I took these selfies on the same day. They are of the same person with the same name and identity. Why does our society regard and treat them so differently? How do we create a world where this aesthetic difference is unremarkable? Just another human doing what humans do: changing.
There is no before and after. There is no in or out of drag. The photo on the left is not my *feminine* side, the photo on the right is not my *masculine* side, both of them are me. All of this is me. I exist outside the gender binary. Before 19th century gender norms there was my spirit. And after them - my spirit. My personhood is not about what I look like, it’s about who I am.
I am playing dress up in both looks. Because I am a soul. Invisible and irreducible to a body. The rest is just adornment. A tshirt, a wig…both elaborate forms of decoration.
I feel so much sadness for the ways that we structure and constrict reality into binaries: man and woman, cis and trans, authentic and artificial, true and false…
Nothing is simple, flat, or one dimensional. Let alone a whole ass human. I wonder if the reason we stay attached to a singular self, is because we worry that we won’t be understood if we declare our multitudes? That we will be abandoned if we assert our fluidity?
We must move past the desire for comprehension. The very systems that assign coherence are the ones that are holding us back. We may never be understood by other people, but that’s not as important as being embraced by ourselves.
I do not request nor require your acceptance. What I ask for is your curiosity. Why do you wear what you wear? Why don’t you wear other things? What made you feel like you could only be one thing? Are there forms of love and expansion you haven’t allowed yourself to experience yet? Why?
The movement to #degenderfashion isn’t just for trans and non-binary people. It’s for everyone to wear whatever they want and determine what that means for them. We aren’t just resisting gender norms, we are uplifting humanity as multifaceted and complex — a constellation of stories. We are reclaiming humanity from gender norms.