A story in being non-binary.
I find it hard to write about my gender, because for the first 20 years of my life, I didn’t realise gender was a thing. Everyone knew I wasn’t exactly a ‘girly girl’, since I preferred short hair and trousers over ponytails and dresses. Whether I was bothered by the (sometimes daily) question ‘Are you a boy or a girl?’ depended on how I felt. My responses varied from simply answering ‘I’m a girl’ (even though I wasn’t sure I was), to laughing it off, to challenging them to choose (‘What do you think?’), to feeling just a little bit hurt (on the rare occasions when I actually did feel like a girl and thought I looked the part). Their responses varied from aggressive (‘Answer the question, bitch’), to mocking (‘You do look a bit like both’), to deeply embarrassed once they figured out that, no, I wasn’t in the wrong bathroom.
There have been times when I tried to ‘conform’ to one gender or another. I shaved my legs, wore tank tops and sometimes allowed my friends to put makeup on me before going out. On other occasions, I attended drag king workshops where I learned how to move and act more masculine as well as how to put on a fake beard. Despite probably only ever having dressed up in drag about ten times in my life, I ended up participating in a drag king show in Germany, in a short documentary on national tv, and in two or three local magazines. Suddenly ‘drag king’ had become my identity. At least, it had to the media looking for a new niche to cover. Although I learned a lot and I greatly enjoyed my times in drag, I did not feel as though that suddenly was ‘me’. It’s funny how it’s sometimes easier for the world to see you as an either/or. People like clear-cut definitions – labels. One person actually assumed I would choose to transition at some point, finding it easier to cope with the idea of me ‘turning into’ a man than of me being, well, me.
“ It’s funny how it’s sometimes easier for the world to see you as an either/or.”
Personally, I don’t really like labels. My ideal world simply has none. It’s a world without gender, where people just are who they want to be, act how they want to act, and dress how they want to dress. But reality (for now, at least) works differently. And in such a reality, labels can sometimes be helpful. For me, there was one label that accidentally found its way to me and ended up sticking. I was at a fantasy fair dressed up as a fictional character (a man, so I was in drag) and I joined a quidditch workshop. For some reason, they started counting the number of men and women on the pitch before the start of the game. I had a sinking feeling, but then they reached me… and ever so casually, they said: 'You're non-binary right?'
Whether it was the label itself, or the casual way in which they introduced it as an actual option, it just clicked. You don’t have to be an either/or. You can be neither. You can be both. You can be a little bit of everything or anything in between. ‘Yes, I guess I am.’
While the label did not magically solve everything, it did make me feel accepted and validated my sense of identity, which was something I didn’t know I had needed before then.
I didn’t suddenly become more confident, and I still go through a small identity crisis every time I’m on my period and I’m confronted with the treacherous femininity of my own body, but at least I know there’s a space in this world carved out for people like me.
“at least I know there’s a space in this world carved out for people like me.”
I’m lucky enough to have a supporting wife who accepts and respects me just the way I am, unshaven legs and all. We’re currently engaged in the balancing act of raising our first child as gender-consciously as possible. It’s a constant confrontation with ourselves, society, and how even we are influenced by the way the world currently works. We were shocked to notice that we talked very differently to each of our cats (one being a male, the other a female). And they are just cats. We are now trying to be extra careful with our child, but we know we’ll end up making mistakes as we go. And we’ll get judged along the way. ‘Is it a boy or a girl?’ is still the first question people ask and replying with our child’s sex is often easier than engaging in the ‘Does it matter?’ conversation. Some people feel we’re forcing our child to be something they are not, even though our philosophy is simply to buy them neutral clothes until they themselves can decide what they would like to wear. We’re not forcing our child into ballerina dresses or shirts that say ‘bad boy’, but if at some point they were to decide they want ALL THE TULLE, we’re not stopping them either. We hope that by having a diverse set of parents who are confident in their unique identity, they will also feel free to express themselves in whichever way they want.
In the end, I believe that’s the main thing: as long as what people are doing does not harm anyone, let everyone just be themselves.
Hover over the pictures to see which picture relates to which description below:
2000: I'm almost 10 years old here, it's around this time I decided to cut my hair short for the first time
2008: high school prom, which is probably the girliest I've ever looked in my life, I just wanted to see what it would be like
2011: one of the pictures taken for a drag king shoot in a magazine (credit: Leigh Van den Acker)
2014: first time playing quidditch while I was partially in drag (fantasy fair where I was dressed up as a male character, though obviously in this picture I'm wearing the team shirt). This is the first moment I heard that 'non-binary' was a thing (credit: Irene Knoester)
2016: an action picture of me playing quidditch (credit: quidpic.be)
2018: wedding picture of me & my wife (credit: Dirk De Lobel)
2020: picture of me and our baby in somewhat matching outfits.
Article Written by Joke Daems
(they/she/he them/her/him)