in their own words

I used to carry a doll as a child, I don’t know much about the doll -- just that my parents thought dolls would make me gay and action figures wouldn’t, which was way off. If anything the action figures made me gayer with a hint of body dysmorphia. I can’t fault them, though -- For parents, it’s easier to try to prepare your child for the world than to prepare the world for your child. But if their goal was to get me to buy into society’s gender roles, like “normal children,” it didn’t work.

No shade, but all of this gender stuff seems like a scam, no matter how you do it or don't do it.

When I walk into a store today and it says, boy’s, girl's, men's, or women's -- I can still shop anywhere in the store. Anyone can if you aren't afraid to. But stores are selling us gender roles, and most of society is buying in.

And I'm just trying to pay my bills.

These days I’m finding labels to be very stressful. I feel like I don’t have a gender, but no matter what I wear I’m going to be seen as a man because of my body. But I don’t have to uphold expectations of what I should be wearing for my body, or who I should be 24/7.

It's really hard to pin down with words how I move in the world with so many people trying to stick labels on me-- from being told by family while growing up, that I had to be masculine to being told by the kids on the bus that I had “a little sugar in my bowl,” to being told by racists that dark-skinned black bodies like mine are masculine by default. I’m even labeled by potential romantic partners that say I’m either “too feminine” or “not feminine enough.”

All my life I’ve been told to toughen up because dealing with racism requires black folks to have a tough skin, but I’ve always been “soft.” Part of me is sure that most nonbinary folks are empathic energies in a world that loves division -- division of genders, bodies, etc.

In an ideal world, by shedding labels I’d be able to shed the -isms that come with them.

Instead, I have to navigate a gender nonconforming body, a black body, and being assigned male at birth. I have to navigate how people think femininity is frivolous and the judgments they project onto me.

If femininity were as frivolous as it is assumed to be on my body, then we’d expect femininity from no one -- and that’s part of the whole “gender is a scam” thing. Gender is a scam, but as long as society continues to buy into it, nonbinary folks will be treated like scammers. And honestly, I’m tired.

I need a rest from intersectional mental gymnastics like America needs a rest from gender reveal parties.

I know that I get tired of being woke, and other people get tired of being woke and that we all need some rest.