rthko

I don't mean any of this in a weird way but if we're interested in breaking down binaries, we can't cling onto the binary of cis versus trans. If gender expectations are as constrictive as we say they are, then this imagined class of people who are okay with gender expectations 100% of the time with no complications is just that. Imagined. It's similar to "neurotypical" as an imagined class of people who are completely comfortable with the social and mental expectations of their jobs and would never understand what it's like to get overwhelmed or feel out of place. The unintended implication is an obsession with labelling and pathologizing that says that it's not gender or workplace norms that need to be interrogated, it's you.

The truth is that you can be outside the binary without formally committing to calling yourself nonbinary. I am a cis gay man who feels most comfortable and affirmed when I'm free to wear earrings and garments I bought in the "women's" section. I tell people my pronouns are he/him because it's the simplest explanation, but they/them and even she/her are comfortable, even validating, in the right circumstances. There are a lot of cis gay men just like me. Am I actually nonbinary and just in denial? No. Being a gay man is deeply meaningful to me. Am I encouraging nonbinary to start calling themselves cis and questioning whether they're actually nonbinary? No, and I feel more comfortable in my own manhood knowing I have the option to leave. I just want us all to define ourselves on our own terms. I want celebrate common ground and shared queerness with trans people and not have to overstate our differences. We treat it as a political and moral obligation to fine tune our labels for the sake of establishing who's allowed to say what, who's allowed to relate to who, and I have to ask: Are we committed to breaking down boundaries or not?