Bandwagons and lightbulbs
Before accusing anyone of jumping on a bandwagon, ask yourself what their motive for this might be? Isn’t it more likely that they’ve been confused as to who or what they were and the discovery of this new thing – due to it becoming more widely known – has switched a lightbulb on in their head?
I’ve written before several times about how revelatory and important finally getting my autism diagnosis was for me. Up until then I'd always had some self-doubt; the nagging feeling that I was not actually, as had been suggested, autistic but was in fact just a crap human being as I had so often been told by my inner voice and many outer voices. I was lazy and just had to make an effort like everyone else. I was using autism as an excuse because I simply didn't have enough willpower to fit in. The diagnosis helped dispel all this uncertainty. I was autistic and what's more I had a piece of paper to prove it. Of course self diagnosis is perfectly valid, but for someone with confidence issues having this kind of backup from an external authority was exactly the sort of validation I needed.
Unfortunately I can't get a piece of paper for everything. This is a shame because the way I feel about my gender now is exactly the way I felt about my autism then, pre-diagnosis.
Now that I know it’s a valid thing to be, I’m sure that I am non-binary. It makes sense of everything I have experienced in my life since puberty and I only wish that I had been aware of the option earlier in my life rather than wasting all of my precious time trying to fit into one of the masculine roles society deemed were appropriate for me.
But of course the same scent of doubt is lingering in my mind, wisps of uncertainty that whisper to me when I’m alone. Have I discovered what I am or am I jumping on one of those bandwagons I mentioned earlier? Am I non binary or am I just a crap male, someone who should "man up” (God I hate that expression. Not least because it implies that strength and courage are not to be found in women. Fuck that.) and make an effort to behave in a certain way like everyone else?
A piece of paper isn't going to get me out of this one. For a start there isn't really such a thing as a gender diagnosis. It's self diagnosis or nothing – and if I'm assertive enough in my self-belief then that should be enough for me and the world. I have seen references to studies finding that neurodiverse people are significantly more likely than neurotypical people to have diverse gender identity or sexual orientation which helps, but it’s the self belief that’s the most important thing here.
That's more difficult than you might imagine. One attempt at coming out to someone – some time ago, so I think I hadn't heard of the term non-binary and used "genderqueer" – was met with a response which I still remember word for word.
"Bollocks. You're a bloke and you fancy women so you're straight and that's the end of it."
That was the END of it. I'm fairly sure this aggressive outburst set me back quite some time. It would be years before I began to accept who I was again and by then the term non-binary had become more widely known and so I was fairly sure that was what I was.
If only I could get past the self doubt. The idea that I am somehow jumping on a bandwagon rather than actually discovering that the way I’d always felt was a way you could be, that I wasn’t alone.
“Limb’s queer!” was the constant cry at school. Yes, the bullies could sniff out the difference. And I knew I didn’t fit in with the general culture at the single sex establishment. But I liked women so surely I couldn’t be queer could I?
However, thinking back and viewing the way I thought throughout my childhood, adolescence and beyond, a lot of the signs were there. I just didn't have the words for them. For a start even before puberty I never liked the old rhyme about what little girls and boys were made of. Neither sugar and spice nor frogs and snails appealed to me very much. Why wasn't there a third option? I preferred stories with girls as the protagonists – the boys were somehow embarrassing and impossible to live up to (even if I’d wanted to) and at least the girls who were the protagonists of their own stories weren't remotely made of sugar and spice - they were thoughtful and intelligent and usually managed to think their ways through situations. That was exactly what I wanted to be like.
My puberty was very gradual. I do remember starting to find women attractive, which was probably the reason for so much of my confusion over the next few years. To foreshadow the phrase that was to be used towards me much later in life - I was a boy and I fancied girls and there was no more to be said. But thinking about it, the way I felt was very two-pronged. On the one hand I really fancied some women in the conventional sense – but there was also part of me that wanted to be like other women. Note that they were not the same kind of women.
Yes I found some women very attractive – some might say traditionally attractive viewed through dark weird lens, the darker and weirder they were the better – but there was also something about small, spiky girls who were odd and brightly coloured that attracted me for slightly different reasons. I found it hard to articulate back then, but now I can see that I also wanted to be them. My teenage obsession with Toyah was more than just her being my pin-up; I wanted to be like her, she was my role model. I now find it satisfying and gratifying that she's recently spoken in interviews about she often considered herself third gender, showing just what a good role model she turned out to be for me.
Because for a long time - most of my life - I had no idea that there was such a thing as a third gender. I knew what gay looked like as a lot of the pop stars I liked at the time were gay or flirted with that imagery - the early eighties was the age of the "gender bender" after all. I knew that there was such a thing as a sex change, that had been part of the cultural furniture for a little while. But the idea of there being another state - or in fact a whole spectrum of states – in between the typical view of what people are simply hadn't occurred to me. I just knew I was a bit weird and didn’t quite fit what was expected of me.
My demeanour led many people to think I was gay on first meeting me. The majority of people assumed I was or even said I “had to be” gay. My passive and reactive attitude towards flirting and relationships meant that a couple of times I ended up in bed with men. I didn’t really want to, but it was taking the easy way out. Just give them what they want and let them wank themselves off. It wasn’t awful and I didn’t have a negative effect on me – if anything it was confirmation that I just didn’t like men like that.
There was a recurring fantasy I had when I was a student at university - what if I dressed as a woman and pretended to be my cousin? Would people be taken in? Would I be able to pull it off? Often discussed with my closest friends as something we would plan to do – but never of course get close to actually doing. Thought experiment.
Interestingly I was happy and confident to express these things at the time - I’d say those last couple of university years were when I felt the most comfortable with myself and the people who surrounded me. If I’d managed to maintain that level of self-conviction I am sure I’d have been happier in my life, but unfortunately my people pleasing tendencies meant that I allowed myself to be beaten back into the heteronormative model that surrounded me once I left higher education and re-entered the outside world.
This may be one of the reasons why I was spectacularly bad at relationships. My male body and role – even when dressed up in the more androgynous costume of my preferred youth culture – made the women I got involved with expect a traditional male when it came down to it. I’ve been in relationships with bisexual women and a comment from one of them while dumping me struck a chord: “If I wanted that I’d have gone out with a woman”. In addition a male friend once angrily told me (probably in response to a bit of campery from me) “You’re never going to get a girlfriend until you embrace your masculinity!”
No matter how much I tried I was never any good at being a man. I thought it was just because I was rubbish (similar to what I thought of my social skills before my autism realisation). It didn’t do much for my self esteem. But on the other hand actually trying to fit in with that traditional male role always made me even more unhappy. This is one of the reasons I’ve always hung onto the gothic, alternative “punky” style from my younger years, despite many people’s pleas for me to “grow out of it”. It was - and still is - an excuse for me to carry on wearing makeup and nail polish into my old age. Not to mention continue dying my hair bright and unnatural colours - which has now come to be a signifier of gender non-conformity. I had queer hair all along.
(I once knew someone who had a close crop on one side of their head and longish hair on the other. She used to talk about her girl side and her boy side. I have no idea if she was non-binary, but it could have been something trying to get out)
Other clues? I have always hated it when people called me “sir” or referred to me as “that man”. I find myself mentally looking over my shoulder and thinking, “What man?” Conversely I always found it quite fun when people accidentally referred to me as “miss”, “love” or “darlin’” because this meant that the natural bias of being AMAB was surmountable after all. The pandemic was a particularly good time for those encounters; one afternoon in a newsagent the fact that I was wearing a mask with just my brightly coloured hair poking out from under a hat and painted fingernails meant that the cashier referred to me as “Young lady”. I was probably older than him as well.
Sometimes it seems a shame that I’ve discovered all this so late but on the other hadn’t I should count myself lucky that I discovered it at all. I am sure people in centuries past grew up not knowing what was wrong, but just the nagging sensation that something didn’t quite sit right.
At least I can spend the last couple of decades of my life sitting comfortably.