I’ve had an interesting couple of months exploring the concept of gender identity. 

Somewhere along the line, I felt a little burgeoning curiosity about how it might be to seek others who are ‘non-binary’ – which is basically an umbrella term for those who don’t identify with the binary gender ‘options’ (for want of a more accurate word).

What I learned is that gender identity is much more intricately complex than even I, as a gender non-conforming person, could ever have imagined.

And I realised how lucky I am that the binary, gender and gender identity, to me, have just been a theory and an idea that I rejected as having anything to do with me at all. 

I’ve realised that it’s much easier to feel no need for a gender identity, for it to simply not be felt, than it is to wonder just where you fit along what you perceive, experience and feel as a huge spectrum with ‘male’ and ‘female’ at each end of that scale.

A lot of the colourful and wonderful non-binary people I’ve encountered have been at an early, or at least still fluid, exploratory stage (and maybe it will even always be that way for them) and their unrest and efforts to find comfort and equilibrium brought back a previously forgotten sense of my own earlier years.  

There has been a stirring up of memories of when I felt like maybe I ought to consciously adjust what I wore and how I carried myself… 

…just to throw off people’s perception enough to make them think twice about sharing their gender-observing comments and all the ensuing assumptions and expectations that are inextricably tied into that. 

…just to try to remove myself from others attempting to push their own ideas about gender identity onto me, because they believe we must certainly have either a comparable or dissimilar experience or view of things – when they don’t even know who I am inside. 

…just as an always-on prevention mechanism for the feeling of outrage or incredulousness that I naturally felt (still feel, actually) when I’m spoken to as if I’ve joined some club that I definitely did not join. Or when I’m addressed with a naming label that has me looking over my shoulder to see who they’re talking to, because it. simply. does. not. fit. 

But, even with that desire for more control over what happened around me, my actual efforts to counteract it were short-lived, as I quickly realised that making any adjustments to who or what I am was not the way to go. 

What I actually needed to do was to start speaking up when people didn’t know, or didn’t understand, and overstepped my boundaries with their words or actions.

What I actually needed was the absolute freedom to feel my own feelings, find my own way, do my own thing, representing and presenting myself in the exact way that I know is right for me. To be fully and authentically ME, as only I know myself to be.

People are experiencing so many things all the time that you could never guess are happening by observing them from the outside.

Please be a little more aware today that not everything is as it may seem to you. 

Your willingness to let people show you who they are, without first feeling the need to add your own preamble, may well be appreciated far more than you could ever know.

We all need the space to explore and grow and find out who we truly are. 

Let’s do it together, by allowing everyone to do it separately, and in their own unique way.

#authenticity #respect #identifyyourself