Dear brothers and sisters, dear gay family...isn't it time we began to appreciate that it is one of mother nature's great gifts to us to be different. I have always felt it was a great gift to be gay.
-- Harry Hay, The Little Book of Pride: Love Is Love, p. 15
When insecurity and resentment creeps in, I am reminded that nothing about being queer is easy, but it is always creative and reinventing.
-- Michal Jones, Nonbinary Memoirs of Gender and Identity, p. 28
Today, I straddle the borders of being not comfortable in women's spaces, yet not being fully seen as trans, with growing patience and acceptance for my own truth. Today, my rejuvenated spirit has learned to breath under pressure. Today, I live in a liminality that is on neither side of the binary but all encompassing and surpassing it. "Both man and woman," I am all and none of these things. I've always lived in this space, and am grateful that language is slowly emerging for folks who feel this way. Occupying this space is a constant coming-out process...
-- Michal Jones, Nonbinary Memoirs of Gender and Identity, p. 28
I have always wanted to be both man and woman, to incorporate the strongest and richest parts of my mother and father within/into me...
-- Audre Lorde, Zami, p. 7
To live in authenticity does something to a person.
-- Michal Jones, Nonbinary Memoirs of Gender and Identity, p. 26
What is true is that unpacking the gender binary is becoming increasingly popular, because I think youth recognize that it is not adequate for deeper human existence. Gender roles are largely archaic in many regards. So are youth experimenting with gender bending? Yes, absolutely. But they are not in distress. They are bending in solidarity with a movement to dismantle an obsolete set of gender rules, and stand in solidarity with their trans friends and the community. There are distinct differences in these youth. They are not likely to stick a needle in their body every week to be trendy. There is no reward for being trans. I can't get adolescents to finish ten days of antibiotics. It is critical to differentiate between distress and social change.
-- Dr. Johanna Olson-Kennedy, Nonbinary Memoirs of Gender and Identity, p. xxv-xxvi
How can people understand what they don't even know exists? When a nonbinary person opens up their life to one or hundreds or millions, they contribute to rebuilding our shared mental model of gender.
-- Micah Rajuvnov and Scott Duane, Nonbinary Memoirs of Gender and Identity, p. xxi
Biological diversity is only the first crack in the precarious male/female binary. Historically, societies have afforded gender expression varying degrees of flexibility that shift across time. As an example from our own modern culture, up until the 1940s pink was considered a masculine color for it proximity to the more"vigorous" red. But due to a combination of gender normative panic and marketing, pink is now exclusively reserved for the feminine. Another strikingly recent gender crossover is the mundanity with which we regard women who wear pants. Clearly, the porous boundary around gender expression is not new. Rather, what has permeated our contemporary awareness is the acknowledgment that gender runs deeper than appearance, behavior, or preferences.
-- Micah Rajuvnov and Scott Duane, Nonbinary Memoirs of Gender and Identity, p. xvii
While in most babies sex is as straightforward as penis or vagina, in as many as 1.7 percent of births this is not the case. Medical literature possibly underestimates incidence rates, given that many people do not find out they are intersex or have a difference in sexual development (DSD) until adulthood. This happens either because only nonvisible features such as their internal organs or chromosomes exhibit this divergence, or because their parents were pressured into silence due to continued stigmatization. If you argue that biological variations in sexual dimorphism are too rare to be of much importance, then consider that roughly one in a hundred people have bodies that differ from the "standard" male or female -- a rate that mirrors that of people with red hair. Surely you know someone with red hair.
-- Micah Rajuvnov and Scott Duane, Nonbinary Memoirs of Gender and Identity, p. xvi-xvii
Most of us were raised to believe that gender is a dichotomy: male and female. But underneath this foundational "fact" lies a complexity we've been trying to untangle. The modern discourse on transgender people and on gender more broadly has already been elevated beyond duality. But, what is gender? Rather than having an answer for this basic question, we are left with even more questions. What is a man? What is a woman? ... Communities are blossoming around the experience of being something other than man or woman. While still new to many, the rise of nonbinary identities is another step built upon the work and accelerating progress of our LGBTQ predecessors. As gender diversity is increasingly embraced, more people and their allies are emerging and finding one another. They, in turn, extend the fight toward a deeper understanding and acceptance not only of the complexity of gender, but of the complexity of the individual.
-- Micah Rajuvnov and Scott Duane, Nonbinary Memoirs of Gender and Identity, p. xv
Binary gender regimes maintained themselves with a few rules: everyone must be in a box; there are only two boxes; no one can change boxes; no one is allowed between the boxes. Since no one really fits the perfect masculine or feminine ideals, these rules end up being terribly oppressive to almost everyone, and more so to those who are genderqueer. One can only hope the emergence of a nonbinary movement is the first step in finally retiring it.
-- Riki Wilchins, Nonbinary Memoirs of Gender and Identity, p. xii-xiii
The work of the poet is often the same work of democracy building. It's to equalize, it's to connect, to engage, never to oppress.
We now accept that transgender women are women and can use the women's bathroom. But what bathroom do we want nonbinary people to have the right to use: Both? Neither? And what sex marker do we want them to be able to put on their ID? Both? Neither? A new one? You can see where this is going. Neither our language nor our politics is suited to accommodate this, and we're going to have to do a lot of rethinking.
-- Riki Wilchins, Nonbinary Memoirs of Gender and Identity, p. xii
As nonbinary comes to the fore, it will challenge everything we currently think about bodies, sexual orientation, and gender, almost all of which depends implicitly or explicitly on the binary.
-- Riki Wilchins, Nonbinary Memoirs of Gender and Identity, p. xii
perfection is a eugenic ideal. love people for who they are, not what you think they should be.
-- Alok Vaid-Menon, Your Wound / My Garden, p. 53
not all knots need to be untied. you are not for
everyone, you are for you. how devastating.
how gorgeous.
-- Alok Vaid-Menon, Your Wound / My Garden, p. 53
beneath every supremacy lives insecurity
-- Alok Vaid-Menon, Your Wound / My Garden, p. 48
i used to think that if i "toned it down" i would be taken
more seriously.
but then i realized:
you will always find a way to discredit me.
we both know:
this was never about what i looked like,
it was always about what you felt like.
-- Alok Vaid-Menon, Your Wound / My Garden, p. 47
contrary to popular belief,
i am not a character in your novel.
i am not an actor in your tv show.
i am not a statue in your courtyard.
i belong firmly and irrevocably to myself.
the only opinion about my appearance that matters is my own.
-- Alok Vaid-Menon, Your Wound / My Garden, p. 47
i am not interested in legitimacy. / legitimacy is a circus that requires me to convince others / of what already is. / i have more important things to do with my time. / does the ground have to authenticate itself to the feet? / does water have to substatiate itself to the tongue? / i have nothing to prove. / my dignity is not up for debate. / i accept myself. / and that is not only enough, / it is everything.
-- Alok Vaid-Menon, Your Wound / My Garden, p. 47
we do not live in the present / we live in the promise / after all: this is the promised land / where power is conferred not from the ability to deliver, / but rather from the ability to promise delivery
this distinction is both as vital & as scarce / as a ventilator
i suppose the better unit of measurement would be: / the promise
how many promises does it take / to turn a crisis into campaign strategy? / how many promises does it take / to make the coffin your fault, not their misdoing?
-- Alok Vaid-Menon, Your Wound / My Garden, p. 36
He who controls the word controls the world.
-- Alok Vaid-Menon, Your Wound / My Garden, p. 17
I write with the curiosity and vigilance of a scientist.
-- Alok Vaid-Menon, Your Wound / My Garden, p. 5
It took many years of vomiting up all the filth I'd been taught about myself, and half-believed, before I was able to walk on the earth like I had a right to be here.
-- James Baldwin
I have always said, it's easy to be who you are when what you are is what's popular! I chose myself in the face of nothing. And after a time, a very long time, the world has begun to lean in with me. My prayer is that anyone who lives in fear of their truth being maligned by outside validating forces will find, through seeing the manifestation in my life quest, the ultimate peace that comes with living one's personal truth unapologetically. Always believe in yourself. Always choose you first, no matter the cost, for in due season the light and the joy of living a glorious life will be revealed -- and I am living proof that when you dare to dream the impossible, impossible dreams do come true.
-- Billy Porter, Unprotected, p. 274
I have learned a lot about livin' in my time on this earth, and the more I think I know, the less I can comprehend. But this I know for sure -- when one's intention is shifted from the egoic state of man to the intention of service, all the rest will work itself out. Oprah Winfrey, Dr. Maya Angelou, and Iyanla Vanzant told me that! Over twenty years ago, when I heard these ladies speaking on the power of this radical truth, I peered at myself in the mirror and asked, "How can I truly be of service in an industry and, quite frankly, an entire planet that is inherently narcissistic?" In a moment it hit me like a ton of bricks: Your service is leaning into your truth, your queerness, your authenticity.
-- Billy Porter, Unprotected, p. 274
We are the people, we as artists are the people that get to change the molecular structure of the hearts and minds of the people who live on this planet.
-- Billy Porter, Unprotected, p. 273
Who we are and how we live is still a bit of a mystery to many. They don't see it, so they fear it ... I don't even have the words to describe how it feels. What it feels like to be loved. To have support for your love. To receive it like never before. I've never felt it. I didn't know this is what it's like. I'm trying not to be mad that "they" got to withhold it from us for so long. And for what...? 'Cause The Bible told them so. The Bible gave them permission to hate. To treat another group as less than. I hate hate. I really do. And it takes everything within me not to hate these people in return. But LOVE has to win. We have to be the change we want to see. We MUST. And now I get to do that with my soul mate. The love of my life like no other I've ever experienced. The Porter-Smiths are getting ready to change the world!
-- Billy Porter, Unprotected, p. 249
We got our marriage license yesterday. That was an emotional experience I wasn't anticipating. It hearkens back to that idea that all this time we've lived with the painful reality that our love didn't matter. That our love was somehow less than theirs. That their straightness made their love superior to ours, and I believed them. I didn't know I was believing them, but my actions in past relationships reflected just that. Lack of belief in it. Nothing and no one around to support it. I tried to be strong and act like this was not the case, but what else could it be? My heart has been cracked open in a way I've never seen or ever felt. It's a beautiful feeling and I don't ever want it to go away. For the first time in my life, I feel safe.
-- Billy Porter, Unprotected, p. 248
I waited for 47 years for somebody to have the courage to speak our collective gay truth to (Kim Burrell's) theoretical power. Now I realize it is I who must give voice to the voiceless.
-- Billy Porter, Unprotected, p. 247
