I’d first become aware of my gender when I was at kindergarten and the teacher split the class into girls and boys. Because of the body I had, I knew I was meant to go to the girls’ side of the room. But I had this overwhelming feeling that I didn’t belong there, so I stood in the middle of the classroom in my yellow dress and red shoes, gazing longingly at the boys’ group, thinking, “I think I fit better over there, but I don’t think I’m meant to.” There I stayed, sick inside, until the teacher steered me in the “right” direction.
As I grew older, even though I didn’t feel like a woman, I also didn’t believe I could be anything else. Gender seemed to cling to my body, as if the two were inseparable. That’s why, in my early twenties, I came up with explanations like, “I’m a woman who doesn’t feel like a woman,” and later, “I’m a bisexual woman,” then later still, “I’m a queer woman.” But it never felt right. At one point, still clinging to the notion that gender was the body, I began to wonder if I’d been an intersex baby who’d had surgery. (After all, my family would never have discussed such a thing.) But whether or not that was true, I was missing the point.
In my thirties, I met my trans husband (who I’ll call “The Man” or TM) who I later supported during his transition. There I was, watching the human I loved bravely transition even though it terrified him, while those around him continually misgendered him or acted like he was “less valid” as a man, and how could I not begin to see who I was, too?
So, I came out as non-binary. People told me I was “newfangled” and “foolish” to look the way that I did and think I wasn’t a woman. These same people often got me into discussions, by asking me to explain who I was, but what many of them seemed to mean was, “Let’s have an argument about this, so I can put you in your place, and then not use your they/them pronouns.” I was once moved to hear the non-binary poet Alok Vaid-Menon speaking so beautifully about gender in a podcast interview with Glennon Doyle: “They tell you that there’s only two genders, and they get away with it because they kill, disappear, erase, and delegitimize all of us who, for hundreds of years, have lived alongside you.”
Even being in public with TM could feel erasing. When we’d first met, I loved presenting as women, walking hand-in-hand down the street, because my queer identity could be seen. Now that TM presented as male, however, we looked like a cisgender, heterosexual couple. This was affirming for him, but it wasn’t who I was. Besides, now I was out as non-binary, I wanted more than ever to be truly seen.
That’s why I ended up staring at my reflection in the bathroom mirror, having what I thought was a radical idea: “I’ll change my femmeness,” I told my reflection. “Then I’ll be more seen and believed.”
So, I started by pushing my favorite fitted tops, dresses, and form-hugging jeans aside and replacing them with what I perceived as gender-neutral clothing. I considered donating my beloved floppy-brimmed sun hat to a thrift store, but the thought made me ache, so I buried it at the back of the wardrobe, along with my dresses, including a lacy one that made me feel divine. Instead, I started wearing peaked caps and looser clothing. I also wore my hair in a blunter style and stopped shaving my legs.
I knew there was nothing wrong with presenting in a more gender-neutral way—I want to stress that because I know how quick society can be to judge non-normative gender presentations. Honestly, as a pansexual person, I could easily be attracted to someone with a gender-neutral presentation. But for me, while I was presenting that way, I felt no joy. It wasn’t authentic for me. It wasn’t who I was.
“It’s just an adjustment,” I told myself in the early days. “You’re tearing through layers of societal shame and constructing your gender in a new, exciting way.” But it didn’t feel exciting. Over the following weeks, I kept trying to not look in the mirror, because I didn’t want to see someone who didn’t look like me. Shopping for clothes became perfunctory and joyless. Yes, some of my clients were beginning to use my they/them pronouns, which was great, but what use is that when you feel drained, restricted, erased? I was killing a part of myself in order to be seen as more valid. This was, to quote Alok Vaid-Menon, “the intimate violence that comes from within.”
What I was missing then is what I actually now know: My identity as a femme, non-binary, AFAB, cisgender human is real and valid, because the construct of gender is about how we feel. For instance, I remember once reading in a newspaper about a transgender woman who was living in a country where, if she came out, she would face extreme violence on a daily basis. She likely wouldn’t have been allowed to live for long. So, she continued to present in a stereotypically male way with the body she currently had, but inside, she knew her pronouns were she/her, and she knew she was a woman because that is how she felt.
But the truth is, even if you think gender is purely physical, the binary you imagine doesn’t exist. Experts suggest that intersex people are born at about the same rate as people with red hair, yet we erase them constantly. As for gender as a construct, listening to Alok Vaid-Menon has taught me how the gender binary spread via colonialism and was originally imposed on Indigenous people via white supremacy through a process of shaming. “European settlers,” says Vaid-Menon on the We Can Do Hard Things podcast with Glennon Doyle, “indoctrinated Indigenous peoples into the idea that they had to be men or woman as defined by your American culture, otherwise they were ‘heathen, degenerate, and wrong.’” This is clearly a history that has been deeply erased, lest it be seen for the erasure it was.
For me, my gender has always felt like the night sky—no noise, no structures that are part of this binary world. My gender identity has nothing to do with the body I’m in or how I adorn it. But my way of celebrating my body—and the way I was first taught to hold it—is through femme clothes and presentation. I’ve learned to love these decorations. They’re part of who I am.
So there I was, erasing the femmeness from my body, telling myself my identity would be easier for others to see. Yet after just a short time, my whole fear of walking hand-in-hand with TM in public and being read as cis heterosexual fell away, because I didn’t want to walk anywhere. I was too depressed. I was also buried by the question others had asked me in a hundred different ways: “If you’re not prepared to erase your femmeness, how can you really be non-binary at all?”
One day, everything came to a head. My partner, knowing we’d vowed to always be honest with each other, courageously shared his truth. He said he loved me very much, that I was his person, and that what he was about to say could never touch that. Then he said the words, “Honey, I’m heterosexual, and I’m having some problems with attraction.”
It was a shock. I tried to accept it. But the more we talked, the more devastating the idea seemed to become. TM was heterosexual and attracted women, yet I was pansexual and non-binary. No matter how I presented, could that ever work for us? Sexually speaking, were we even a fit? Didn’t TM need someone who affirmed him during sex more than I ever could? Also, we were a monogamous couple, and the thought of an open relationship scared me.
It was hard. I was triggered. I cried all night, and Jake cried too. I feared the possibility that we’d never again be sexual partners. At one point, TM was so distraught by my weeping that he said, “I want to take it back. Can I take it back?”
“But how can you, honey?” I sobbed. “This is who you are.”
The next morning, we needed to get to a couples’ therapy session. Drained and upset, I looked at the clothes in my wardrobe and just couldn’t face them. I wasn’t clear from our discussion whether what I wore could make any difference, but even so, the anger I was feeling also related to my inauthentic presentation. So, I got in the shower, shaved my legs, retrieved a dress and floppy sunhat, and arrived at therapy feeling radiant.
Nevertheless, couples therapy was tough that day. We had a lot to work through. For one, TM believed my dress and shaved legs were an attempt to erase myself in order to save our mutual attraction. What he didn’t realize what how alive I was feeling, as if, in spite of our heavy situation, a part of me was finally shining. In fact, there was one point during the session when I leaned towards our couples’ therapist, looked her straight in the eye and said, “There is one good thing that’s come out of this. I was so angry that I dressed femme today. And God, how I’ve missed it!”
Then, to my surprise, I burst into tears.
My therapist passed me a tissue. “Of course you missed it, Star,” she said gently. “This is who you are.”
After, TM and I got home, walked through the door, and fell into bed together. It was as if my femmeness had cast a magic spell. There was more work to do, of course, especially for me—I needed to work on nurturing my non-binary femme identity. But once I was presenting femme again, our sexual connection began to expand in beautiful, empowering ways. I felt only joy.
About a year later, TM and I were in Las Vegas, renewing our wedding vows with an officiant who looked like Marylin Monroe. I was wearing my favorite floppy sunhat and my favorite dress with the lace sleeves, and I felt wonderful. After the ceremony, we wandered around Vegas hand-in hand, totally presenting as a cis, heterosexual couple. But doing so felt surprisingly joyful. Who cared what anyone thought? There I was in the beaming sunlight with my man. I was my femme, non-binary self, happy and in love. People said “ma’am” and I laughed. Nothing could erase me.
Romancey Pants 