Gender Nonconformism: How Traditional Female Stereotypes Made Me Question My Gender Identity
Pink for girls. Blue for boys.
But what if you’re a girl and prefer blue? Does that make you a boy? Orange. Purple. Which gender claimed these? Both? Neither? Who am I if I like green?
How can I be a girl if I don’t like pink…?
This is the tale of how I tested the waters of the gender spectrum from agender to transgender, settling subsequently at cis female: gender nonconforming (or gender-variant). Confusing? It doesn’t have to be.
Unpopular opinion: labels are necessary. Language and labels are fundamental in starting the process of better understanding our own identities and those of others. Thanks to the accessibility of the internet in 2020, it has never been easier to access the bottomless database of gender identity and sexual orientation terminology (it’s how I realised I was pansexual, but that’s a different story!).
But say you’re a young child of around 9 years old. The only internet access you have is your mums’ phone. Your Wi-Fi has parental blockers. Your immediate family and social circle are cis heterosexual adults. How do you even begin to formulate the questions that you need to ask about your gender identity when you do not possess even the foundation knowledge of the gender spectrum? We will return to this question later. For now, let’s take a journey of self-discovery with a little girl who renounced all concepts of femininity and chewed out the eyes of her barbies.
9 years old. Orange and green bedroom. Trees in the backyard so tall I could’ve climbed them for years. The occasional Baby Anabelle gifted at Christmas that I would throw against the wall to get her to sleep. A bike. Rollerblades. My pink Barbie house - but that was OK, I played with my toy dinosaurs in there. My general aesthetic: t-shirt, joggers, fingerless gloves, trainers. Cool as a cucumber. So far? So good.
10 years old. We move to a new house unexpectedly. The bedroom is pink. The bedding is Groovy Chic. There is a pink wastebin, pink lava lamp and obnoxiously pink playboy bunny pillow (what was that all about?!). Wowzah. My mum has left most of my belongings behind. My uncle has a wedding coming up – we have to buy me some new clothes. This is my first memory of me knowingly rejecting femininity. My mum and cousin took me shopping and pick out a two-piece: a short, beige, frilly skirt with pink flowers on it and a matching top, with pink sandals. I cried in the shop. I looked in the mirror and saw an alien. That wasn’t me. I felt like I was drowning. “Stop being so ridiculous! It’s nice and you’re wearing it. Because I SAID SO.” Mum didn’t bother to force me into clothes I didn’t like after that scene and the one at the wedding. Though she did berate me if I didn’t act on her encouragement. My sister was a hardcore tomboy, you see. I think she was hoping for at least one ‘pretty in pink’ daughter.
15. After many aesthetical phases; emo, goth, florescent legwarmers (though I may return to that one, actually!), I finally settled back into my joggers and tank tops. It wasn’t necessarily about the way they made me look and feel, but they were comfortable. At 15, I was sure I liked girls. I always had, but I knew what the name for that was now (we would later find out that I liked boys, too. Cis, trans, genderqueer; attraction hit us from every direction! But again, that is a different story…). I had my own laptop, and I started researching the gay scene. That’s when I came across drag queens, but more specifically, drag kings. Women dressed as men? My heart was thumping. I’d never felt a connection like this before. This felt right. This felt like me!
After many months of slicking my hair back, practising my make-up and trying to look as convincingly male as possible, I must confess that this phase never got past my bedroom walls. But it did introduce me to a whole new appreciation for the drag artform and as a consequence, encourage me to explore what was really me: a queer little 15-year-old that fancied men in drag!
Despite the self-discovery, 15 was a rough year. I was outed at school and the bullying started. The school informed my mum of the bullying, and I was outed at home as a consequence. I lived in a small little mining village at the time where the majority of its residents still occupied a 1700s mind frame, so that went down a treat.
I lost my friendship group. I spent my school dinners in cramped rooms with counsellors when the mental health onslaught succeeded me. And then something incredible happened that writing about now could honestly bring me to tears. Another kid in my year group came out as gay. Two in the year above came out as bisexual, and a sixth-former confessed that he was non-binary. I had people confiding in me that had never paid me the time of day before that they were curious and questioning their sexual and gender identities. That they had been for a while, but didn’t know how to come forward, or who to come forward to…
I finally had a community.
Many years have now passed since my first introduction to the gender and sexuality spectrum. As I have more knowledge of the identities of those around me, I feel more comfortable in myself, and thus, the need to express myself so intensely has diluted. Not because I feel any different, or that my adult years have rendered me silent and coy, but because I believe that with comfortability comes quietude - a clear sense of self that I no longer have to convince people of, or myself.
Having fought my way through the rapids of existential crisis alone, I consider it my civic duty to provide a safe, open and inviting space for children, teens and adults alike to talk, question and develop a better awareness of themselves and those around them. Knowledge breeds understanding and understanding provides a linear line of communication.
Parents, educators, siblings, friends; the conversation about who we are does not need to be complicated. Educating your children on the gender spectrum will not make them trans. Including same-sex couples in sex education will not make your child gay. But hiding, hating or criticising those who are not cisgender or heterosexual will make them fear themselves if they are not that way. And that will make them fear you.
1:2 LGBTQIA+ youth in the UK report having self-harmed, with 44% having considered suicide. Roughly 1:4 trans people have actively attempted to commit suicide, with 1:2 having experienced suicidal thoughts. I am not embarrassed to say that I sit within these statistics. My plea to all of you reading this, regardless of how you self-identify, is that you encourage and welcome the conversation of diversity, inclusivity and equality into your everyday lives. Ignorance to those around you will only inspire bigotry and the loss of more of our community worldwide…
Would you want your lack of understanding to be responsible for the death of a child? How about your child?
It has been 13 years since my first heart-shattering experience with the colour pink, and a lot has changed since then. It did, in fact, come to fruition that I did not identify as a male. Though I still didn’t identify as particularly female, or more so I realise now, with femininity.
I dabbled in the non-binary scene in my inner circle and experimented with different pronouns/names for myself, but none of them did seem to fit. I was quite comfortable as Nicole. But as Nicole that liked to play in the dirt, make robots and beat my male friends in races. Not as the Nicole that was expected to play tea-party, bake cookies and think babies were just the cutest (this I can confirm was not a phase; the maternal gene was left out of my genetic make-up).
And so, the biggest change of all! Now I’m 23. Completely comfortable in my own traditionally nonconforming, cis female identity, I can ironically confess that I have unironically grown to enjoy the colour pink.
The author of this piece wishes to remain anonymous.