It’s too short to be able to understand all the facets present in its community, the LGBT acronym has to be extended, embracing sexual orientations and identities of different kinds. The letters Q (queer), I (intersex), A (asexual) and a ‘+’, which I personally do like very much, have been added because it indicates that the door is open to everyone. What I find particularly interesting, especially because it managed to make its original negative connotation a source of pride, is queer.
Queer is a so-called umbrella term, a kind of generic term for anyone who isn’t cisgender and/or heterosexual. The first time I heard it I asked myself why there was the need for a Q, as I thought that the remaining letters, were enough to represent all sexual orientations and gender identities. After a lot of reading, I not only became even more aware of the LGBTQIA+ community, but also I had a much wider vision especially of gender identity. Queer in fact also includes all those people who, being neither cisgender or transgender, are considered to be off the gender identity track, sometimes embracing both its ends, sometimes stepping away altogether.
Personally, and I realize this may be a statement that’s not up everyone’s street, I have always found the labels very useful. This is due to the fact that, in this specific historical context in which too many people don’t know or are still struggling to understand the difference between sexual orientation and gender identity (and the examples could go on forever), I think to have a clear idea with a precise explanation of what a particular term means can help to break down the wall of ignorance, laying the basis for a future society in which having to explain who you are and who you love will no longer be necessary because it will be considered natural. I am very graeful for the term queer because it has allowed me to break down even more my personal wall of ignorance, introducing me to that universe of colourful tracks which is the genderqueer community
As it often happens, celebrities are often the ones shining the spotlight toward a certain topic, at least with regard to the LGBT community they often become the spokespeople of the struggle for equal rights. Some of these celebrities have also bravely opened up to the world about their sexual orientation and gender identity. Although today the former ones are more numerous, a good number of celebrities have come forward to declare, albeit maybe not explicitly, that they see the world outside the tradition gender tracks and that they actually are genderqueer (among the latest examples there are Ruby Rose, Ezra Furman and Miley Cyrus).
Grab via itspronouncedmetrosexual
But what does it exactly mean to be ‘non-binary’?
Explaining it is not simple, as well as understanding it, and for those who grew up in the firm belief that either you are male or you are female it can be even harder. Just imagine a rope with many knots starting from one end and finishing in the other. At the knot on the right hand side of the rope there are all those who consider that their gender identity is female (even though they were born biologically men); at the knot on the left hand side of the rope there are those who consider that their gender identity is male (same here as they were born biologically female). In between, however, are still many other knots who, not considering themselves as neither man nor woman, remain in the middle. There you go, the term genderqueer embraces all these people, giving a name to their being.
As genderqueer is considered to be an “umbrella term”, this means that it encompasses many more varieties. In order to avoid getting confused, therefore, it’s best to recap for a moment all of the terms that we defined as of now before moving on to the next ones.
Cisgender: it is a neologism that describes anyone who feels at ease and perceives as their gender the one assigned at birth. Example: I was born with a vagina, I was assigned the ‘female’ gender, the pronouns that people use to refer to me are female one and I’m okay with all this, because I feel like a women. I am therefore cisgender. I should, however, open a brief parenthesis: one thing is talking about gender identity, another is the social expression of that assigned gender identity. Just as a cisgender man remains man even though on Tuesdays he ‘dresses as a woman’, a woman remains cisgender even though on Thursdays she ‘dresses as a man’. This applies to all gender identities from here to follow, and it is therefore important to ask, if ever in doubt, which pronoun to use with the person with whom you are talking to (unfortunately the Italian language does not have a neutral pronouns such as ‘they’ in English and the ‘hen’ in Swedish).
Transgender: anyone with an identity that is different to that associated with their genitals.
Transsexual: the term ‘transsexual’ refers to those transgender people who have started a long psychological and medical transitional journey who will eventually lead to the achievement of the identity of their belonging genre. There are transsexual women and transsexual men; the first ones are men transitioning into women (this doesn’t mean they go from man to woman like magic, but it means that they have always been women and they are ‘just’ taking the journey that will lead them to change their primary and/or secondary characteristics); the second ones are instead those transitioning from woman to man. We are therefore talking about FtM and MtF transsexuals.
Genderqueer: anyone who feels that their gender identity doesn’t coincide with either the sex assigned at birth, nor necessarily with the male/female binary dichotomy that is normally embraced especially in the Western world. The genderqueer can therefore belong to a third kind, to both or to none. They can also choose a medical path to get closer to the physical representation that they feel they belong to, just as much as they can not do it (there are those who bind their breasts, there are those who remove them, there are does who don’t carry out operations but decide to undertake hormone treatment, and there are those who express their true being by mixing clothes conventionally considered feminine with masculine ones).
Courtesy of Chloe Aftel, for the San Francisco Magazine
Let’s talk about them one by one.
What you might have already heard of is genderfluid. As the word suggests, the gender identity of those who call themselves genderfluid is, precisely, fluid. This doesn’t mean that these people are undecided, or that they don’t know ‘which side to be on’ or that they have fun wearing a tie on Mondays and wear lipstick on Tuesdays. It doesn’t mean that when they are dressed ‘conventionally feminine’ then they are only women and therefore stop being genderfluid. It means that their gender identity is not ‘fixed’ in time, but it travels though a spectrum of identities according to what one feels best represents oneself in a given period of time. Who ever feels represented by both genders is instead defined as bigender, while those who feel totally out of male/female binary opposition is agender (and this is where usually the lack of an adequate neutral pronoun is felt even stronger).
Thanks to the English language, that in terms of the LGBTQIA+ terminology it’s definitely on the forefront, all of the other genderqueer facets are slowly finding a suitable name for them, allowing anyone to be gender non-conforming (whose gender expression, for biological or personal matters, doesn’t meet the expectations of the society), therefore allowing everyone to receive a just and worthy representation.
Courtesy of Chloe Aftel
What it means specifically to be genderqueer, though, I do not know: I always felt represented by the gender assigned to me at birth, I do not know what it means to wake up and not feel adequately represented by my gender and considered by society as a woman. What I have understood though it that human nature is too complex to remain confined within the boundaries of ‘male’ and ‘female’, and that it’s right and proper that everyone is respected and represented in the best way possible in the society in which they live.
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Some useful resources
– A GLAAD Media Reference Guide on Transgender Issues
– the ‘Gender Tag’, by activist Ashley Wylde
– ‘Golden Boy’ by Abigail Tarttelin, a review
– ‘My life without gender’, a testimony
– Why is Gender Identity so Important? | Rikki Arundel | TEDxWarwickSalon
–‘I identify as gender-fluid – Here’s what that means’ – Mtv.com
