gender non conforming Archives

How a Pandemic Helped Me Come Into My Gender Identity

The pandemic allowed me to cultivate joy and explore gender identity without the expectations and gaze of others. By Mirusha Yogarajah The pandemic bought me time. I thought about how I, for 26 years, conformed to the desires of the men around me,

Oct 14, 2020

LGBTQIA+

Non-Binary People Share Their Self-Care Tips

For trans and non-binary people, self-care starts with finding your environment, your home. When it comes to self-care, finding sources online will often lead to blogs focused on cisgender people, and doesn’t provide anything for self-care techniques aimed at those

Jun 5, 2019

LGBTQIA+

Five Non-Binary People On Their Favorite Parts of Transitioning

Even within the LGBTQIA community, non-binary issues are largely misunderstood, or ignored altogether. “There were days I felt like a girl and days I felt like a boy, and those days wouldn't always correspond with the body I was in.

Apr 17, 2019

Body Positivity In Color

How Mainstream Body Positivity Has Failed Us

To launch our #BodyPositivityInColor campaign, Sherronda J. Brown discusses why the mainstream movement needs an intervention and how decolonizing our ideas about body composition and function, while centering queer, trans/GNC, fat, and disabled BIPOC and our rage, can help move

Feb 1, 2019

LGBTQIA+

10 Perspectives on Advice for Trans Youth

Although visibility has come far in the trans and gender non-conforming community, it is important that we keep our youth in mind.

Navigating my gender identity as a transgender woman has been an arduous yet fulfilling journey. I grew up during a time when trans visibility wasn’t gaining the traction that we see today. As a young child, growing up in a Southern Baptist family in North Carolina, I was always seen as the black sheep or “the one who stood out”. I loved to wear my grandmother’s high heels and I would wear towels on my head to mimic long, flowing hair. I was mocked and ridiculed in school when all the boys went through puberty, and I was the kid whose voice remained one octave higher than what was preferred. I was called every kind of homophobic slur you can think of, and often I didn’t feel comfortable expressing myself as I felt too alienated. In 2017, following the backlash behind Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Channel 4 interview, Laverne Cox took to twitter, and had this to say: “I was talking to my twin brother today about whether he believes I had male privilege growing up. I was a very feminine child though I was assigned male at birth. My gender was constantly policed. I was told I acted like a girl and was bullied and shamed for that. My femininity did not make me feel privileged.” Laverne went on to say: “So though I was assigned male at birth I would contend that I did not enjoy male privilege prior to my transition. Patriarchy and cissexism punished my femininity and gender nonconformity.” Many transgender men, women and non binary people alike, can relate to having felt punished growing up for not sticking to the status quo of the gender binary, because we were anything but cisgender, even if we did not have the language to understand it. We all know the challenges that come with childhood, as youth navigate school life, peer pressure and puberty, and growing up to find their place in the world. Adding on the layer of being TGNC (transgender/gender non-conforming), reveals a harsh reality. A survey conducted by GLSEN, reveals 65% of transgender students feel unsafe at school, in addition to facing verbal and physical harassment regarding their gender identity. According to The Williams Institute, an estimated 150,000 youth identify as transgender or gender non-conforming (TGNC), making the highest percentage of individuals in the United States who identify as TGNC. These statistics however, underrepresent the vast majority of youth who are unreported and those who have not come out yet.