Multi-Gendered Identity, Pt 1.
In 2014, a TV series called Faking It came out from MTV. Originally, it was the premise of a lesbian and her best friends “faking” being lesbians for the popularity that got my attention. Pretty soon after that, I was arrested by the side character of the intersex teen played by Bailey De Young.
What is intersex, I asked myself. Why haven’t I heard of this before?
In the first season, at least, the character of Lauren and what it meant that she was intersex wasn’t really developed beyond the fact that she had parts of both male and female genders, and that she took pills for the “condition”. I went elsewhere to find out that intersex was the term adopted in the medical industry to replace the term “hermaphrodite”.
Late 2014 was also when I met the darling and amazing @deerishus who kindly allowed me to sit up with them all night, multiple times, and ask all kinds of questions about what it meant to identify as non-binary.
In November 2015, Dahlia Adler and Elliot Wake (then Leah Raeder) put on this amazing pod cast / interview that dedicated a whole section to the importance of changing identity labels, that finding ones that work “for now” is fantastic, as is being able to use the internet and places specifically like Tumblr or Twitter to interact with other people who might know or be using other labels that might more comfortably fit your identity.
I honestly haven’t stopped thinking of this, so much so that it’s featured in the article I wrote for the upcoming issue #1 of RANT Zine.
Since then, I’ve followed literary non-binary and trans writers on Twitter, read blog posts and reposted the ones I’ve really identified with.
I’ve also, perhaps interestingly, read every single. book concerning. intersex characters. I’ve been able. to get my hands on.
This may seem a bit obsessive, but at least half of these books I picked up only to THEN find included an intersex character within.
I’ve found myself frustratedly asking why there isn’t an opposing word for non-binary, meaning not fitting into either of the binary genders, before feeling like I wanted to cry since the obvious answer is ‘binary’. THAT’S NOT THE ANSWER I’M WANTING.
I’ve found myself stuck in a way of feeling that was steadily more envious of these intersex characters, jealous that I could not and did not have both the reproductive or sexual anatomy that doesn’t seem to fit the typical definitions of female or male but, rather, both.
I’m asking myself, if there are currently at least two words for having the physical representation of both of the two binary genders, WHY isn’t there a word for the mental representation of both of the two binary genders?
Simple answer? There is. At midnight tonight I keyed in the words ‘all gender identity’ into Google, hardly even hoping for anything and not even knowing what I was looking for or expecting to find.
All-gendered led to multigendered led crying which led to not being able to sleep for thinking of this blog post, which led to this blog post, which has led to a quietly contented smile on my face, and it is now one in the morning.
