Addison & Jace ::: en route

That didn’t last long.

The “ode to my womanhood” that I wrote only a month or so ago (click here to review it) feels like a distant memory now. It didn’t take long until I realized that the connectedness I was feeling toward my female identity was fleeting.

Quickly, I drifted away from that end of the binary. Swam back toward genderqueer waters. Dipped my toes in the pool of masculinity. I haven’t drown. Not yet anyway.

So what brought on my connection to my womanhood? Wanting babies. Loving women. Witnessing a hateful, nationwide attack on women. Talking to proud butch women who bravely blur gender lines with their short hair, male clothing, and masculine energy.

Undoubtedly, women are beautiful. Powerful. Women have babies. Women fight back against attacks on their access and their health. Women walk through a world that still oppresses them and stay strong. 

Women are incredible. You can’t deny it. And on the day I wrote my “ode,” I felt it — the power of women.

But I’m on a journey. And it isn’t over yet, my mind and my heart tell me. I still have some exploring, some learning to do.

So what brought on my shift, my swim away from the female end of the gender binary, after feeling so connected to it?

Sitting at a table with Addison and another couple — and the waiter calling us “ladies.” It hit me all wrong. I didn’t look like a lady, didn’t feel like a lady, didn’t want to be called a lady. But it happened, and it sent me swimming. It got me thinking about the other part of me — the masculine part.

The part of me that looks in the mirror and is only happy with what I see when the image staring back at me is masculine. In fact, the more masculine I look, the more confident, secure, and comfortable I feel.

The part of me that uses the men’s restroom because the women’s restroom was scary and overwhelming. Women, unlike men, police their restrooms. They guard their spaces, inspecting anyone who walks in. The examination I was experiencing each time I walked into the women’s restroom with my short hair and tie — it was too much. I fled.

The part of me that hates my breasts. Has hated them since they emerged on my chest in middle school and hampered my basketball playing. Has bought bra after bra looking for one to minimize and hide them. Has researched expensive surgery for them.

One month ago, I screamed, “I am woman; hear me roar.”

Today, I wonder, “Who am I?” Am I genderqueer? Am I a proud butch lesbian, a proud woman with a male gender expression? Am I transgender? 

My gender journey continues. Up and down, left and right, female and male. Today, I am in touch with my masculine energy. One month ago, I was tied to my womanhood. Two months before that, I embraced genderqueer for the first time.

I won’t pretend that this post is the end of the journey. It is yet another stop. I’ll see you at the next one.

-Jess

I’ve been thinking a lot about gender of late, and coincidentally, the world has been thinking about gender quite a bit too, given that Chaz Bono is two-stepping on Dancing with the Stars. 

In the past year, since Addison and I moved to Denver, my understanding of my own gender has been evolving. After many years of confusion, I am finally beginning to understand my own gender identity.

I didn’t grow up in a rigid gender world. Although I was taught about gender roles, my parents let me cross gender barriers often, from playing sports to wearing pants (not dresses like many of the other girls in my small southern town). Still, as we all do, I learned what was expected of me as someone who was born female. I learned how I should act and what I should wear. I learned that girls cross their legs and wear dainty outfits of pink and purple.

We all learn these rules. Our society is built upon them. Our world is structured around a gender binary—a system that forces all of us to fit on one end or the another. We are born female or male. And it’s a big deal. We find out the sex of a baby months before he or she is born, and we prepare accordingly. Pink and green nurseries or blue and yellow onesies. This is the way of our world. You must be either male or female. Not both. Not neither. One or the other, the one you were born as. This is life.  

Like all of you, I was born into this world. I grew up in this world. I was taught the rights and wrongs of this world. And I realized that I am on the wrong side of this world.

I was in my early twenties when I discovered that I don’t fit into the binary. I was standing in front of my mirror in my bedroom, getting ready to go out to the club with friends. I was staring at the button-down shirt I was wearing. The shirt had darts in it, a design-element used in women’s shirts to make them more form-fitting. The pants were tight on the thighs and wide at the bottom.

I looked in the mirror, and I didn’t like what I saw. Not in that “Gosh, I look fat today” way. But in that, “This doesn’t feel right way.” I didn’t know what I was feeling exactly, but it wasn’t good. I took off all my clothes, overcome by intense anxiety, and I didn’t go out that night.

Several months passed before I decided to try something new. I think it took me that long to understand what had caused my debilitating anxiety. 

But after months of continuing anxiety, I decided to stop following the rules. I bought a pair of men’s jeans and a men’s sweater. I put them on. I looked in the mirror. I felt like myself.

There wasn’t some glowing light to illuminate why a simple change in wardrobe had changed my anxiety to comfort. I didn’t understand why I felt the way I did. I didn’t try to understand. I just acted. And with every act, I broke another rule. 

Action defined the next two years of my life. I no longer performed my gender as society deemed appropriate. I didn’t think much about why. I was celebrating, enjoying the fact that I finally felt good about myself and my body.

It wasn’t until I moved to Denver that I started searching for the language to explain my feelings about my gender. I wanted words, in part because, if language existed, I would know that there are others like me.

And so I found words. Cisgender. Transgender. Genderqueer.

Cisgender means gender-normative. It means that you perform your gender in accordance to what you were assigned at birth. It means that you feel you are the gender you were assigned. You were born female and feel female; therefore, you comfortably perform what our world has defined as “femaleness.” 

Transgender people grow up feeling like they were born in the wrong body—that the gender they feel inside does not match their gender on the outside. At some point in their lives, transgender people often decide they must live their lives in the gender they have always known themselves to be and often transition to living as that gender.

Genderqueer people reject the gender binary, which means they defy definition all together. They may consider themselves neither male or female, both male and female, or somewhere in between.

It was these three words that helped me understand me. Three words that helped me to know that there is life outside of the binary. Three words that showed me there are others like me, others who break the rules and live to tell the tale.

Which word is me? Today, it’s genderqueer. Yesterday, it was butch (another word I discovered to specifically describe women who are more masculine—-and a word I think I might use to describe myself for a while). Tomorrow? I don’t know what it will be. Because what I’ve learned most deeply of all is that what I am today may not be what I am tomorrow. My gender is fluid; it resists and rejects a binary and instead exists on a continuum. It refuses to follow the rules.

Each day I’m letting my feelings guide me. With each passing moment, I get to know me better. With each step I take, I give myself a little bit more room to breathe, to experience, to live outside the rules.

-Jess