Bigender: having two distinct gender identities, either at the same time, or at different times. Not necessarily ambigender.
Based on bigender (woman-leaning) flag edit by @ask-pride-color-schemes and bigender nonbinary male flag edit by @nblmgalaxy, yellow reminds the abinary flag and pale super pink the woman flag, both together the girlby flag.
Representing/symbolizing people whose bigender identity includes female and non-binary, such as androgyne gal, maverique woman or fem agender.
The narratives surrounding transgender and nonbinary individuals are narrow, usually leaving out nonbinary genders altogether, and often parsed for cisgender individuals instead of for us. This column is dedicated to providing more, to raising the bar, each article devoted to a different nonbinary person getting the chance to answer some questions and talk a little about their gender and gender in general. To expand on the stories we have, on the ideas of what being trans and nonbinary looks like.
This week, to start us off, we bring you some questions answered by Chris, who’s the bigender trans-feminine latinx in charge of the submissions blog here at Ways2Raise (She/they/him pronouns).
How do you define your gender?
With reams of paper, lots of self exploration and examination of my cultural heritages, and in general quite a bit of vitriol. Which, I mean, I realize I’m being a bit tongue in cheek, maybe very tongue in cheek considering I’m the one who wrote these questions. But it’s true.
I define my gender in poetry, bigender is a word that fits me, and it might always fit, or I might find a better word. Or half a dozen words all wrapped in thorny prose and starlight flowers and seething and longing. But, basically, it is really hard for me to fit what my gender is into a word. So I define it in many a lot of the time, with whole reams and stories.
What that means, in a much less roundabout way, though, is that my gender is both feminine and something else. Right now that second part feels masculine, though I’m unsure if it always will. Gender is really complicated.
The rest is behind a read-more because it gets quite long.
What does your gender mean to you?
The world. I mean, a big part of my world. It means me, to me. Or, I suppose, not all of me. It’s a part of me though, that influences and informs everything. It’s very confusing, really, but that’s okay.
A part of me even likes that honesty. It’s okay to not have it all figured out, for it to be this roiling and twisting and vital part of you that isn’t completely understood yet, that might never be, or might be tomorrow; this brightness and darkness, a liminal component of yourself.
How and when did you realize you were nonbinary, what was that journey like?
Thinking back, I realized quite a few times. There was a moment in a hotel singing with my parents as they belted out a duet, there was another with a play, and a few moments identifying with various women in fiction where things clicked and I simply moved on and pushed it down, because I didn’t really understand what it was that’d felt so illuminating. Because it was a lot.
For me it wasn’t the realization that was key, it was the realization combined with awareness and acceptance, and well. With words. A lot of people discount how powerful words are, how much having a word or a few, a story to identify with, can actually mean to a person. They’re very influential things, they can bind and link experiences, they give us a way to talk about things, to think about things, that we don’t otherwise have. All throughout highschool I rigorously controlled how I dressed, expressed, how I thought of myself, attempting to control who and what I was because well-
I felt something discontent in myself, but I didn’t have a name for it. It was hot and coiled and needing and intrinsic and terrifying. Something in me that felt very Galadriel. But there was so much else going on, school, my mother slowly dying, other relatives growing ill, abusive relationships, I needed to be in control of something of myself, at least. It was a really hard time, a lot of unpleasantness went on that I still struggle with.
Those half realizations and a longing for well, something, for a word, for an understanding, started to come together when I moved from California all the way out to New York, where I knew very few people. Taking myself away from the safety nets I had, though not far enough away to not still have support, and from well, the pressure of being Known in a certain way, was very beneficial to me.
I explored my gender pretty slowly at first, and then rather haphazardly I leaped into it. What followed was a lot of navigating of communities, too, the realization and experience of how trans feminine people are marginalized. It was complicated, but at least I had words, at least there was something to work with. This was who I was. And I’ve been swimming in it ever since, learning about it, about gender, about myself.
What did you wish people knew more about your gender?
Probably that, like most nonbinary genders, it isn’t a monolith. Being bigender just means that you are an individual with two genders, they are not necessarily masculine or feminine. Some bigender folks move fluidly between their genders, some are static, some a mix between them.
What advice would you give to people questioning their gender?
One of the things most infuriating for me, looking back, is that I was aware of nonbinary genders growing up. Or at least, I was aware that gender was only a neat binary in our culture because people tried to make it so. It just took a long idea to connect that basic idea to me, that I didn’t have to be cis. That I wasn’t.
It’s okay to not be sure, and it’s okay to not have the words yet, you can find them later. It’s okay to be nonbinary, to be trans, to not be cis. It’s okay. You can be nonbinary. You can be trans. You are not, necessarily, cis.
Gender Expansive is an ongoing series designed to cover a wide range of stories and individuals, we are happy to accept submissions of articles from followers. If you’re interested in writing a gender expansive article yourself, feel free to send us an ask to talk about it!
