By Emy: https://oneemy.wordpress.com/
It has been over a year now since I changed my name and asked those around me to refer to me in neutral terms. However this year of visibility is but a scratch of my experiences over the years. Gender in definition, much like my experience of it, is boundless, polymorphic.
Gender is power. This is what I have come to learn. It may enslave us or set us free. And though I have been publicly non-binary for a year now – still I swing between ensnarement and relief.
My perception of our world is grounded in its construction, or more precisely; in the knowledge of our construction of it. When I first read Judith Butler’s ideas on gender, they resonated deeply (gender is a social construction – not some imposed and objective truth). Yet I made no effort to share this truth with those around me, and certainly no effort to share the validation it provided my own identity. Around the same time, when the term non-binary entered my sphere, I was reluctant to validate it. Bitter with my own ineptitude to express myself, I instead convinced myself that this was just one more pre-constructed category to place oneself into.
Continue reading “Gender is – some personal reflections”