Everyone has a different journey for discovering their gender identity, but for some of us, it is a long and confusing road.
I am bigender. I identify as both a woman and as nonbinary, and I use she/they pronouns. I wanted to write about how I came to understand my gender to do my part to showcase how unique each experience can be. My path to identifying my gender is by no means a blueprint or a path your own journey must be compared to, and it is certainly not always neat or pretty. But it’s my story, and, hopefully, it sheds some light on how confusing and wonderful and scary and fulfilling gender identity can be.
As for so many of us, my gender journey came in steps: first realizing that I may not be cisgender, then using and asking for different pronouns than I had ever used before. Then I experienced someone using a new pronoun to refer to me, then gave my gender identity a name, and next validated my identity through some negative experiences. Now, I’m looking back and realizing that who I feel like now was who I have been all along. These were uneven, crooked steps, and sometimes I fell back a step or two, but ultimately, those steps have led me to understand myself in a way that I wasn’t able to before.
When I was a freshman in college, I’d come to terms with the fact that I wasn’t straight. What had initially been relief at finally allowing myself to admit that, though, turned to more confusion when I then started to realize that I may not be cisgender, either. My friend told me later that during this time I had spoken to her about using she/they pronouns by way of trying to make others feel more comfortable using they/them pronouns, but she said that she knew then — as I know now — that this was an early sign of my understanding that I was nonbinary.
It wasn’t until the beginning of my junior year, a year and a half later at a training for work, that I actually asked anyone to use she/they pronouns when referring to me. A friend of mine was referring to me and asked to be sure that I used she/her pronouns. I told her I used she and they, actually, but that it was perfectly fine that she had used she. I texted my boyfriend on the way home and told him I had finally identified those as my pronouns for the first time. I said, “It was weird, but I feel like it’s right.”
I clearly remember the first time I heard someone refer to me using they/them pronouns.
My boss and I were presenting a sexual misconduct workshop. She was giving a hypothetical example when she referred to me as they. I was so happy to hear that used. The happiness that I felt really solidified that those pronouns were a part of me: that those were my pronouns. I hold such a special place in my heart for her because of that moment and all of the many other moments after that when she respected and validated my identity in ways so many others did not. That first time hearing someone use the pronouns you want used for yourself can be such an important milestone because it not only allows you to feel seen, but shows you just how important that identity is for you. I now knew that it definitely did feel right.
I did not yet have a word for my gender identity until over a year after I’d started using she/they pronouns. I had learned what bigender meant in a Women and Gender Studies course (one of many reasons why I think a gender studies course should be mandatory in college, but I digress). Hearing that there was a word for the feeling that I had of embodying two genders at the same time really helped me feel seen and validated. I know that many genderqueer individuals like to just use the term queer because it can feel less confining and is not as specifically defined, but that’s not me. I think that’s one of the wonderful things about gender identity and getting to know ourselves: we get to decide what suits us and makes us feel the most comfortable, authentic, and proud. It made me feel proud to have a word for my identity because it helped me understand myself and my feelings a little bit better, but I also still refer to myself as genderqueer too.
Discovering a label for my gender identity was a positive experience that validated my gender identity, but there have been some terrible experiences that proved to me how important my identity was to me, too. In the same semester of college that I learned what bigender meant, I was enrolled in a multicultural psychology class, and one day we had a discussion about gender. For homework, all the students had been assigned a worksheet about our gender journey. My professor asked us in class to share what we learned through the process. A few students spoke up before me and said that they did not really learn much because they never had to think about their gender. I raised my hand to share but got scared and asked my professor to come back to me. After I had put my hand down, another student in the class spoke up with some very transphobic rhetoric and other students agreed or shared their own transphobic beliefs. I will not explain what they had said here because there is no point in giving more space to those beliefs, but, needless to say, they were upsetting to hear. We were less than an hour into a three-hour class (which is way too long for any class, much less a class in which you have to listen to people fight about the existence of your identity), and I had fallen silent. I sat there for the rest of class, furious and trying to hold back tears. Luckily, other students tried to educate their classmates, but it was still such a shock for me to have heard how people in my community felt about people, like myself, who didn’t identify as cisgender. (I later learned, after talking to my professor because the conversation had gone so sideways, that they had added the topic for my benefit, to try to get other students to be as respectful as possible.)
I was a mess in the bathroom in the hallway of the building, on the walk home, and when I got home from class, but as hard and upsetting as the experience was, it showed me something. I was still struggling with my gender identity, but my reaction to hearing the transphobia in my community showed me how real and important that identity was. I wish I could have skipped that experience, just like I also wish so many other trans and gender-nonconforming folks didn’t have to experience all the terrible things we all do every day, but those experiences sometimes also show us just how important our identities are.
I’ve thought a lot about how I expressed my gender as a child. I’ve realized that I have always been genderqueer. When I was a kid, I didn’t feel like I fit into female gender roles, until I was socialized to care about gender roles. I remember one of the first times gender norms were really pushed on me. I had told a classmate in kindergarten that I wanted to play for the New York Giants when I grew up (which would still be amazing, but, considering I am 5’4” on a good day, probably unlikely), and he told me that I could not play football because I was a girl. While the interaction may seem harmless, it was just the beginning of being pushed into a role that I never fit into. I had been my authentic self as a child, then was socialized into trying to fit gender roles that did not suit me, then came back around in time to being my authentic bigender self. While it is sad to think that I was kept from myself and a gender that felt right for me for so long, in the end it is really a beautiful story of self-discovery that I believe a lot of trans and genderqueer folk experience.
Still, I don’t think I should have had to go through that path while being forced to view myself and my gender in one specific way. Self-discovery is wonderful, but it should be able to happen in an accepting, supportive, and unassuming space. When I was young, and frankly not even all that young, I did not even know it was an option for me to not be straight, much less to not be a woman. I remember in middle school being infatuated with girls and thinking I just really wanted to be their friend because I didn’t even have a way to understand that those feelings could have been anything else. If I had known back in kindergarten that I could be whoever I wanted to be and didn’t have to fit some specific role for my sex assigned at birth, my journey could have been so much less painful and so much faster. And I would have started working out a lot earlier, so I at least had a chance to try out football.
While I am in an important spot in my journey now, I also know for certain that it is not over. Gender is fluid and ever-changing, and I acknowledge and even embrace the fact that my gender identity could change many times in the future. My boyfriend and I have joked for years that when we picture me as an old person we never see an old woman, always an old non-binary person or an old man. So, if I change gender identities to being nonbinary or male-identified in my later years, I can’t say I’d be too surprised. The only thing static about gender identity, and about life in general, is change, so it is best to love ourselves for who we are and who we will be without tying that love to a specific label or idea of ourselves.
I also haven’t yet come out to my family. I frankly do not know when or if I will make it to that step. It’s hard to hide such an important part of myself when I’m around them, but fear that they won’t understand or love me the same keeps me from telling them. It’s been hard trying to reconcile what it means for my identity to not be out to my family. But who I share or don’t share my gender identity with does not change how proud I am or how genderqueer I am. If one day I tell them, that will be a huge step and I will be proud of myself for taking it, no matter the outcome, but for now I will be proud of myself for loving and knowing myself and for sharing my whole self with those that I choose.
While it certainly isn’t the case for everyone, my gender journey has so far been a step-by-step process. If you find that your journey is step by step too, and maybe the steps are taking a long time or some are a lot more challenging than others, please do not give up on yourself. Think back to yourself as a child, who you were before you understood gender norms. Try to make that full circle journey and get back to the kid who didn’t know or care what gender even was. Your gender journey and your gender identity matter, because you matter.
