beyond the binary, just a glimpse
let's live in the wide, open, uncertain field of infinite possibility
A few weeks ago I got a haircut.
It was different and much shorter than what I had before. With my new haircut, I felt less womanly.
My hair used to cascade down my chest to gently graze the skin just above my belly button.
My long, beautiful mane felt really affirming of my gender.
How bizarre to experience my sense of gender identity diluted or reinforced by hair length; something so completely irrelevant to my actual being.
And yet I’m sure most people can identify closely with having a similar experience.
I relish being a woman.
I’ve fought hard to like being a woman in a world where Woman is steadily reviled.
I love being a woman with a ferocity that makes me feel connected to women the world over and as many generations back as my imagination can touch.
That said, I’ve been intimately exploring existence beyond the gender binary… beyond the confines of heternormative scripts that say what a woman is and what a woman is not.
Molds that tell me I can’t touch or inhabit parts of myself if they fall outside the script.
Messaging so violent that for most of us, we never even look in the direction that stretches outside the confines of the binary.
Outside the walls of these rigid, uninteresting definitions I have found many subtle insights - ranging from the absolutely inconsequential and quirky to the profoundly earth-shattering - both about myself and the world.
These words that Alok Vaid-Menon shared on the Man Enough Podcast reinforced an experience I had this morning.
“A lot of non-binary people get a bad rap because people think we are the killjoys saying you’re not allowed to be a man or a woman. Or if you’re a man or woman then you are complicit in my oppression.
That’s not true! What we’re saying is that man and woman are two of potentially infinite. And that man and woman are like two stars in the sky. They don’t actually require diminishing one another’s shine.
Man doesn’t have to mean not woman. Woman doesn’t have to mean not man. Masculine doesn’t have to mean not feminine and feminine doesn’t have to mean not masculine.
We’re saying that there are potentially as many ways to be a man as there are men. There’s as many ways to be a woman as there are women.
And you get to tell me what man or woman means to you.
So actually moving beyond the binary is not about erasing your ability to be a man or a woman.
It’s about asking you who are you?”
I had sent my boyfriend some photobooth pictures we had taken together on my birthday when I still had the long, sexy mermaid hair. I jokingly captioned it, “Now you’re dating a queer little biker babe, no more femme for you!”
There was a bitter edge to my tone.
What was I now if I no longer felt womanly?
A tomboy?
An alt babe?
A dirt femme?
Then I realized that being a “dirt femme” also felt very much me.
Another flavor of my ‘galaxy of woman’ getting to come out to play because - let’s be real - there are SOOO many flavors and expressions of Woman inside me.
As I imagine there are so many flavors and expressions of person/gender within you.
Exploring what Woman means to me beyond the binary makes me feel free to exist as all of them.
As all of ME.
The sunhat-wearing farm girl me who wants to foster dogs, keep bees, forage for mushrooms, go crabbing, and sing John Prine around the campfire…
The dirty biker femme me who thrives in counterculture spaces, who constantly itches to ride her motorcycle, who is passionate about fighting against systems of oppression, and who wants to get waaaaay more tattoos…
The Spaniard-in-another-life me whose happiest place is sipping fabulous coffee, journaling in the morning, reading evocative essays, and wears her long polka dot dress with the slit that goes aaaaaall the way up to the flea market…
The insatiably curious nerd me who can get just as excited about space, plant medicine, and marine ecosystems as she can about pleasure activism, intersectional theories, and restorative justice…
The athletic me who thrives on forging through mountain ranges, swimming in wild waters, pushing her physical limits, and slamming the pickleball just right to win that last point…
The proud, independent adult me who loves homemaking, obsessing over her out-of-control plant collection, and feels rad and hawt when she tackles DIY projects with power tools…
All of these are what w o m a n looks like in me.
The identity and expression of Woman gets to be exactly how I choose to share it and embody it in the world.
This is that “one expression” within the infinite that Alok is referring to.
While I benefit from the privilege I have of identifying with the gender assigned to me at birth, many of the mentors, friends, classmates, and lovers in my life over the years do not.
I look at them and I see people who against all odds, chose themselves in spite of the obstacles, violence, hate, risk of loss, and rejection leveled at them daily from every direction.
“The thing that still takes my breath away is the strength of character in trans people when you take a solid look at what it means to be trans. No matter how much the world, the medical community, or anyone else for that matter tries to tell them that they are wrong or that they shouldn't be authentic, trans people step up. They remain steadfast in who they are; they have a strength of character that is undeniable, which taught me that I can be who I am. I too can have the strength of character. I can step forward and be seen.”
Like Green, I have been ushered into more of my true self by the people I know who transcend the binary.
In these trailblazers, I see unbelievable bravery and generosity.
I see how their fight to exist fully and freely also makes the world a more wonderful place for me to live. I see how they are fighting not just for “their community”, but truly for all of us. Even the most privileged.
We all get to be safer, happier, more free, more spiritually actualized, more artistic, more connected, more fulfilled, more ourselves in a world where the most vulnerable are protected, afforded dignity, and venerated as inherently valuable and essential to society.
That is a world I want my children - and everyone else’s children - to inherit.
That is the world I want to believe in no matter how impossible it seems.
That is the world I want to contribute my spoonfuls of impact to.
If I can return to remembering to embody that world in my work, my relationships, my connection to my Self, my advocacy, my consumption, my conversations with strangers… then maybe a few other people will also do so… and maybe a couple more who know them…
Maybe, just maybe, the way we live our lives in the small, less noticeable moments, is the rumble that builds into the collective tidal wave of change.
I believe in the power of individual effort because of how powerfully I have been influenced by individuals.
Of course we need systemic change and action on a massive, collective scale.
But I don’t know how to access that in my day-to-day life in a meaningful way.
The magic I actually have at hand is how I show up today for the world I want tomorrow, so that’s what I feel called to do.
Dive Deeper:
Want to explore your identity independent of the binary? Beyond what anyone has told you can and cannot be? What you must and must not be?
Here are a couple of places to start:
Check out Alok’s evocative, gently-educating, easy-to-read book Beyond the Gender Binary here!
Want absolutely epic, magical, dynamic, life-altering support to explore your gender identity? Look into coaching with Terra Anderson here.
Invitations:
I’ve got some awesome things coming in 2023 but in the meantime, here are a few of the ways you can follow along and/or work with me!
The Free Ways:
Subscribe to this newsletter!! I send it out (almost) weekly. It’s a love letter. It’s storytelling. It’s life as soul curriculum. It’s both thought provoking and silly stuff that will make you smile…
Listen to the podcast!! (here are the links to find it on apple podcasts and spotify)
The Monthly Way:
Join the Relationship Dojo! The Relationship Dojo includes two, intimate group calls where you can bring all your dating and relationship questions and get actionable, empowering, uplifting advice on how to tackle everything and anything coming up in your romantic and relational world. While your friends may be well-meaning, they are often regurgitating bad, sometimes charmful, advice! If you are ready to learn wildly unconventional ways to partner and date intentionally, I will blow your mind! It’s $97/mo, for all genders, and you can cancel at any time.
The Private Ways:
Love Coaching for Individuals - This 75-minute session is powerful private coaching to help you intentionally create what you want in your romantic relationships. Whether it’s calling in your person through intentional dating, or wanting to learn how to show up to your current partnership in new and empowered ways, I’ll help you identify actionable steps and perspective shifts you can take to create what you want in love.
Relationship Coaching for Couples - This 90-minute session is perfect for couples wanting support to take their relationship from good to great to extraordinary. Whether it’s keeping the magic alive, navigating a complex transition together, learning how to reconnect after a miscommunication with more ease, or any of the other many common curveballs of partnering, this session will help you come together and employ unconventional thinking that will help you feel like both a team and lovers again!
Mindful Business Strategy Session - This 90-minute audit and strategy session is designed to help business owners/leaders map out their gameplan for their next expansion. This is for you if you know you are on the precipice of your next wave of growth but are also aware that you need to work “smarter not harder”. You can feel in your gut that hustling harder is going to wipe you out but you’re unclear what “smarter” looks like for this next chapter. You’ll walk away with a 3-month outline of what to focus on to achieve your goals sustainably, and if you have a team, your leadership plan for them as well.
List of Noticing:
An idea I’ve borrowed from Marlee Grace; this is a little list of things that I am noticing, enjoying, and experiencing in the world that I want to share with you too…
When I’m anxious, I tend to avoid journaling. Subconsciously, I don’t want to submerge myself in the discomfort of feelings that in the past were incredibly hard to extricate myself from. But when I do manage to muscle myself into my pages, I always rediscover that I do not get stuck there. It is within those pages that I rediscover gentleness, hope, new ideas, and my trust in the greater organizing force that has this whole existene thing figured out.
Have you seen Reservation Dogs yet? It’s so good. I love it when I continue to notice cool things about a show days and weeks after watching it!
I went to a Sauna Party yesterday evening (which was just a backyard gathering where there was also a sauna), and I met several aspiring stand up comics. I realized that I love being around comedians because they are particularly invested in paying attention. They are well-practiced in noticing what is happening and any ways it might be unusual or special or particularly human. That’s how the get their material… now that you mention it, that sounds a lot like yours truly!
My partner sent me this podcast episode after reading my last newsletter. It sung to me not just because it was about rejecting the limitations fear wants to impose on us, but because it was a heartfelt conversation between writers. A vocation I am finally giving myself permission to fully own and embody.
I Give You Back by Joy Harjo; 23rd United States Poet Laureate
I release you, my beautiful and terrible
fear. I release you. You were my beloved
and hated twin, but now, I don’t know you
as myself. I release you with all the
pain I would know at the death of
my children.
You are not my blood anymore.
I give you back to the soldiers
who burned down my house, beheaded my children,
raped and sodomized my brothers and sisters.
I give you back to those who stole the
food from our plates when we were starving.
I release you, fear, because you hold
these scenes in front of me and I was born
with eyes that can never close.
I release you
I release you
I release you
I release you
I am not afraid to be angry.
I am not afraid to rejoice.
I am not afraid to be black.
I am not afraid to be white.
I am not afraid to be hungry.
I am not afraid to be full.
I am not afraid to be hated.
I am not afraid to be loved.
to be loved, to be loved, fear.
Oh, you have choked me, but I gave you the leash.
You have gutted me but I gave you the knife.
You have devoured me, but I laid myself across the fire.
I take myself back, fear.
You are not my shadow any longer.
I won’t hold you in my hands.
You can’t live in my eyes, my ears, my voice
my belly, or in my heart my heart
my heart my heart
But come here, fear
I am alive and you are so afraid
of dying.