journey. I think about all I've experienced and learned by being a woman— lesbian culture (fraught as it was), learning about sex as something other than penis-in-vagina, experiencing sexism firsthand, pregnancy and childbirth, building an authentic understanding of misogyny and feminism, and the ability to step into male privilege with that knowledge.
Is my identity a destination waiting at the end of a long journey? Or is it more like a shopping trip where I try on different looks and styles until I find one that fits? Each time I made a new discovery about myself, I breathed a sigh of relief because if felt as though I was finally "there". Each time, without fail, I would get to the point where I was questioning my identity again.
When we are asked "What are you?" the only true answer is "This is what I am right now." Everything I've been through and all the identities I've embraced have been true to me. Right now, I am at a unique intersection of identity that includes what I wear, whom I love, my current passions and fears, my deepest held secrets, hopes, and dreams. Right now I am a writer who is polyamorous and a parent who is trans and nonbinary. Right now, I can simultaneously feel good about the work I've done to discover and honor my authentic self and also acknowledge that I'm not nearly finished with the job of answering the question, "What am I?"]
CK Combs, from What Am I?, from Non-binary: Memoirs of Gender and Identity, edited by Micah Rajunov and Scott Duane, Columbia University Press, 2019
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