I am not a woman.
I am not a woman in a dress, I am not a woman in heels, and I am most certainly not a woman in makeup. I am not a woman when I use she/her pronouns, I am not a woman when I take birth control, and I am not a woman when I have my period.
Androgyny is expected of someone when they come out as non-binary. We have been given this image of a skinny, white teenager with brightly colored short hair and button down shirts and we are told that this is what a non-binary person looks like. There are a lot of queer people, especially young queer teens that are still trying to figure themselves out, that do fit into that picture. But by expecting the rest of us to fit that mold can make “non-binary” seem as though it is a third gender instead of a genderless identity.
As a person assigned female at birth, it is expected of me to dress and act like the traditional idea of a woman would. As a non-binary person, it is expected of me to push the boundaries and lean more into the masculine side of expressing myself.
There is a feeling of privilege when it comes to how I present myself as how society wants me to. I don’t have to worry about getting stared down in a public bathroom or harassed by bigots who can tell that I am genderqueer. But it still hurts something deep inside my chest when I hear “yes ma’am” and “excuse me, miss?” even if I often don’t mind using the pronouns I was born with.
Imposter syndrome is something that I have struggled a lot with when it came to my gender and sexuality.
I came out as bisexual in 2016 after years of trying to figure out why I felt butterflies when I shared a bed with my girl friends at sleepovers. I thought after that, the noise in my brain would quiet down. I thought the strange detachment to my own body would fade and I would feel normal again.
Flash forward to 2020, and I had been stuck in my home since March with nothing to do but reflect. It was harder for me to come to terms with the disdain I felt towards the female gender, because I never hated the way I looked or represented myself. My issues were internal.
I constantly feel like I am having to explain that I am not a woman. Repeatedly having to explain to people that I am non-binary, stressing the use of the “they/them” pronouns in my bios and email signatures.
Some days I can’t tell if people just don’t care enough to get it right, or if they really just don’t believe me because the person that they see on their Zoom screen looks like a “woman” to them.
I understand that it would be easier for me if I just accepted that by dressing the way I like, I’ll forever be seen as female. But I have worked too hard to figure out the mess inside of my brain that is gender to throw it all away just to make those around me more comfortable.
Non-binary doesn’t mean to be half man, half woman. It is devoid of gender, impossible to fit into a box. That is how we like it, that is who we are. By expecting androgyny from everyone outside of the gender binary, true personal expression can never be fully reached. This goes both ways too.
Recently, Harry Styles broke the internet by posing on the cover of the fashion magazine Vogue in a full dress. Some people loved the way that he expressed his feminine side, others stated that by wearing the dress he was not a “manly man”. But this isn’t the first time that Styles has pushed the envelope when it came to dressing more androgynous.
When it comes to picking out his clothes, Harry Styles told Tom Lamont in an interview for The Guardian back in December of 2019, “What women wear. What men wear. For me it’s not a question of that.”
He continued on to express that he thinks “the moment you feel more comfortable with yourself, it all becomes a lot easier.” That quote in particular stuck with me for a long time after I had read the interview.
At the time, less than a year ago, I thought that there was no way that I was going to feel that way with myself. Maybe partially, maybe sometimes, but this idea of being completely comfortable in being myself was something just out of reach for me. Until one day, when it was right there in front of me. One day when I woke up and looked in the mirror and thought, “I’m me.” and didn’t cringe a little after the words left my mouth.
I still have my days where I feel that imposter syndrome creeping up in the back of my mind. Those are the moments that I try to ground myself in the fact that my body is no one else’s, and I don’t owe it to anyone to fit the idea of me that they have created in their minds.
I don’t regret the hardships I’ve been through, and I don’t wake up every day wishing I was anything else. I was never meant to fill the mold that society created, what they decided I was supposed to be when I was born.
I love the color pink, I cry when I watch romantic comedies, I enjoy jamming out to boy bands in the shower. I paint my nails and let gentlemen open the doors for me and wear my curly hair long and flowing.
I have fallen in love with the person I am now, because of everything that I had to figure out about myself along the way.
And I am not a woman.
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