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Hi everyone. Welcome back to Let’s Talk Gender.
This episode is about living in the world as a nonbinary person including what ‘passing’ means for nonbinary people, navigating public washrooms, going to the gym, and how a nonbinary perspective can influence how you interpret other aspects of society.
PASSING AS NONBINARY
Passing typically refers to the idea of ‘blending in’ with one of the binary genders, or being consistently recognized as the gender you identify as (assuming it’s one of the binary options). In Western society, we are trained to categorize everyone as male or female as quickly as possible because we learn from a young age that this is a vital piece of information that we need in order to interact with people. Since ‘nonbinary’ isn’t a gender that people assign to strangers, passing doesn’t exist in the same way for nonbinary people.
Some varieties of passing that might apply to nonbinary people are being read as female in one situation and male in the next, or causing confusion and hesitation when the cues they typically use to gender you are conflicting.
I have found that some of these cues are stronger than others. Voice is one of the strongest. Luckily it doesn’t come into play until you interact with someone but this can be very frustrating over the phone, radio, or at a drive through. Another strong one is whether you have a curved or flat chest. There is some variability to this one depending on body size and structure but a chest that is curved or rounded, as when pushed up by a bra, is, in my experience, exclusively read as female where a flatter chest does not signal male nearly as strongly. On the flip side, having facial hair strongly signifies male, especially if it is darker, thicker, and more widespread, whereas having no facial hair does not necessarily signify female. A slightly less strong cue is bone structure, particularly of the face, presence of an Adam’s apple, a person’s stature, and shoulder to hip ratio. And lastly, clothing and hairstyle can have a significant effect from farther away but are easily overridden by the other cues above.
I don’t mean to list these as a way to trigger dysphoria in anyone. It’s more a way of expressing my frustration that society is so hung up on these aspects of how we look and present that they can completely hijack a stranger’s brain into categorizing us a certain way regardless of our efforts to flag our gender.
I also think about the list of cues above as a guideline of how to mess with the gendering system in other people’s brains. If I avoid the cues that have a stronger effect in either direction by flattening my chest, speaking in the lower range of my voice, wearing clothes that look boxier, and keep my hair short, maybe I will have a stronger effect. Or for someone else, this may look like having facial hair, wearing more feminine clothes, and maybe even a padded bra or breast forms.
Unfortunately, if you can’t be easily categorized into male or female, you tend to stand out and draw attention to yourself. Always feeling like you stand out just for being who you are can be exhausting and often we end up compromising our personal comfort in order to blend in, even if just temporarily. This can be for safety reasons or to have one day where we don’t get second glances, stares, and looks of confusion. Some days I’m able to reframe the double takes as a positive thing, that who I am is showing through and challenging their binary views of gender, but most of the time it just feels like unwanted negative attention.
ASSUMED CIS
Passing is usually referred to in a way that makes it sound like trans people are attempting to hide i.e. be ‘stealth’, trying to trick cis people, or frames passing as the goal of transitioning. These perspectives can be very toxic to lots of people, but especially nonbinary people.
Instead of using the term ‘passing’ to mean ‘being identified by stranges in alignment with my identity’, which doesn’t feel like it will ever apply to me, I prefer to use the term ‘assumed’. Most of the time, I am assumed to be female by strangers, acquaintances, co-workers, really anyone I’m not out to. There has been the occasional time when I was assumed male and got called sir. One of these times they ‘corrected’ themself and changed it to ma’am when I turned around and spoke. The other time I was so surprised, in a good way, that I couldn’t remember my breakfast order and my husband ordered for me while trying not to laugh at my deer-in-the-headlights reaction.
Anyway, I much prefer the term ‘assumed’ to ‘passing’. Not only does it relate much more strongly to my experience as a nonbinary person, but it also assigns the action to the stranger rather than to me. This is also much more accurate to my experience. I am living my life, presenting and interacting however is most comfortable for me and it is the people around me who are assuming that I am a cis woman.
PUBLIC GENDERED BATHROOMS
There are some specific situations where not blending in with either binary gender can make life a lot more difficult. Namely, public gendered bathrooms and gym changing rooms. Let’s start with bathrooms.
When it comes to using a binary gendered public washroom, I have a few different options. Choosing either binary gendered washroom comes with the psychological impact of having to misgender myself in order to use the bathroom. I can use the bathroom I’m guessing that most people are assuming is in alignment with my gender regardless of how I’m feeling (usually the women’s which is lucky because it has a lower safety risk). I can use the bathroom that most closely aligns with my gender at that time to minimize the psychological cost (but if this happens to be the male bathroom I am trading the psychological cost for a much higher safety risk). Or I can avoid going to the bathroom until I have access to a gender neutral, all-gender, or non-gendered washroom with the increased risk of getting a UTI if this becomes a regular occurrence. When I’m out, having a friend to go to the washroom with can help protect against the safety risk posed by strangers but it doesn’t take away the impact of having to misgender myself in order to use the bathroom.
As you can see, none of these options is great. But it has led to me making note of every business I come across that has non-gendered washrooms.
GOING TO THE GYM AND OTHER PHYSICAL ACTIVITY
Going to the gym includes a few different things I want to talk about. The first is the changeroom situation. This closely mirrors the things I talked about related to public washrooms but with a few extra points. We aren’t just using a stall at the gym, we’re actually getting changed, often in view of strangers. This can be terrifying for anyone who’s body doesn’t fit the gendered expectations associated with the space they’re in. Getting changed is also often a trigger of dysphoria for lots of trans and nonbinary people. So overall, this experience sucks.
On the plus side, most change rooms include bathroom stalls or changing stalls. This added privacy can definitely help with the safety risk. There are also often family change rooms that are single use. I know it feels weird to use those as a single person (maybe this is one of the random benefits of being a parent as a nonbinary or trans person?). I’ve done it when my dysphoria was too bad to feel comfortable using the women’s change room (and there’s no way I look like I belong in the men’s). It feels like everyone is watching you and judging you for using the one family change room as a single person but I know it’s what I need to do sometimes so I change as fast as I can and try to ignore the feelings of guilt.
Then there’s the working out part of going to the gym. Let’s ignore for a minute that there’s a global pandemic and lots of areas have gyms closed or many of us are choosing to work out at home instead. Some of this will still apply.
Gyms often have at least one wall made of mirrors. This sucks for a lot of people with dysphoria. Though I have found that sometimes, if my dysphoria is mostly social in nature rather than physical, seeing my body do something strong and personal and gender-affirming can actually help mitigate dysphoria or increase euphoria.
The physical activity involved in working out can have lots of positive effects on our bodies in terms of endorphins, health, mood, energy level, and a sense of control over our physical being that we often feel so at odds with. All of these things can help improve our resilience and resistance to the negative effects of dysphoria. Unfortunately, with the nature of lots of types of physical activity, we can’t use some of our dysphoria management strategies such as binding, tucking, or packing. And feeling parts of our body move around that we don’t feel should be there in the first place can make certain types of physical activity a strong trigger of dysphoria.
Luckily there are lots of different types of physical activity to choose from. And that’s the last part of going to the gym, or in this case, even working out at home, that I wanted to talk about. For me, different types of physical activity feel more or less affirming depending on how my gender feels at the time. Whether it’s social conditioning or something inherent in the types of movement and how they feel in my body, stretching, Pilates, and low impact or endurance cardio feel more feminine to me, kickboxing and Thai chi feel more neutral, and weight lifting and higher intensity cardio feel more masculine. I can choose the type of activity that feels most in alignment with my gender at the time or I can choose a type of activity that will temporarily make me feel a different aspect of my gender to increase my sense of balance.
THE POWER OF A NONBINARY PERSPECTIVE
Discovering you are nonbinary starts with questioning the gender binary. But living as a nonbinary person and challenging the gender binary on a daily basis also gives you the skills and awareness to recognize other binary situations and systems that you are uniquely equipped to navigate in a new way.
For example, we have the saying ‘there are two sides to every story’. But what about a third or fourth interpretation? What about recognizing that those two sides overlap? What if neither side is wholly correct or wholly incorrect?
In divisive politics and crisis situations, there is often a rhetoric of ‘you are either for us or against us’ or there being a ‘right way’ and a ‘wrong way’ to react to a situation. A perspective derived from a nonbinary view of gender teaches us that there is lots of space for middle ground, other options, and nuance.
And lastly, when it comes to emotions, we often struggle with so called ‘conflicting’ emotions – grief and gratitude, love and anger, excitement and frustration, relief and shame. We often express these emotions by saying something like ‘I’m so excited to get my new ID but it’s taking forever!’ or ‘I will really miss my grandmother but I’m glad she’s in a better place’. We use the word ‘but’ between concepts that feel like they conflict because the two can’t possibly exist in the same space at the same time. This would be equivalent to me describing my gender by saying ‘I’m female but I’m also male.’ Instead, what I say and what feels true for me is ‘I’m both female and male.’ Applying a nonbinary perspective to conflicting emotions teaches us that just because these emotions are different from each other does not mean they are in opposition, in conflict, or are mutually exclusive. Just as various experiences of gender can exist in the same person at the same time, so can various emotions. Try listening for the times when you use the word ‘but’ and switch it out for the word ‘and’. You might be surprised by how this little change in phrasing makes the experience you are describing feel more whole and valid.
REACH OUT!
If you have other thoughts on how being nonbinary has influenced your perspective on the world or you’re struggling with the day to day experience of living as a nonbinary person, send me an email at letstalkgenderpodcast@gmail.com. I’d love to hear from you and help if I can, or connect you to other resources. You are not alone.
That’s it for Episode 7 of Season 2 of Let’s Talk Gender.
The music for this podcast is by Jamie Price. You can find them at Must Be Tuesday or on iTunes.
Coming up in Episode 8 I will be talking about pregnancy and parenting as a nonbinary person including navigating the incredibly gendered world of fertility and pregnancy, the physical experience of being pregnant, and my thoughts as I look ahead to parenting.
Talk to you soon.
RELATED POSTS
- Passing as Nonbinary
- Passing vs Presenting vs Assumed
- It’s All About Bathrooms
- At the Gym
- The Power of a Nonbinary Perspective