Sunday Dispatch: My Queer Reflections on a Genderweird Life
Or; Old Genderqueers Don’t Die, We Just Get Queerer
As a kid in the 1970s, I (and we all) lacked language that defined and delineated states of genderqueer identity. All I knew was that I felt most at ease living in the space between; I felt most at home in my body when I was perceived not as male or female, but just as me. As early as I was able to dress under my own steam I dressed in the nonbinary spirit, leaning, in today’s language, masc of center while living in an AFAB body: bowties or suit ties, button-ups, caps, trousers. I learned how to tie my own tie by the time I was nine. I still enjoyed dresses sometimes too, and would often mix “gendered” clothing willy-nilly, ending up with a gendercreative mix-and-match sartorial blend.
Being a queer kid in the rural lands of California I had a scant few role models and even fewer like-minded peers. Sometimes I wonder what my life might have been like, how different my world may have looked, had I more of a formulated and consistent queer community to grow up in.
My Heroes Have Always Been Genderfuckers
In the absence of community, like so many others, I found icons. I loved and looked up to Annie Lennox, Boy George (and I know this [former] fave is problematic), Prince, David Bowie (again, yes, problematic), Pearl Harbour, and Laurie Anderson. I loved and felt affirmed by the genderfuckery that each of these icons played with.
Between the advent of the AIDS pandemic and the conservatism of the era, the 1980s were a notably horrible time for queer culture. Like most queers in my generation, I grew up under the shadow of AIDS, having lost my first loved one, Daisy Chainsaw, to the plague in my teens in the late ‘80s.
HIV and AIDS shaped so much of my consciousness and life. I started offering safer sex workshops in my communities in my late teens after being turned on to this form of underground activism at an event put on by E.W.O.K at Epicenter in SF. At this gathering, there was a live, lesbian, sexy, safer sex demonstration by the Safer Sex Sluts and I was enthralled and empowered by the performance, and the intent and impact.
Simultaneously to those years being an era of political deterioration of our rights and the cultural apocalypse of the HIV/AIDS pandemic, there was a revivalist counterpoint in pop culture; evolving from the Glam Rock era of the 1970s, there was a gorgeous mix of strong AFAB folx and frilly AMAB folx taking the stage, and they set an androgynous fire to my imagination. For that I am eternally grateful. The gender fluidity and socially transgressive nature of these icons brought me a sense of inner peace and excitement, and created ground I felt I could walk on–out of thin air.
Moving Through A Man’s World
Clothes may or may not make the man, and gender identity goes deeper than surface levels. Like my choice of dress, my behaviors did not fit neatly into a gendered box either. I hope we agree that there are no gendered behaviors–and, in the era of my youth, in the locale of my upbringing, and in the Back-to-the-Land movement perhaps in general, there were rather rigid and retrogressive gender roles and expectations at play–feminist influences notwithstanding. (Again, a complex topic, and maybe one for another essay at some future time.)
Even before my dad left our family when I was 14, I was taking up the slack and doing the “dad” things to make sure we were safe and protected. I worked on the constantly-in-need-of-fixing cars. I patched the roof. I made our super minimal, off-grid electrical system work. I chopped the wood and lit the fires in the cooking stove and the fireplace. (Yes, we had a cooking stove that was fire-powered. For those of you new here, I grew up off-grid.) I protected my family from predators–including my father. Sleeping with a shotgun next to my bed at 13 years of age, I took on the mantle of “protector.”
Being gender-noncompliant was not without its thorny parts. I injured myself on a number of occasions, being a tiny, young, small person trying to make myself bigger and more capable. But I survived it all, and grew stronger for it.
Passing as Male in the Late ‘80s and Early ‘90s
As I grew up and headed out on my own, dressing and walking masc in a man’s world gave me undeniable freedoms–while also affirming for me the lack of safety that exists for female-presenting people. I surrendered any shred of femininity in order to gain what the male world had on offer. I shaved my head while living in an Anarcho-feminist squat in Berlin. I trained in martial arts and did bodybuilding. I dressed in jeans, a-shirts, and army jackets. I wore stompy boots. I hid my breasts, made them absolutely nonexistent. I learned to walk and move from my shoulders, to stabilize my hips. I moved with decisive direction.
I took no shit.
During this time, I identified with masculinity, and the freedoms it brought. I hitchhiked, and picked up hitchhikers in my truck. I walked around strange cities on my own at all hours of the day and night. Most often read as a twink, I got called faggot, queer, degenerate; invectives were hurled at me from passing trucks, and passersby. An old lady tried to convert me on a bus after I panhandled change from her to get from one city to the next. She bought me a ticket with the agreement that we would talk as the bus moved in the space between. I was regularly ousted from women’s bathrooms, and didn’t feel safe venturing into most men’s toilets; the perennial “Where can I pee?” question.
I gained a lot, I lost a lot. I had nowhere that I belonged fully, but was afforded ease and freedom of movement. I felt it was a valid trade-off.
No one tried to rape me.
“Hope” is the Thing with Feathers
In many of my sleeping dreams, from childhood onward, gender did not exist; I flew, sometimes with huge wings, sometimes by will alone. I was genderless. Gender was less than a shadow of a thought.
Gender is Performative
In my early 20s, I started experimenting with performative drag. I invited others to do the same. I hosted parties that lived in the binary by crossing it. The first time I went in full masc drag, I took on the persona of a mechanic named Johnny.
I went to a private party full of friends I’d known in most cases all of my life. No one recognized me. No one would talk to me. With a 5 o'clock shadow and darkened eyes, and a bit of a chip on my shoulder, I was a scary dude. I lived into my projections of masculinity in that moment, and was read by my community as dangerous.
I learned a lot that evening about the isolation of masculinity.
Over the following years, my masculine persona softened. I made peace with him. Let him more fully into my daily life. Let him teach me about my areas of broken trust, projection, anger. Finally, I integrated him.
Sometimes he was still an asshole.
A “Female” Body as Communal Property
In my mid-twenties, I started stripping. I cultivated a femme appearance in order to cash in, and at the same time, felt a trend toward feminization occurring in me at an organic level. I was ready to soften on some level and still had a lot of binarist and polarized identity shit to work through.
As a Witch, I dedicated my work in sexual titillation to the gods, and saw myself in the mirrors of the club as a divine embodiment. The Work was healing, and complicated, and empowering, and wearing. Channeling the goddess current, I sold the illusion of intimacy and the reality of wise counsel where needed, and profited off the assumption of the female body as community property. After all, in the words of Ani, I had been “paying for it all of my life.”
The awareness of how little agency I had in womanhood came home at an even deeper level with pregnancy. I was 25 when I had my first child. Pregnancy, and the license folx thought it gave them to touch my body, was a shock to me. Adding insult to injury, at the time (in the mid-90s) all the maternity clothing available in my little two-horse town was frilly, floral, floridly femme. I wore jeans (with a rubber band as a buttonhole) and tank tops as long as I could, only resorting to the tent-like dresses and frilly tops in the later months, when nothing else would fit over my protruding belly. I felt my gender identity being drowned in the cultural expectations of motherhood. (Not to mention my sexuality, but that’s a topic for another day.)
People held doors for me, which annoyed me. (Yeah, I was that kind of feminist.) And they touched my rounded belly like it was their conquered land. (I saw red, but bit my tongue. Why didn’t I yell?)
The dysphoria I felt was something I couldn’t put into words, didn’t have context or terminology for, even in my head, nor in the world.
By the time my second pregnancy that I carried to term came along, I decided to revel in the experience, knowing it would be my last. I ate all the ice cream, got round and full, and settled with some measure of comfort into having breasts and a “matronly” body for perhaps the only time I truly got there in my life. I wore stretchy slip dresses, and showed every curve in its full glory.
There were other notable moments of feminine expression in my life, but they are areas I am still making sense of and do not have words for, so those will await further exploration at a later date. But pregnancy for me was a complex territory of resistance and capitulation, and a push-pull relationship with cultural expectations.
Rural Hunger and The Feeding of the Queer Spirit
Living in rural America, I was hungry for queer culture. In my years as a mom of young children, this only intensified. There was no space in rural America for genderqueer moms in the 1990s and early aughts. I found myself crying while watching Priscilla, Queen of the Desert, and listening to every diva pop song that I heard.
Sometimes I would get out of town and have a chance to feed my spirit. I would head straight for the club.
The fact that the club (any queer club in any city) was the only place I could find what I was looking for is a topic for another time, but suffice it to say that sweaty, sexuality- and gender-rebel bodies doing sweaty things in close proximity filled me up. I would dance all night, and walk away mostly sated, and live for another few months touching base with my few queer buddies as often as I could.
Gender is Relational
My gender expression is fluid and flexible. On some levels it is relational and sometimes reactionary. The relational aspect of gender is not always comfortable—sometimes it is the opposite of comfortable. My gender identity and expression are not fixed, they are fluid. I am always in flux.
This can be disorienting. For me. For others. And mostly I try to stay with the process, and find who I am in the moment without letting my fluctuations run me, and without letting the discomfort of others define me. I am aware that most folx tend to like a set of fixed parameters, and binarist definition, and generally don’t prefer fluidity of identity.
To that I say, if you like it, you are welcome to stop changing and growing. I choose to continue to evolve. Again, this is another bargain that offers me losses and gains; once again I choose ease and freedom of movement at the cost of belonging.
Cis Masculinity Is Fragile
Cisgender is fragile in expression, and cis masculinity is, in my opinion, the most fragile of all. Gender, being relational and performative, needs a reflection in order to be seen. Cis masculine gender is disrupted by nonbinary expression and trans expression in general.
Cis masculinity is easily destabilized, especially in a relational context, by queered gender identity and expression. This can easily become volatile. We are all acutely aware of the danger.
In my life, this has at times resulted in cisgender men deciding they do not have room for my gender identity, or the genders of those who, like me, don’t fit into the binary box. Relationships have floundered and recovered. Some have floundered and never recovered. I have, in many cases, chosen to release relationships that are not able to accommodate my expression and essence. I just stop investing. I step away.
Feminism as a GNC/Genderqueer Person
Feminism is for everybody, as bell hooks wrote, but what about when identifying as a feminist reinforces people’s assumption that you are female? My gender expression and identity are confusing to many. When you add in that I’m a staunch feminist, and that I have in the past written books primarily for a female-identified audience, it makes it even more challenging to be seen, known, understood, and accepted in my ever-evolving and updating expression of gender identity.
I believe we, as a global amalgam, across the board (with the possible exception of some low-contact, egalitarian-leaning and/or matrifocal Indigenous communities), have a solid need for intersectional feminist theory and praxis.
My gender identity and expression do not make me less of a feminist. And my feminism does not make me less genderqueer.
Coming Out Old
When I was in my mid-40s, I went back to school. After 25 years of investing in a career out on the periphery (teaching, writing, coaching, and intermittent sex work), I decided it was time to get a degree and find some more mainstream career stability. I moved to a different rural California town, one with a university, and threw myself into my studies. I was working toward a master's in social work.
While I had been identifying as GNC (gender non-conforming) and genderqueer for years already (and “genderweird,” and queer in general, since my youth) and was already using they/she pronouns, I took this opportunity to finally come out as nonbinary in a public way. I took on with more seriousness and commitment they/them/their as my most accurate pronouns. I found myself under the trans umbrella.
Somehow, though, the language still initially felt off-limits to me. And while many younger people loved that I was living my best life, others were skeptical, some even a bit hostile. (This continues.) The generation wars are a real (made-up) thing, and sometimes I let the sneers and derision get at me.
Middle-aged folks are not encouraged to continue growing, changing, adapting. And with each refusal to accept or recognize my growth, I feel the edge of isolation that claims the lives of so many older queers. (The specter of nonbinary isolation teams up with that of bi+ isolation, and the outcomes start to feel inevitable.)
But in the club, young folks were always grateful to meet an old queer. “We need to see that it’s possible,” younger folx would say. “We need to know that dying young isn’t our only option.”
Resistance
Sometimes I find myself wondering why I waited to come out as trans when my gender journey has been a long, wide-ranging, and flexible one for my entire life. Why did I wait so long?
Some of it was fear. Some of it was respect for younger folx in my community and family, and not wanting to step on toes. Some of it was a fear of relationship turbulence.
Yes, those of you who know me know I am married to a cis man who claims a straight identity. (And, I also have a variety of other relationships with other people. Which also do not legitimize nor delegitimize my claim to my own queerness, regardless of who they are or what their identities consist of.)
I sometimes insist to my spouse that he’s gotta be a little bit queer since he’s with me, but there’s no arguing with identity and the names anyone might give it. Many of us are also aware that there are often differences between identity and behavior. For this same reason, those of us with a sex ed background are conversant with terms like MSM (men who have sex with men)–not even all men who have sex primarily or even exclusively with other men identify as gay.
Who am I to challenge anyone’s self-identification?
And, relationships do not define identity. We know this, and yet I am still defensive. Over the years, many have used my relationship status to delegitimize my queer (both gender and sexual) identity in both private and public ways. The onslaught never gets easier to take.
I am a queer person in a marital relationship with a straight man. (I am far from the only one.) This unarguably has had an impact on my exploration, my expression, and my identity. Yet, living in my authentic expression is worth the struggle.
On the Shoulders of Giants
As genderqueer folks, we inherit a legacy. This younger generation didn’t dream up genderqueer identity or breaking the binary, but they have updated the language and given us more options for claiming our identities. For this I am grateful.
And, it’s not the whole story. This generational Working would not have been what it is without the efforts and risks taken by the generations that came before. We owe a debt of gratitude to all the varied queers who walked, danced, loved, lived, and died before us.
Mine is a generation without elders. The HIV/AIDS pandemic robbed us of our birthright, robbed us of a generation of queer role models. I wonder what life would have been like if my friend Daisy Chainsaw had lived past 20. If the phenomenal Phoenix, who I did hospice work with in my early 20s, had lived past 50.
I like to think there would have been an innocence afforded us. I like to think we would have updated our language even more quickly. I dream we would have lived more fully into the queer possibility present in the very different genderqueer aesthetics and ethos of the 70s hippies and the 80s anarchist punks.
Growing Into The Space Between and Around
Continuing with whatever I may contribute to the legacy, I continue my oft-uncomfortable journey of elderqueerness. I face gender complexities in my relationships. I have faced gender-based discrimination at work (with often no pronoun use on name tags except mine, which would be a bare minimum measure in my mind). I’ve been impacted by the “no bathroom for me” struggle, and am disgusted that there’s been so little growth on that front since the early ‘90s. I am faced with constant misgendering.
I am coming out of “coming out” no more or less assured of who I am, but still facing the struggle. And the struggle is where the definition cuts its teeth in my experience.
But I am also committed to expanding the space for the experience of queer joy, queer love, T4T delights, and a continued investment in queer community in my life, and allowing and investing in this vibe to also lend itself to my ongoing definitional experience.
I choose to stand in the light, as much as I dance with the shadows.
I Will Survive
I continue to commit to coming out proud and standing in my truth, as it emerges. I will myself to continue speaking up when I am not seen, heard, or recognized for and as who I am. I commit to aging, and relaxing, into compassion and self-assuredness. I commit to moving forward into an emerging era with stars in my eyes and the wind at my back, knowing I stand on the shoulders of giants. I commit to offering my own shoulders as a dais to the next generation.
In the quiet of this gently dawning morning, I fervently whisper this prayer; “May I be a worthy transcestor.”
I love your ability to express these broad truths through these very specific glimpses into your unique life, thank you for sharing!
Thank you 🙏