(trigger warning: this post touches on, but without any detail: teenaged sex, rape, suicide, and drug use)
I wrote this towards the end of 2023, before by birthday in December. I finally got around to posting it in early March, 2024.
I would love to tell you that I am beyond gender – that gender isn’t real – but that would not be true, and would be me ignoring large swaths of my own experience (painful and confusing swaths, at that) by falling back on intellectualism: relying on one “truth” of the matter: that we made up gender as an auxiliary to sexism – that, therefore, one might argue (I might argue) it isn’t real. The truth is that I exist, and have always existed, in a highly gendered world. A world in which there is no moving beyond, no existing beyond, gender. And, in fact, it is impossible to avoid the gender binary – which means, in effect, there are still two choices: are you male, or are you female. And, that goes beyond your primary and secondary sex characteristics, though of course those are still seen as primary indicators – inextricably tied. So, there is no choice, there is no other option in the normative western culture that dominates in the United States still. Yet, and this is where the confusion and pain has come in for me: I don’t feel or experience my SELF as a having one of the two binary genders – either in my body (as in my so called “sex characteristics,” from the biological side of things) OR in my outward presentation (how I dress, act, etc.). I also do not feel trans — as I feel connected with the body I have. Which makes me cis-gendered non-binary AFAB… something like that. I am not great at all this labeling, but I understand the need to identify in our current time and place.
When I was a little girl, which was my assignment at birth, and then additionally it was how I was raised as a small child in terms of how I was dressed and in terms of what activities I engaged in, it took me a while to orient myself enough to realize anything felt wrong. I was dressed in definitive “girls” clothes – think pink, dresses, skirts, etc. – and I did “girls” activities – think dance, with an important key: Dance as a Girl (tutu’s, dresses, curled hair in pigtails). At some point, although I knew I LOVED TO DANCE, I started to not want to go to dance. I wanted to do something else. I loved horses and wanted to ride – I did not, at the time, see that as a “gendered” thing to do – and the reality in that world, in fact, was that, unlike dance, males and females were not treated, or expected to dress, particularly differently from each other, in my experience, and riding did not feel particularly gendered to me. But getting there would be a long way away, and it is only recently (I am 35 years old) that I have even been able to see this aspect of what was happening in my childhood.
I lived for a time in this sort of internal resistance to being “female.” Femaleness did not feel right to me as it was enacted in my early childhood – nor as I see it playing out in the world in the currently dominant white, middle classed, way. And I am white and middle class – so this is my high-order acculturation. I was in Australia as well as the United States. I went back and forth a bit, and this played a big role in my experience of myself and gender. Before 5th grade, I remember a growing resistance to going to dance. I remember not wanting to wear dresses and skirts, but I also know I still was. At public school in Australia in primary school (grades K through 6) they have gendered uniforms. I wore a dress every day to school. When I was in 5th grade, we came to the US. We were here for my 5th, 6th, and part of 7th grade (we then returned to Australia where I did 7th and 8th grade, then back to the US for me to restart 8th grade).
Before we left Australia the first time, I already felt like I didn’t fit in well. I had a few good friends, though, and it was all ok. I wasn’t super aware of it at that time. Then, we moved to the US. Something big shifted, because suddenly there were no school uniforms. I was about to own more clothes of my own choosing than I ever had in my life. In fifth grade I started gravitating towards boy’s clothes. I wore mostly big baggy shorts or pants and big t-shirts. I did start riding horses – my mum took me and my sister Jaimee to western riding lessons. I could wear jeans and a big t-shirt in that context as well. I also gravitated towards skateboarding, and in general felt that I wanted to do things more boys were doing than girls. I also, during this time, developed more of an interest in science and math. But, of all of that, what was most impactful was my change in outward presentation – the clothes I wore and how I did my hair (mostly either down or in one ponytail, versus full of scrunchies, pig tails, and the more “feminine” (in my white middle class culture) styles.
During this time, people would call me a “tomboy.” I can say that I did not feel like a boy, but I certainly did not feel like a girl either. When we then returned to Australia – to the small town in central New South Wales where I grew up – my lack of fitting in was no longer easily ignored by others. During the year and a half, we were back, I went to high school. The good thing was, I didn’t have to wear a dress. The bad thing was, everyone could now tell I was different, and I was bullied big time. As a side note, my last name is Fagg, which did not help me out at all once I was being targeted. I spent the last six months we were there (give or take, I am bad with time) avoiding school and pretending to be sick. I smoked my first cigarette and had my first alcoholic drinks during this time. I was 13. People made fun of me for just existing, for being a Fagg, for not being into boys – and for things I still do not understand at all. Then, when I decided to try to prove that wrong by kissing one, for being into the gross ones. People also made fun of the way I chose to dress. The shoes I wanted to wear (riding boots a lot of the time, since I missed riding dearly), my backpack, my hair – basically any and everything. I now understand that, in addition to my gender nonconformity and non-straight-ness, I am autistic and ADHD, which would have been contributing factors in why others saw me as so different.
Well, when we returned to the US, I was quite happy to get out of there. But I also had learned a few things about people that were not great things to have learned. When we got back to the states, I insisted I would not go to a large school. So, I ended up at a tiny charter school with a graduating class of 12. I decided I was not going to use my last name anymore – and the school I was at let me go by my first and middle names only (“Angie Lee”). I wore baggy pants, but I also had not liked the way I had been treated with my shirts, so I wore more “female” shirts with “male” pants and shoes. I wore a combination of “male” and “female” underwear. On some level, I had decided I didn’t want to “fit in” and I didn’t care – but on another level that lack of belonging was deeply painful, so I would still do all kinds of things to “fit in” while being “different.” For one thing, I found that if I had sex with people that would create a kind of belonging. I started having sex when I was thirteen. The first time I had sex, though, I did not feel like I had a choice in the matter – yet, at the same time, I later told myself that I did. I also started using other drugs (in addition to cigarettes and alcohol). This both numbed the pain of my existence, and created a sense of belonging.
I might have been able to understand about myself that I was not straight when I was in high school, but that was shut down when a friend of mine filmed me and another friend of ours having sex (I was blacked out at the time from alcohol – my first time having sex with someone else with a vagina I do not remember at all). My friend then distributed that video around the school. That moment caused a rift in the couple of friendships I had, caused a lot of attention from the boys at my school, and drove me further towards my drug addict “friends.” I did go back to riding horses, this time English hunters and jumpers. I worked at the barn in exchange for lessons and did a lot to be able to ride. In many ways it was the only place in my life that was actually good for me.
When I was 16, I tried to kill myself. I didn’t try well – I drove my car off the less steep slope right before a drop I had wanted to drive off but was too scared. My car was towed out. I thought about suicide a lot during that time. I found some of my journals from that time a few years ago when I was working with myself and my suicidality with my mushroom teacher friends. I wrote about it a lot. I was just a kid. At any rate, by the time I tried to kill myself I had had sex with many adult men, and several kids my age or a bit older. Some of it had been consensual. Some of it I thought was, in the sense that I was getting something out of it (drugs and/or alcohol). Some of it was just plane rape. But I wouldn’t really notice that for many years to come. I also had been in a state where I would put anything in my body if I thought it would numb the pain. I also was living about three or four lives at once, and was largely lying, blending, masking, in every situation. I was fragmented. I also was doing well at school and had a job – I worked at PetSmart in the equine department – or perhaps at a local saddle shop – my timeline isn’t clear in my head. I had worked at a saddle shop before I could legally work. I also had given up on humanity and did not understand why everyone was so horrible and everyone seemed to be lying to themselves and to each other. For a time I just decided I would lie about anything I wanted as well. I also started having horrible visions and hearing voices. I had made several attempts to cry out for help, but they always came out wrong. I went to a mental hospital. I came out and was put on more drugs – these ones anti-depressants and mood stabilizers. I was told I was bipolar.
When I was 17, I was a cocaine addict (although I would still really do any drug presented to me – I had tried various pills, drank a lot, smoked cannabis, had smoked meth and crack cocaine, and had snorted a lot of ketamine). I went to the mental hospital again. This time to detox. It was hard to get there, but I did. From there, I went into an outpatient rehab program for kids (I was still under 18). Parents went there as well – my parents had groups there. We had mixed groups. It was a good place and it helped get me on the path of being honest with my parents. It helped us as a family. And it was only the beginning of that work.
The drug addiction started because of the pain of not fitting into the normative world in which I lived. Today I can see that a lot of my trauma started with the gender binary and the way that it is enforced by white middle class culture in both Australia and the US, and as I mentioned earlier some was likely neurodivergence. There are so many layers to it all, and I have focused on some aspects a lot already – I’ve worked to heal the sexual trauma that came from my youth. I’ve worked to understand myself as neurodivergent and have moved beyond the diagnosis and attached stigma associated with my being labeled bipolar. I have and have had sexual relationships and experiences that feel healthy, true to me, and connected – with primarily women, some with other nonbinary humans, and I have even with a couple of men. Yet, until incredibly recently, I have not been ready or able to come out of my own self-denial around gender. At least not fully.
When I was in college, I had left most of my hard drug addiction behind. I still drank. I still used cocaine occasionally. I still smoked PCP once to end the longest time period to date (yes, I am 35, and I have just now, as of this writing, actually spent about 46 days with no mind/consciousness altering substances in my body for the first time since before I was 13) I had not had a drug in my body (if one does not count caffeine and nicotine) – which was 89 days. But I digress. By college, I was starting to come a little more into myself. I mostly wore men’s pants and women’s shirts, though the shirt style leaned towards neutral (black and grey tank tops, mostly). I wore men’s and women’s underwear but was moving towards only wearing men’s boxers.
I feel most comfortable in what are considered men’s clothes and underwear, except for occasionally wearing a sports bra to support my breasts, which are on the smaller side, but I am not flat-chested. I mostly wear sports bras to work or to workout.
When I was 19 I started working in a bar, and this was an interesting experience and turning point in my life in several ways. First, when I began working there, the owner (also a good friend of my family) suggested that I would want to dress feminine and wear makeup when I worked to make good tips. I gave it a go. I would be at the university, and I would finish up class, or whatever I was doing, and then I – who had virtually never worn makeup of any kind – would put on at least mascara and I would change into an outfit that was feminine. In retrospect, it was an inappropriate request of me to begin with, but I didn’t know that at the time, so I tried. I also perceived that this family meant well. But I felt so uncomfortable in the outfits and the makeup I would wear that it was distracting and made me awkward at doing my job. Fairly quickly, I outright abandoned these attempts to feminize myself and I just showed up as I was. Well, my tips got better, and I started to be myself at work – which customers loved. Working in the service industry became like a home to me. I found the work generally fun and relatively easy, with just enough challenge to it that I wasn’t totally bored. But, more importantly, I learned that I really, truly, and more comfortable in more androgynous, or if it must be classified as one of two genders, masculine clothing. But: I never felt like I wanted to be a boy or a man – and I still do not feel that way. I also, however, do not feel like a girl or a woman.
I do have the experience of my body having the primary sex characteristics of enlarged breasts, a uterus with fallopian tubes, a clitoris, and a vagina. I do experience a roughly monthly cycle of bleeding. And I am not looking to change this. I do not, personally, experience gender dysmorphia. That said, there are ways in which I physically look more “masculine” than many people who identify as women and who share my primary sex characteristics. Part of this is by my personal grooming choices, related to how I feel most myself, and part is not by choice, but just is how my body is.
My breasts are relatively small, my shoulders are very broad, and I build muscle very easily. My voice is on the deeper side, and I do have a slightly pronounced Adam’s apple. I choose not to shave my legs or my armpits, however my hair is also quite dark in those areas. I have a dark and thick “happy trail” from my bellybutton to my pubic hair. My jawline is on the more chiseled side. I keep my hair short – most often in a mohawk. The way I carry myself – the way I sit, walk, and stand – has been said by others to be “masculine.” I also, however, have wider hips that are somewhat curvy and “feminine,” and I sometimes wear tight shirts, which make it apparent that I have larger breasts than men typically do. I have both ears pierced multiple times, which is often read as feminine. I am on the shorter side (5’3.5”, to be exact). When I am out and about it is not uncommon for me to be read as male, and it is non uncommon for me to be read as female. I am more often seen as female, but also my name is a commonly female name (Angie).
I am asked by people not infrequently, especially by little children, as it turns out, whether I am male or female (or if I am a boy or a girl). I have stood in line in a public women’s restroom and observed women coming in, seeing me, stepping out again and looking at the sign on the door saying it is a women’s room, then looking confused, and walking away. It often seems like women can tell I am not really a woman, and men can tell I am not really a man, and women are more accepting then men of this difference in me, generally speaking, but no one quite knows how to identify me. Usually this isn’t much of a problem, but occasionally it is. For example, a friend and I were caught peeing behind a bush in Tucson by a male cop. The cop asked my friend’s name and was relatively polite and gentle with my friend, who was a gender-conforming cis woman. At the same time the cop referred to me as “it,” never asked my name, asked my friend what I was, and was gearing up to arrest me for peeing in public
(which is a sex crime under Arizona law), while letting my friend go on with a warning. Thankfully, a female cop arrived on the scene and saw what was happening. After overhearing the way the first cop was treating me, the female cop intervened and said “you better let them both go right now.” To this day I am grateful for that second cop.
For most of my life, though, I have not been bothered by people’s occasional confusion about me in a conscious way. For most of my life, from when I learned to be enough of my authentic self at the bar, and enough of whatever whoever I was talking with wanted (through blending and masking), I have felt comfortable being different and just not quite fitting it the white, middle class, heterosexual, binary-gendered, culture in which I have lived. I have allowed myself to be read as whatever anyone wants to see. To those closest to me, I have been gender-non-conforming, but still largely considered female. And, in many one-on-one interactions, it seems like it simply has not mattered what my gender is (or isn’t), and I can get along just fine without ever saying anything about how I feel or how I see myself.
I am used to being called female, primarily, and this does not feel uncomfortable to me most of the time – with some big exceptions around normative gender expectations and norms. I am used to going to the women’s bathroom, because that is where I have gone all my life. I relate to myself as a female human, in the sense that my primary sex characteristics are female – but I see my femaleness as no different than my dog’s femaleness – which means that I do not see that as impacting my expression, my secondary sex characteristics, or in any way connected to how I dress or what activities I do. Yet, the outside mostly would call me a masculine woman, I think, if I were to ask it – and within the binary, that the best approximation for me.
Early in college I came out as a lesbian. This made sense to many people, my father included, but not to my mother, although she still loved me and respected me. Once I did that, though, I felt more comfortable in the clothes I chose to wear. It gave people a sense of understanding as to why I was so different seeming – and it gave me that sense as well. I have mostly dated and had sexual relationships with people who both identify as women and have vaginas, enlarged breasts, and uteruses that bleed once a month. At least since high school, during which as I think I mentioned I mostly had sex with adult men.
I felt freer being a lesbian than I had been as a straight woman. It felt closer to me – closer to a true way of identifying myself. At some point, after I had finished college, moved to Portland in 2011 to be with my still partner, who at the time lived here when I lived in Tucson, and had finished law school I met a person who identified as a man and had a penis. I had felt attracted to people of this general category once or twice before, though it generally did not happen. I was quite attracted to this man. We ended up having a relationship for a couple of years. Overlapping with this relationship, was a relationship with another person with a penis, although this person identified as non-binary, but still used masculine pronouns. Something had shifted. I felt open to having sexual and romantic relationships outside of the types of people that would be typical for a lesbian.
Part of what allowed this to occur was the healing work I did with my mushroom friends around the unhealthy and abusive sexual experiences I had had as a younger person. Part, was I became able and willing to expand beyond the identity of “lesbian.” I learned about pansexuality, and that made sense to me. I realized I was sexually and romantically attracted to other humans, in a way that transcended gender as well as physical sex characteristics. I could essentially be attracted to anyone with any body parts. For me, body parts do not matter so much. It is really about energy – and non-binary-ness is super attractive to me.
Back to my gender, which it is hard to talk about without also getting into sex and sexuality. I have spent much of my life numbing out, or ignoring, or denying, that I did not feel “female” — while accepting that I was different. I have largely been able to exist within white middle class hetero monogamous society because I have learned to get along with basically anyone. There is a healthy and an unhealthy aspect to this. On the healthy side, I am accepting of difference in others, and I genuinely love people. I find other humans interesting, and I usually enjoy connecting with them on some level. I am charismatic and agreeable. And I can usually read people and situations well enough to know what is expected, or to understand how to move within the situation. I have found lines to walk that have generally kept me feeling enough of my authentic self to be ok. And, I have become very used to being different in some key ways from most of those around me – and have become good at communicating about my differences in ways that people seem to generally take well, and even at times to learn from. These include talking about being Australian, veganism, my relationship style (polyamory), my thoughts on and experience with gender, and my sexuality at different times.
On the negative side, or the shadow side, I tend to gloss over or hide some of my differences, and to just allow myself to be seen as whatever the person or group of people I am in wants to see. I am good enough at telling what response is expected by other people that I can give the “right” response, even at the expense of my own sense of self and truth. When I was younger, I got in a terrible (and hard to break!) pattern in which I would just say whatever anyone wanted to hear in a group setting to “fit in.” This happened a lot with respect to pop culture of the white middle class hetero variety. And it happened as well in situations where I would just go along with whatever anyone was saying, rather than voice my honest differences of opinion, to the point at times that I have felt I betrayed my own self. Additionally, and relatedly, I have become adapt at laughing off or moving past micro aggressions without even noticing sometimes, and without saying anything most of the time. As I have grown and evolved, I have moved more and more into myself, and more and more away from these patterns – yet they are still there. And they are especially still there with respect to my gender identity as non-binary.
Much of the time this feels comfortable to me. But the less numbed out I am, the more embodied I am, the less this is so. Today I identify as non-binary and androgenous – and this seems like the best language I can find to describe me, as I have been for my whole life. I feel neither male nor female, but somewhere in between – both at once or neither. I go by they/them and she/her pronouns when asked, and they/them seems feels the most accurate, but I am ok with any pronouns, including he/him. I am pansexual, with my sexual attraction relating more to spiritual connection and the individual being than it does to any genitalia, identity, or presentation. Ultimately, I would love to live in a world that is beyond using labels like these to describe ourselves – a world beyond gender and beyond normative sexuality – in which we each are celebrated as unique individuated beings – all different and all integral parts of the One. Loving and expressing ourselves freely. I do believe that world is possible for humanity, but it still feels a great distance from where we are now, so for now, the labels and identification play an important role in our dismantling the oppressive normative systems in which we still live – including the gender binary and heteronormativity.
