I view gender
As a beautiful animal
That people often take for a walk on a leash
And might enter in some odd contest
To try to win strange prizes.

~ Hafiz, from I Heard God Laughing: Poems of Hope and Joy.

Last summer, I bought my first binder. I had passed it off as a “fashion choice” that would allow
me to wear button-ups without the annoying gap in the fabric caused by my chest. “I simply
wanted to dress more androgynous,” I told myself. Nothing to look into there. I was only
wearing it when the outfit asked for a little less oomph in the front.

However, it wasn’t long until I began turning to the binder more regularly, wearing it under
bulky sweaters and even when I knew I wasn’t going out or seeing anyone that day. It made me
feel more secure when walking past my reflection or looking down at my chest.

As someone who cares extremely little for their own health, I predictably began wearing the
binder longer than advised and often fell asleep with it on. I’d wake up to bruises on my ribs and
fabric burns on my back from the tight cloth rubbing against my skin. I began lashing out at my
mirror, frustrated at my own reflection. My hips, my ass, my chest, they were all wrong. They
felt foreign to me. Too prominent. Too feminine. Too…not me.

Journal entry: November 19th, 2020
Is it more official now that I’m writing it down? To formalize it? If I’m the only one who will
ever read this, then what am I achieving by writing it down? Anyways, I think (am pretty sure) I
might be non-binary. I don’t know what I’m going to do now though, I guess this is the part
where you begin to tell people? I don’t want to do the whole coming-out thing again. It’s
exhausting.

Towards the end of November, I decided to articulate these feelings to my roommate. A week
later, I had put my pronouns in my bio. I was euphoric, excited about this new development in
my life. Of course, there were ups and downs with my family. Well, uh, mostly…all downs. But
that’s all very depressing, so I won’t talk about it. “Repression is key to a healthy mindset,” I
say.

Journal Entry: December 7th, 2020
Sorry, it’s been a while. You’re non-binary now, put the pronouns in the bio and everything, go
us. Decided that I didn’t really have to come out since I’m not seeing anyone in person anyways.
I kind of just wait for people to either bring it up after they see my bio or correct them when they
misgender me. I did stop going by Mar though, change my name to Loes. I kind of always wanted
to go by Loes. Mar never fit right. Mar. Mar. Maaaar. No. It’s not a huge change, going by the
second half of your name, but it feels right.

Of course, with every identity crisis comes a Google and social media deep dive. In my case, it
was of non-binary representation on social media. Something which began as an exciting world I
longed to be part of but slowly turned toxic. Representation was framed, as it often is on social
media, in unachievable standards. My timeline slowly filled with people who looked like they
were born to wear a suit like nothing looked more natural than a blazer. Their slim frames lacked
all the parts of myself I had begun to hate. No one would look at them and immediately assume
their gender. In comparison to them, I just looked…wrong. Like a child who’d rummaged
through their parents’ wardrobe in an attempt to look “grown-up” but instead was just told to
stop pretending.

I became fixated on the idea that, if I wanted to appear legitimate as non-binary, I had to present
as masculine as possible and hide all parts of myself that are considered feminine. I could never
wear a dress, a skirt. Makeup was acceptable, but only in a “masculine style,” whatever that
meant. I became overwhelmed with these restrictions and unspoken rules. I still am. It’s hard to
break out of gender roles, and it’s even harder to feel comfortable in your identity when the
entire world perceives you as someone else. I try to stay off social media.

Journal Entry: March 5th, 2021
Meeting with my professor today. Kept referring to me with the wrong pronouns in front of the
rest of the research team. Mom and dad were in the room, I couldn’t correct her or say anything
and no one else was correcting her. So now I’m in a park crying on a swing set while the sunsets.
Very aesthetic trauma.

For me, this marked the first time I got openly misgendered. Its impact made me realize just how
important my identity had become to me over the year. Not to be a cliché, but ya really don’t
know what weight you have placed on your gender till it’s gone. It f*cking sucks. Sure, there had
been incidents before. But when it’s just your friends, there isn’t the same pressure. If anything,
you make a fun drinking game out of it! Hard to ask your boss to take shots in the middle of a
meeting.

The dysphoria comes and goes. And I am still working through some deeply ingrained and
internalized conceptions of gender and identity. I am still processing how I understand being
non-binary and trying to move away from it being anything other than deeply personal to the
individual. There is no blueprint for identity. As I write this, I think back to myself last summer
and the excitement I’d felt when putting on my first binder. I think about where I am now, and
it’s hard to not feel just a little optimism for the future.