Coming in as Non-Binary

I had always identified as not-your-garden-variety-man, but it has been an odyssean journey to recognizing myself as non-binary and genderqueer. First, I had to come out to myself, a years long process, which I’ve decided to call ‘coming in’.

The first inkling I had that I might be non-binary (and not just eccentric) occurred the first night of a workshop on uncovering social bias. As each of us stood up to introduce ourselves, I was surprised to hear myself say, “…and I’d be delighted if you would use they/them to refer to me.” That was in March of 2018.

That was the spring that Dirty Computer was released by Janelle Monae. I listened to it on repeat in my car. My partner and I bought tickets to see her perform in Denver. When the night for her performance rolled around, partner and I dressed up. Partner did my eye-liner, and I wore a single clip-on earring, turquoise with a line of tiny pearls around the perimeter. That whole night I felt so un-self-conscious, so at ease. I chalked it up to being with ‘my people’, the queer-dos. Only days later would I think, “Oh. I wasn’t ‘dressing up’ for the concert. I wasn’t wearing a costume. I was wearing myself.”

Then came allegations, later confirmed, that the lineage holder and head of my spiritual community had committed, at minimum, sexual misconduct. In the wake of those revelations there were many, many zoom calls for different groups of people to process together. There were calls for people of color, calls for women, and then the announcement of a call for men came across my inbox. A voice in my head said, “WELL, that’s NOT me.” Followed by another voice saying, “whoa there, Self—we always identified as a man before. What’s this all about?” Followed by, “Oh. Fuck. You’re right. Not a man.” Then gravity fell away and the sky got real big. Then I got heavy and wary. That was the last gasp of my normative gender identity.