all language is created

THEYBIES, I love you! Just a reminder that all language was invented. That people don’t get mad when new words like “tweet” and “hangry” are developed and recognized, they get mad when new words about gender and sexuality are. This disproportionate scrutiny + backlash is about transphobia, not the integrity of language. The purpose of language is to make meaning — we are constantly creating new ways of fashioning language to be more particular, nuanced, and precise. Language shifts and adapts with time. That is a good thing that gives more clarity, more options, and more specificity. What’s happening here is entitlement: cis hetero patriarchy wants to be able to control + monopolize language and name us accordingly; they don’t want queer people to have the power to name and narrate ourselves. When you control language, you control reality, and this is part of a historic + ongoing effort to disappear queer + trans people. If you care more about “grammar,” than you do extending a small courtesy to living breathing humans for whom this could go a long way in making our lives a little less exasperating — then you need to question your priorities + your power.

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degendering fashion is an anti-violence imperative

often people mistake our calls for “degendering” to be equivalent to erasing their right to be men + women. gender neutrality is not the same thing as requiring everyone to be non-binary. gender neutrality is an inclusive frame for all genders (men + women, too).

this is not about erasure, it’s about entitlement. cis people are used to being the universal. losing the power to control a narrative is not equivalent to the material violence that gender non-conforming people face. we aren’t calling for genderless fashion for “political correctness,” but rather because our safety depends on it. if you think us not being bashed is “political correctness,” then you need to get it together.

let me explain. i got this fabric in a market abroad while everyone was staring at me, laughing at me, + pointing at me simply because i had a nose ring + my hair in a bun (randomly associated with femininity). ultimately my friends + i decided to leave because it wasn’t safe + we were worried things would escalate to physical violence. the entire trip i had to be escorted everywhere because my hosts feared that i would be attacked simply for existing as gender non-conforming in public.

people like me live in constant fear because society — including the fashion + beauty industries — holds up toxic + monolithic images of what a “man” + a “woman” are supposed to look like. it’s not that we are failing to be real, it’s that we are failing to be what these industries have helped design. degendering fashion will proliferate more images of people like me so i won’t have to be the first that people encounter, will create more expansive images of masculinity + femininity such that we aren’t read as incongruous, just another way to be.

sure it is not the end all be all of ending our harassment, but it is a necessary move + should be understood as an anti-violence imperative. @adriannekeishingofficial + i designed this dress with the fabric i got while harassed to embody what i do: turn other people’s hate into my healing. their repression into my self-expression. wearing it on the #bofvoices stage i was able to speak with conviction: the time has come to reclaim what is rightfully ours.

Notes on my ever evolving relationship with gender

My gender cannot be categorized because it is constantly in flux and shifts depending on context.

Ultimately I would like to be seen as a person outside of the rubric of gender. Words only approximate me. Like grabbing a hand full of water from a running stream - my gender it finds the cracks and spills out.

Foremost I am ALOK, complex and multifaceted. So much of that vital nuance gets lost in extrapolating me to categories which require minimizing difference for the sake of coherence and convenience. I am less concerned with being known as I am being experienced. I use categories (and try to not let them use me) because they are currently the only way to address how I experience disproportionate vulnerability and they allow me to build affinity with others.

I use “gender non-conforming” to indicate how I visibly defy society’s understanding of what a man or woman should look like. GNC people are systematically policed by gender norms to maintain the fantasy that men and women look uniform.

I use “non-binary” to indicate how I am outside of the Western constructed gender binary of man/woman. There are infinite non-binary genders, we are not merely some third option for leftovers.

I use “trans” because I was coercively assigned male at birth and made a decision to transition/transcend elsewhere.

I use “gender fluid” because my gender is not static, it shifts across time and space. Presenting what society deems as “masculine,” doesn’t invalidate the legitimacy of my femininity and vice versa.

I use “transfeminine” because I most frequently present in a way society labels “feminine” as people continue to read my body as “masculine. I therefore experience distinct harm for the presumed dissonance between my “masculinity” and “femininity.”

I use “queer” as a political term to challenge how/why I have to have a fixed gender or sexuality category to begin with when I am so much more than that.

Clothes Are For Any Gender

I’m giving a big talk next week on how clothes have no gender. I’m having flashbacks to prepping for my TEDX talk I gave 6 years ago. In that era of my style I was wearing a lot of bow ties, waistcoats, blazers + of course, lots of prints. To me these articles of clothing were so feminine! The intentionality, meticulousness, the bow around my neck...😍).

This was the period when I started to become an LGBTQ public figure + it was a very different media moment with very little gender literacy. I received so much scrutiny for my self presentation: “he isn’t trans, he dresses like a man!” “if he’s trans, does that mean he’s a trans man?” People conflated my vests + bow ties with my gender with my presumed manhood. I was new to this level of visibility, young and still coming into myself. It was traumatizing to have so many people misrecognize + misgender me — like they knew who I was and what I had been through.

Over the next year I started to get rid of these type of clothes + wear more dresses, makeup, skirts, + jewelry. Yes of course I liked them, but part of me also knows that I was motivated by wanting people not to misgender me as a man.

Years later in my speech I write: “I believe fashion should be a celebration of beauty. I believe that the gender binary is an obstacle to beauty. It limits our self expression and confines our aesthetic imagination.

Clothes should mean what we want them to mean, not the other way around.” I see now how the gender binary made me have to reject clothes associated with “masculinity” + don clothes associated with “femininity” in order to be legitimate, real, + worthy. I understand why I did — so many things were beyond my control. But I want so desperately for us to create a world where every article of clothing is for anyone who wants to wear it. One in which people can determine what their clothes mean to them.

Proud of my growth — that years later there’s still misrecognition + invalidation but I am wearing what I want for me, not the gender binary. I know who I am: my spirit transcends the visual, my body belongs to me not others’ projections.

Dresses Are Gender Neutral

I receive hate mail every day for living beyond the gender binary but this one takes the cake. A concerned gentleman offered to send me “men’s clothes” + a “shaving kit” to fix my “non-binary mental illness” + make me look like a “real man.”

The gender binary + masculinity is so fragile that it can’t bear to even look at people like me — it has to disappear us. Masculinity maintains its power through control — disciplining people into one uniform look.

But here’s the thing: we don’t need to be fixed, society’s obsession with gendering arbitrary objects needs to be fixed. Dresses have no inherent gender, they are gendered as part of a political project to create gender binary.

Seems like a good time to remind people that in NYC up until the 1970s police would arrest people for looking visibly gender non-conforming in public. Our community referred to this as the “three article law” meaning they had to wear at least three articles of clothing of their assigned gender, otherwise risk arrest. Police would forcibly strip search gender non-conforming people to confirm their “real” gender. People who they read as “women” wearing slacks + shirts would be criminalized + people who they read as “men” wearing dresses + makeup would be criminalized.

While so much cultural, aesthetic, + political work has gone into making pants + shirts more gender neutral, dresses still remain associated with womanhood + femininity. But dresses can be feminine for some people, masculine for some people + mean whatever they want for anyone. Everyone should be able to wear what they want without fear of persecution or harassment.

i am trying very hard

“disgusting” “unappealing” “gross” “animal” every time i post a photo of me just existing i receive a torrent of messages like this, often times from my own LGBTQ + trans communities.

the idea goes that i am “not even trying” that i deserve the abuse that i receive because i choose to wear “feminine” clothing on my “masculine” body. i am “an embarrassment” + “walking joke,” + if i didn’t want to be violated every day simply for being in public, i should “at least” shave.

here’s the thing: i am trying very, very hard. trying to survive + thrive in a gender binary world that seeks to extinguish, eradicate, annihilate gender non-conforming people like me.

i am trying very hard to unlearn what i have been taught + accept the gift of my body hair — how it blooms from my face, my chest, my shoulders, my arms, my legs, my back, such that i am always embraced by it.

i am trying my very best to exist on my own terms, not the ones dictated to me by white patriarchy which polices body hair because of colonial beauty norms that associate body hair with racial difference.

i am trying very hard to hold my head high outside while people weaponize their shame on me.

i am trying very hard to love + fight for my LGBTQ community which so often leaves people like me behind in pursuit of acceptance.

i am trying very hard to preserve my dignity + mental health when i so often have to bear the burden of everyone else’s projections + internalized racism/transphobia.

i am trying very hard to teach the world that we should be able to look like whatever the hell we want + not experience violence.

and if that’s not “trying hard enough for you,” then i don’t know what is.
love + need you. all of you. even the ones who don’t see me for me (yet).

Portrait by Christian Hutter

both gender + sex are cultural

people ought to know this is happening. one of the most vulnerable + subordinated groups in the country is being systematically targeted. every day there is a new assault on another fabric of our being.

let’s be clear: while this is about this administration’s blatant transphobia, the rhetoric + justification they are using for this is constantly deployed by mainstream society— including feminism + LGBT activism.

let’s break this down: they are saying that trans + gender non-conforming people are not protected by anti discrimination legislation because the protected class of “sex” does not include our “gender identity.” they argue that we are, fundamentally, our “biological sex” + that our “gender” is just an identity that we arbitrarily choose.

this gender/sex distinction where sex is seen as something “biological” + fixed + “gender” is seen as something cultural + chosen is transphobic. both sex + gender are cultural! being assigned male or female at birth doesn’t make you any more legitimate than someone else. calling something “biological” doesn’t make it any more real. it’s a rhetorical strategy used to depict us as inferior, one that that shirks accountability + covers the traces of its prejudice.

biological refers to life force, all living things are biological. trans women are not “biological male,” they are women + female, trans men are not “biologically female,” they are men + male, non-binary people are not male or female, we are non-binary! gender is not some exterior costume through which we hide our authentic sex.

when we say that we are men, are women, are neither — we mean this in a total + fundamental sense of our personhood.

of course we need to protest this + all of this administration’s blatant anti-trans measures, but we need to also resist the ideological structure that these arguments are based off of. this is something we all can + should do in our own lives. what this recent push shows is that the forces that be never real cared about discrimination, they care about ideology: biological essentialism.
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being non-binary is not new

being non-binary is not new.

this rhetoric of new “gender ideology” taking over is white fragility. these are racist narratives that deliberately conceal the lived reality of gender variant BiPoC.

the real “gender ideology” “erasing how things used to be” is the binary gender/sex system which was forcibly imposed on the entire world through the criminalization + murder of gender variant people. what’s new is the masquerading of this cultural racism with the rhetoric of biology.

there is a reason why the majority of trans exclusionary feminists are white. gender is a racial construct. trans exclusionary feminism is racism by another name.

conservatives + exclusionary feminists (conservatives) scapegoat “postmodernism” for erasing “real” biological sexual difference. sounds about white!

western academic theory did not invent us nor a critique of gender/sex. TGNC BIPoC people + two spirit people have been resisting attempted cultural genocide + gender binarism for ages. we have been critiquing colonial eugenics — specifically naming how defining womanhood through reproductive capacity was a racial logic (created by white men who believed that the only role of white women was to give birth to the white race). exposing how eugenics argued that gender/sexual bifurcation was a civilizational achievement capable by white people only. showing how this fake “biology” used by trans exclusionary feminists is a continuation of racist eugenics— collapsing + narrating social difference through bodily difference, justifying power differentials through ideas of inherent fitness. “this is the way things are” vs “choices were made to make it so.”

white fragility monopolizes the discourse such that we are constantly rendered unthinkable + irrelevant. feminism remains tethered to cis white womanhood. our — biological — reality is misrepresented as a conspiracy to erase them, not something that just exists. this is a red herring which further distracts from what’s actually going on: the ongoing erasure of non-western gender systems, + the continuing violence against BiPoC TGNC people at the hands of white gender normativity.

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Portrait by Meghan Daniels

ignorance is an organizing strategy

while it is easy to dismiss + ridicule statements like this as “ignorance,” we cannot neglect how ignorance is a political organizing strategy. it isn’t neutral or passive, it is conscious + strategic. ignorance is cultivated, organized, distributed, + indoctrinated. ignorance generates + stabilizes differential meaning: whose bodies matter, whose pain matters, whose lives matter, whose deaths matter.

this is a concerted effort to divert responsibility away from white supremacy, patriarchy, and christian supremacy. these ideologies work precisely through diversion — scapegoating vulnerable “others” be they trans/queer/Muslim/disabled as “the problem.” condemning others becomes a performance of innocence.

in the past few years there have been dozens of anti-trans legislations introduced at the local, state, + federal levels demonizing trans people as a “threat,” all the while white cis men are left un-scrutinized, we get bashed + die + people don’t care. they murder + people don’t care.

this situation is not natural, it is produced by the distribution of meaning which is formed by the distribution of ignorance.

so yes there are mental gymnastics being done, but these are choreographed routines. well-rehearsed + repeated because they work. rather than dismissing instances like these as “ridiculous,” we have to name + strategize against these tactics. moral crises of “the decline of traditional family” + “the rise of gender ideology” are conjured as a red herring such that white supremacy can reproduce itself. this is part of why LGBTQ issues have + will always be about race in this country.

never their own, always his

6/30/19
on my way home after a pride party i stopped to pick up some fruit for a midnight snack. i was wearing makeup + a dress, but that should be irrelevant to this story or any story about gender based violence. it’s not about what we wear, it’s about what they do. why is the focus always on our appearance, never their hands? i handed the shop keeper $1 for 4 bananas. he asked me if i had a penis. it was over 85 degrees outside but i froze. i am alone. it is dark. there are several blocks to my house. if i say something what if he attacks me? if i walk away what if he attacks me? if i don’t answer what if he attacks me? they keep calling me brave but i would rather be safe than that. so i smiled. this is what i do: i smile & keep quiet. i hope that this submission will allow me to leave. it is a sacred art form i learned from my mother who learned from hers who learned from hers. i learned early on how to charm to disarm. i carved this smile from stone. “do you have breasts?” it was past midnight. i had just come back from a pride celebration. at dinner i had talked about how rather than strategizing against public harassment, the lgbtq movement has conceded that we have to conform to gender binary to be safe. i talk about harassment & then i get harassed. visibility is traumatic. it is exhausting. it is the opposite of a party. no it is being at the party & watching people celebrate a victory you have never felt. it is being the only one who looks like you. not by circumstance, but by design. it is a Pride catalyzed by gender non-conforming trans femmes that continues to push us out. is this what it means to be out? not to be free, but to be made a freak? “are you a girl or a boy? i said “both.” then he reached to touch my chest. i ran out with the bananas. i only remembered to breathe when i got home. the bananas, they were stale. my mouth, it was dry. they stayed up all night sweating on a dance floor & i stayed up all night sweating on my bed. to each his own. never their own, always his. always his.

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their glee, our impossible grief

6/25/19
panic attacks during pride. a new genre, an archival feeling. struggling to stay afloat alongside the floats. most lonely at parties. their glee, our grief. being harassed during pride month has an extra kind of sting to it. it’s not just adding insult to injury, it is also adding injury to insult. it is the injury as insult and the insult as injury. it is a movement unconcerned with our movement from point A to B. i look up + see so many rainbow flags. i look across + see so many people laughing at me. they keep talking about progress + i am just trying to get to the next building without being assaulted. rather: i am trying to get through the building without being assaulted. rather: i am trying to use the bathroom without being assaulted. every time i go outside i feel hunted. so hunted that the chase, it continues on the inside. my blood races. my chest, shivers. where can we rest? what is rest? the impact that this has on my body/mind is tremendous + soul/tissue/joint/disc/tendon/bone/dream crushing. it’s hard not to feel defeated by the daily ness of it all. how accustomed i have become to the pain. but that is their world & we are creating a different one. it’s not quite our own yet, but we have dreams here. we live in dreams, from dreams, with dreams. there is always simultaneity. multiple stories. and all of them are true. and all of them are not. today i choose to also tell the one of my hairy belly being embraced the sun. the one of my smile emerging from yet another sleepless night — like that stubborn sun, how it comes back somehow. the one where i walk outside in this city of unrequited love & ask it to love me back. the impossibility of that. the impossibility of this. the impossibility of me. we the possible impossible. the story of we — the possible impossible.

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