I’m noncis but not trans
Hello everyone. I’m nonbinary. I’m not going to tell you what my assigned sex at birth was. I’m not going to be talking about my transition goals because, frankly, I don’t have any.
Something I’ve struggled with since before coming out is the overbearing expectation that I would transition, an expectation that I wholesale reject as a requirement for being noncis (noncis meaning, not cisgender). I plan on talking more about that expectation and about labels such as transmasc or transfemme that get pushed onto nonbinary people in a later piece, but for now I want to talk about that thing behind the scenes that drives cis society to cling to that expectation.
Transgender.
I love that word. I think it concisely and practically describes the experience it’s meant to describe. I think it’s important that such an adjective exists and I will fight for the right of any noncis person who wants to use it to use it. It’s a powerful umbrella term and so many wonderful communities have been built up around it- communities which have saved many lives, including mine.
It’s taken me some time to be able to articulate why, in spite of the huge love I have for the term, it makes me uncomfortable. Viscerally uncomfortable.
At first, I thought it was because of some sort of internalized transphobia, or perhaps an insecurity that I wasn’t “trans enough.” In every noncis community I was part of, I heard so many people talking about these issues and figured I just had some serious learning and unlearning to do. Well, I learned. I unlearned. I delayed coming out for two years so I could do so, and at the end I was still uncomfortable with the term for myself.
In my mind I kept coming back to the history of the word. If you’re sensitive to historical terms for “transgender” or for brief mentions of health services, please take care of yourself and skip on to the next paragraph. In the early 1900s, we saw the word transvestite from Magnus Hirschfeld, who would later go on to help pioneer early gender affirming surgeries. Mid-1900s, we got the now hotly debated transsexual. As time went on, people began to shorten that to trans and the word transgender was born. Words like androgyne had been floating around for a long time, but it’s only recently that it’s grown in popularity. Even so, that label often defines itself in relation to the established gender binary.
The more I thought about that history, the less I saw myself in it. There is a rich lineage to the word transgender that my puny summary can’t begin to communicate. But that lineage is for binary people. It’s for people who have been recognized by cisgender people as being “born in the wrong body.” There’s a historical narrative implicit in the word transgender that says it is for people for whom the binary works.
And that’s great. I love that for them. But where’s the word for people like me? For nonbinary people who don’t self-describe in binary terms? In my opinion it isn’t and can’t be, transgender. There needs to be other language that accurately describes who I am. Recently I came across a word I really resonated with: metagender. I’m still exploring it, but if it catches on it could be a whole new umbrella term for people like me who live outside of the binary.
All this, and I hear you asking yourself: why does this matter? It matters because I’m not the only one who feels this way. There are a surprising number of us. And with the current state of things, in order to have any kind of meaningful conversation about gender with cis people or even, in some cases, trans people… we have to use this word to describe ourselves. We have to put on this label to clear the understanding gap between who we are and what people will understand.
It’s inhibiting and, honestly, pretty sad to have to do.
Full disclaimers that I in no way speak for all nonbinary people. I wish I didn’t have to say that. But there are plenty of nonbinary people of all flavors who adore the word transgender for themselves and I genuinely love that they can find solidarity with the word. This isn’t to say their experiences are less valid as nonbinary people for identifying with transgender, it’s just to say that not all of us are comfortable with it.
I’ll be talking about the expectation to transition next time, but I hope this piece helps you think about what binary expectations you might be placing on your nonbinary friends and colleagues.
