As soon as I was grown enough to pull it off, about the age of 13, I started sneaking into my mother's clothes whenever I had the house to myself. This was not easy. My mother is a very tall woman. She's still taller than I am. If my mother reads this, I doubt that is when she finds this out: I was never as good at hiding things from her as I thought I was, so I suspect she already knew. It was along a similar timeline that I had my first sexual experiments with other boys. I will not go into details about this because people are justifiably queasy about descriptions of childhood sexuality. Suffice to say that both for me, and for the other boys involved, it was possible to mentally compartmentalize these experiences as a kind of "opportunistic homosexuality," similar to that found in prisons and on ships at sea. That is, since we were all nerds and dorks of various sorts, we could rationalize that we were just "practicing" for the girls whom we perceived as being unavailable, and thus that we were able to reassure ourselves that we were really not "that way."
I started college early, at the age of 15, and began my first sexual relationship with someone of the opposite sex shortly before my 16th birthday. This complicated relationship lasted the better part of an academic year and was in most ways bad for both of us, but since she was frankly bisexual herself, I owe her the debt of gratitude of helping me recognize that I was and am also bi. Within a few months of this realization I had told nearly everyone in my life, even my then-7-year-old little sister.
So if I was able to come out so soon as bi, why not as genderfluid, the word that I now believe best encapsulates my gender identity? A long answer would entail a detailed gloss on Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick's Epistemology of the Closet, of which I do not presently own a copy. The short answer is: The word did not exist yet. But there are historical and biographical details that help explain why I would not be the person to coin it, either. Those details are worth retelling.
In college, I continued dressing from time to time. (In the first year, I was particularly blessed that that first girlfriend and I were the same size!) But I was fairly certain--and grew more certain as I entered my 20s--that I was not trans. That is, according to the cultural codes & definitions still prevalent in the mid 1990s, I was not "a woman in a man's body." I felt no dysphoria in relation to primary sexual characteristics (though some in relation to secondary sexual characteristics). So I thought of my forays into femininity as being "drag."
This way of conceptualizing things was helped, once I declared a major in philosophy, by the popularity of Judith Butler's Gender Trouble, which had been published a few years before in 1990, and her conceptualization of gender as performativity. I still find this conceptual framing quite useful, and most objections I have seen to it are based on misunderstandings of the meaning of "performative." (I will not discourse on that at length, as it would take us too far into the realm of philosophical nerdery and in ways that Butler herself has already answered better than I can.) In retrospect, however, my ventures in "drag" differed from most of what is understood as drag in the absence of "camp". The object was not to portray an exaggerated notion of femininity, but to express a feminine dimension of myself, to be related to publicly & sociably as femme. Yet since I did not always wish to be such, since there was also a masculine dimension of self which I was often quite comfortable expressing publicly and sociably, it did not seem, by the lights of what I understood at the time, that I could be "trans" in any way.
I am certainly not saying that such an understanding was absolutely impossible at the time: I had contemporaries in college who were transmasculine or transfeminine in ways that differed from the popular understanding of transsexuality, and that I did not fully understand at the time. I only mean to say that it was not in me to be a pioneer of a term that had not yet been coined. The first written usage of the word "genderqueer" that I can find via Google Books is from an academic book published in 1996, when I would have been a junior or senior in college, and may actually not be an intentional coinage of the author but an artifact of hyphenation. Even if I had been searching for such a concept, it is unlikely I would have encountered it.
However, 1996 was the year when I would have been least likely to be searching for such a term. I had just begun a serious, apparently heterosexual relationship, with the woman who would become my spouse. She now understands herself to be bi, and fairly butch. But she was not aware of either when we were both in college, and so she had not been involved with the LGBT student milieu on campus. Thus, by involving myself with her, I ended up getting exiled from that milieu. Let me say, it was just lovely hearing through the grapevine about friends saying, "Just watch, he'll be gay again within a year."
I had never claimed to be anything other than bi, and I was not claiming anything different. However, this adverse social pressure left me with the sense that, if I was to make the relationship work, I would need to distance myself from the queer "subculture" of which I had formerly been part. Honesty compels me to note, also, that while my wife is perfectly supportive now--we had a detailed conversation about my gender identity a couple of days ago, and as a result I am literally the happiest I've been in years--allowing her to get herself there took some work, time and patience on my part. She felt insecure about my sexuality for many years, and as we shall see, at times I gave her causes for insecurity.
I did not dress again for about ten years.
In that time, a few other things happened.
- After some episodic activism during college, in my senior year I began sustained, organized involvement in socialist politics.
- I entered and quickly quit graduate school.
- After leaving graduate school, I got my first full-time office job, as a data-entry clerk at an insurance company in North Carolina.
All of these facts, including the socialist politics, contributed to the reconstruction of the closet.
Let me first talk about the job. My boss there was a good old boy. He was racist and sexist in casual ways from which I slightly benefited (e.g. with a quick promotion). He wore suspenders every day, and would do his Foghorn Leghorn strut around the office every morning as if inspecting his property. Even before my first interview, I knew I would no longer be in an environment where people read Judith Butler. As soon as he shook my hand, though, I knew I would have to "butch up". That is, the gender that I would have to perform to my fullest was the gender which I presented in my pressed, white, Oxford collared, buttoned-down shirt. It was time to be a man, and particularly, a "professional" and white man. I returned his firm grip, and negotiated what I thought would be a decent starting salary.
My subsequent jobs were in what, to a casual observer would seem to be more supportive environments, but I entered each alert. For example, my next boss, in a law library, was a gay man. But after my collegiate experiences of biphobia, I was careful not to let on anything about my identity to him or other coworkers until I was sure that none of them would take it amiss. Later on, my first job in academia was a mixed experience. The "big boss" was a physics professor who was notorious for his racism, sexism, and general abusiveness to subordinates. However, my immediate supervisor was a woman who was involved in local Green Party politics. I still was cautious. Here is what caution and "butching up" got me at that job: A series of raises and promotions that nearly tripled my personal income in the span of six years, and moved me from the secretarial/clerical ranks to the lower layers of the managerial class. White male privilege is real.
Perhaps if my political life had been more of a refuge, the continual performance of masculinity would have seemed to be less of a necessity. It was not much of a refuge. My political home for just over a decade was a small Trotskyist group that most people reading this have no reason to know about. At the time of its formation in the 1970s, the group in question had had, by the standards of small Trotskyist groups at the time, relatively advanced positions on what was referred to back then as "the gay question." This was part of what had attracted me to it, since similar such groups were worse. Nonetheless, I did push gently to update its positions. For example, at a membership convention--the only one that was held in my years of membership--I had proposed updating our nomenclature from "the gay question" to "the LGBT question" and including some acknowledgement of the importance of trans rights in a "perspectives" document. (Apologies to readers unexperienced in far-left politics for the jargon. Those with some experience of democratic centralist groupings in general and Trotskyist ones in particular may have some sense of the internal significance of both a convention and a perspectives document; describing this to other people would take us too far afield.) I was not prepared for the ferocity of the response. For my efforts, one of the founding leaders of the group denounced my amendment, and by extension me, as "petty-bourgeois". Because of my academic background, this was a sore point that resonated even with some people whom I thought might be inclined to support me. My amendment was voted down by an overwhelming majority. The absurd irony that the denunciation was directed from a straight, retired professor to a young, queer secretary is only apparent to me in retrospect. (Also absurd: The fact that I can't "show receipts" because there were never any official minutes of that convention, because the person who was "National Organizer" at the time lost all the notes. But that's too far off the point, and the grouping in question is too politically insignificant to merit a retrospective polemic. Someday, I'll write a satirical novel and get it all out of my system.) What matters for the purposes of this essay is that, by the standards of "democratic centralism" to which I held myself at the time, any particular attention to trans rights had been held by a majority vote of the membership of my organization to be petty-bourgeois.
Nonetheless, I was not in a state of total epistemic closure. Around this time, I was fairly active on LiveJournal. My presence there was totally pseudonymous, and kept on the DL from my organization, which tended to be suspicious of the internet as a forum for political discussion. Thus my LiveJournal functioned as an outlet for practicing writing techniques too experimental, or working out ideas too heterodox, to be of use in either my work or my political organization. In effect, it was a lengthy rehearsal for my fictional writing "career," such as it has been.
It was on LiveJournal that I first encountered the word "genderqueer." And when I first encountered it, and explanations of what it meant, something about it sounded mostly right, but not quite right, for me.
Even so, "democratic centralism" had just decreed that innovations in terminology relating to sexuality and gender were "petty bourgeois". And so my initial response was mockery. My apologies in retrospect for anyone whom I may have hurt with that mockery: Know, then, that I was hurting myself as well.
Another irony: I am still friends with some members and former members of that group, and they are more vocally supportive of trans rights than they were back then. But I note that their changes of heart followed, rather than led, shifts in liberal public opinion (at least in the U.S., as opposed to the U.K., where much of liberal opinion, and a significant portion of the left as well, is virulently "trans-exclusive"). I have already written on why I no longer consider myself a Leninist, but Lenin did coin an excellent word for that type of political behavior: "tail-ism". Who's petty-bourgeois now, comrades?
So with my work life and political life framing our perspective, let us look at my gender expression in my mid-to-late 20s. I was in an apparently "straight" marriage. I was getting increasingly prosperous, in ways I had not expected. I was getting frustrated with but remained loyal to my political group. My partner was expecting that we would start working on having our first kid soon. I was on the verge of a nervous breakdown. Therapy helped. After a lot of work, I realized that the major stressor was the issue of kids. I was afraid I would be like my father, and ironically, some of the destructive behaviors through which I expressed this fear mirrored his. One way to deal with the stress: I was fucking around with guys on the DL. Another way: Drinking too much, smoking too much pot, and getting in fights with people. With friends, family, and comrades, the fights were verbal, but because of my history of physical abuse, I was far too slow to recognize that verbal abuse is also abuse. (And my outbursts were not solely verbal: I got into public fights with strangers, sometimes in ways that were considered acceptable within a political framework, e.g. antifa work, and sometimes just because I was being an asshole. I was very careful never to be the one to throw the first punch, but I was good at dodging, albeit less effective at landing retaliatory hits. In retrospect, one thing I wish I had had during this time period were friends who shared my taste in punk and hardcore: I could have gotten this out of my system with some slam dancing at concerts, the way I used to as a teenager. But for the long term, therapy was more effective.)
In short, I was having my first major mental health crisis since grad school, and I had a lot to work on with my therapist. My biggest challenge was the issue of abusiveness and kids. If my marriage was to survive, I had to address it. I had to stop abusing others and myself. If I could achieve that, then I could assess honestly whether I did, in fact, want a child. That is where we focused our efforts. So while we did discuss sexuality some, I did not discuss gender much with her. (In fact, though I have had five therapists--two who were excellent, and three who ranged from mediocre to disastrous--gender has been the topic I've discussed least with any of them.) I am still married, and I have two kids, so apparently that worked out.
Another thing that helped, though, even though I did not discuss it much with my therapist, was dressing again. I went out to t-girl nights at bars in Manhattan, though not the kind (increasingly rare thanks to Giuliani's and Bloomberg's crackdowns) where sex workers congregated. Of course, there were chasers present, but mostly I succeeded in avoiding them, and hung out with the other ladies. It was through conversation that I realized that I was one of them to some extent, but not entirely, and not always. The question of "going full-time" would come up, and that didn't seem like what I wanted. Maybe there was something to that "genderqueer" neologism?
So why did I not continue dressing regularly? Here's what is impossible to anticipate before you have kids: Just how much time, energy, and money they take. I stopped publicly expressing my femme moments, for no more substantive reason than this. I hadn't the time, energy, or money. Take, for example, hair removal: It's expensive if someone is doing it for you, and it takes a while if doing yourself. And yes, I know it's not an absolute necessity--women and non-binary people have body hair. But I'm Greek, and if I'm wearing a low-cut dress and mountains of chest hair are peeking out? It's not a good look. It's a dysphoria trigger. And if I had gained weight--as I did, heading into my mid-to-late thirties--and no longer fit the clothes I had bought before, should I buy more?
Here's where we get back, by a circuitous route, to my Daddy issues: My father was not just abusive, he was neglectful. He would spend on himself and his whims even when my family couldn't afford it. This would put my mother into the position of scrambling to make sure that bills were paid and food was on the table. This was another pattern of behavior I did not want to repeat. His whims were drugs, hookers, fast cars, and cockamamie business ventures. Some dresses, blouses and skirts would hardly be on that order of money wasting (though shoes might be another story--get me in a good shoe store, men's or women's, and it's dangerous for my credit rating), but this is psychological reasoning, not economic. Why spend money on clothes I couldn't wear to work, when the kids needed clothes of their own all the time as they kept growing?
Could I have worn such clothes to work after all?
Let's consider: By 2012, I had moved to Maine. I was working at a liberal arts college. I was no longer in the group I once was in. Was I in a welcoming environment? Yes and no.
Portland, Maine is the sort of place where someone could walk down the street with a full beard and wearing a summer dress, and people wouldn't look twice. They'd look once, to make sure they saw what they saw, but wouldn't look again--that would be rude. But I did not live in Portland; I lived in one of the affluent suburbs to its north, what I called "Country Club Land." Nor was the college where I worked in Portland, but in a former mill town that had fallen on hard times. As for the College itself, let us consider a few anecdotes:
Scene #1: A faculty conference on "inclusive pedagogy." There is a student panel on various forms of difference. One of the panelists is a physics major, an international student who is nonbinary. This student is the only one to include pronouns (they/them) in their introduction. None of the other students add their pronouns, nor do audience speakers during the discussion period.
In the discussion period, the chair of the Physics department praises the student effusively--but consistently misgenders them.
Scene #2: I am at a small-town bakery with a faculty member whom, at the time, I considered a friend, a cis gay male. He teaches Gender & Sexuality Studies.
He says: "I don't get the whole 'trans' thing."
I say: "What's not to get?"
Realizing he has messed up, he backtracks hastily.
Scene #3: A fairly well-known nonbinary BIPOC scientist is on campus for a job talk. They, an outspoken lesbian staff member, and I, are in a large room waiting for everyone else to show up. They are discussing lipstick shades. I love lipstick, so I join in.
Staff member: I've never seen you wear lipstick on campus.
Me: Well, I know this place, it would be the talk of the campus if I did. But I promise, if I ever leave here, after I give notice, I'll wear lipstick (and nail polish) whenever the mood takes me.
Some months later, after I have given notice because of my pending return to New York, I come to campus wearing lipstick and nail polish. That day, I have a meeting with the Dean, my boss, to go over a few things for the work transition. When I arrive, he says in a tone of voice that is somewhere between shock and a conspiratorial leer: "So it's true!" So, yes, I was right, even though I had been alone in my office for most of the day before then, it had been the talk of the campus.
To be fair to the institution, shortly after I left they hired a new VP of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion who is nonbinary and uses they/them pronouns, and I have reason to believe, based on how faculty and staff with whom I am still friends discuss gender diversity, that they have been somewhat successful in changing the atmosphere on campus. However, a VP is better positioned to be a pioneer than a staff member in middle management, let alone an international student.
So whence the recent shift in my own attitude? First, I credit my elder child. For coming forward as nonbinary before they had even become a teenager. For telling off their grandfather when he said some particularly hurtful things (even if we, their parents, wish they hadn't screamed quite so much at him). And also for demonstrating, through my mother's much better reaction to their coming out than to my own, that my mother had evolved. There have been none of the microaggressions that I got from her after I came out as bi. Having already cut off my father, I think part of me was subconsciously worried that if I came any further out of my butched-up closet, that I might end up a de facto orphan. (So, thanks Mom; please don't disappoint me.)
I also want to credit the students of my most recent, former employer, Sarah Lawrence College. Unlike my prior institution, it is genuinely open to gender and sexual diversity, and the credit for that goes more to the students than to the faculty and staff. In my short tenure there, I only had a few opportunities to attend meetings with students present. Every single time, the students (including cis students) took the initiative in making introductions with pronouns. Faculty went along, some more comfortably than others. Discussions about this topic with administrative staff were variable, depending on who was in the room. But on campus at least, students set the tone, and a good one. In those meetings with students present, I started introducing myself as he/they, not 100% sure what I meant by that, but knowing that it felt right.
My breakthrough came last week while I was in isolation due to a possible case of COVID-19. I had been feeling some dysphoria (focused mostly on body hair) for some time. With plenty of spare time and the master bathroom to myself, I shaved legs, arms, armpits, chest and belly.
Then on Wednesday, after Spouse and I had the good conversation in which, for the first time, I used the word "genderfluid" out loud to describe myself, I went to a consignment shop for a small treat. I now have a lovely dress--scoop-necked sleeveless black sheath, with a lightly ruffled sheer outer layer in a floral pattern and half sleeves, that I can wear whenever the mood takes me. (I need more clothes, "men's" and "women's" alike, but I'm still a parent, still inclined to put my kids' needs before my own. And I am unemployed at the moment, thus cautious about money. But it was less than $10, so one delightful item isn't going to break our bank account.)
If you search the Google Books N-gram viewer, which cuts off at 2012, the word "genderfluid" does not appear. If anyone has ideas of when and where it may have first appeared, I would be grateful for your leads. Since it does seem to be the word that best describes how I see myself, I would love to know who coined it and when.
If my career-path shows the reality of white, male privilege--the privilege for which I felt I had to butch up and construct a new closet in order to be able enjoy it fully--my layoff and present unemployment also show that, in the face of capitalist crisis, it is transient. After several years of being the "breadwinner," advancing in my "career," I am unsure of what is next. And now, thanks to this essay (and the Twitter thread that gave rise to it), the closet is over and done with, exploded into a million pieces. Wherever my next job is, even if I could rebuild it, I won't.
I am genderfluid and bi, devoted to my bi, butch wife, amazed with both my nonbinary elder child and my younger one who hasn't quite figured such things out yet. We are out, proud, and fighting. My name is Joseph, and my pronouns are he/him or they/them.
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