On “Playing Defense”: Why I Have to Justify My Existence to the World Around Me.

For those of you who read my previous article on the beautiful, badass women of Power Rangers, you’re in for something very different. A fair warning to all of you, I am pissed off, and will be doing a lot of ranting. For those who like reading that sort of thing, this will be right up your alley!

Let’s start with a little “About Me” section to set the scene for this rant: I am MAAB (Male-Assigned At Birth), genderfluid (four months on hormones today!), polyamorous, panromantic, and asexual. Pretty much everything about my sexuality and my gender falls outside of society’s narrowly-defined binaries, and my experiences fall in a lot of grey, liminal spaces. I’m typically very proud of this, because it means that simply sharing my story means I am spreading awareness of all of these fairly invisible, marginalized communities. However, the downside of all of this is that I constantly find myself having to justify myself and my existence to lots of different people from all walks of life, and that gets frustrating and exhausting very quickly.

Being genderfluid, and non-binary in general, has put me in conflict not only with cis people, but with binary trans people, too, and that hurts. Now, this is in no way an indictment of all binary people, as many of the people I love most are binary-identified, and they treat me with nothing but respect, but there is enough pushback from the binary world at large that I have to justify my place in the trans community more often than I really should. Just this week, I got into an argument with some binary trans folks about a YouTube video by LGBTQ YouTuber Ashley Mardell about her experiences with non-binary gender, and was accompanied by several other non-binary guest voices. The folks in the video were talking about people in their lives constantly misgendering them and trivializing their experiences, and ironically enough, the binary trans woman who instigated the discussion in the first place was accusing them of trivializing her experiences. As the discussion went on, it became abundantly clear that this person was largely envious of Ashley growing up in a generally loving, accepting household, while she did not have that safety when first transitioning. She said she doesn’t hate non-binary people, but she has a reflexive reaction to not wish to be lumped in with them because they are “easier to hate” That she would rather remain totally stealth and be seen as just “a woman with a medical condition”, and that when we NBs talk about our trans experiences, and share our pride in who we are, we are making what this woman went through seem “trivial, or even fun”.

This, naturally, put me on the defensive so quickly it’d make your head spin. Not only did the speakers all talk about being misgendered constantly, but also the idea that people have that their/our genders are not real, and that we are simply trying to co-opt “real” trans experiences to seem trendy or postmodern. This is something that naturally grinds my gears, because this is a sentiment that has been thrown around at me more times than I can count in the five years since I first came out as genderqueer in college. My gender is no less real than a binary trans person’s, and it is something that I have struggled with for a long time, and to tell me that my very existence trivializes someone else’s experience makes me livid. I am a proud non-binary, genderfluid person, and it makes me so overjoyed to hear the stories of my kin being just as happy with who they are as I am learning to become. That happiness does not mean that our experiences are trivial; it means that there is hope for us yet, just as there is for binary trans people. What does not make me overjoyed is when people try and use the happiness of some of us against all of us, and say that our experiences are not important.

If that wasn’t bad enough, the vitriol I’ve gotten in the ace community gets even better. Now, the online LGBTQ community (specifically the crowd on Tumblr, though it exists in other places, too) has become infamous for a little thing called “Ace Discourse”, which for those who are not aware, is essentially where a bunch of allosexuals jump in and say that asexuality doesn’t exist, or that what we go through is trivial, and that we do not deserve a place in the LGBTQ community. Specifically, a lot of the talk is centered on hetero-romantic aces, essentially calling them straight. Now, I identify as panromantic, as I said before, but I did consider myself hetero-romantic for about a year and a half, before I realized that was starting to change, but that is really a digression from the reason why Ace Discourse makes me mad.

The reason why Ace Discourse fills me with so much anger and hurt is not because I am personally hetero-romantic, but that by and large what the discourse is all about is asexual erasure. If you call hetero-romantic aces “straight”, particularly if they themselves do not see themselves as such, then you are participating in a little thing called asexual erasure, and that is something that affects all asexuals. By boiling us down to our romantic orientations, you are attempting to divide us, and prevent us from uniting under the common label of “asexual”. By reducing us to just one facet of our sexuality, you are A: not acknowledging the full breath of who we are and what we feel, B: trivializing the experiences that asexuals of all romantic orientations share, and C: essentially acting as if asexuality does not exist. This makes me angry beyond belief, and it is something I encounter online and offline, when I talk about my asexuality to the general population, whether it be from the heteronormative world or the LGBTQ world. I made a video for an asexual YouTube channel that I am a part of talking about my grievances with Ace Discourse in more detail, so I will link that video here.

Not only does this type of “discourse” seem to be prevalent in the ace community, but I have experienced it again recently, this time about being polyamorous. I recently joined a Facebook group dedicated to polyamory discussion, and for the most part, it has been a lot of fun! Lots of poly people with various different relationships and love lives sharing their stories, both good and bad, and it has generally been a welcoming place. However, it is not all peace and love, apparently, as there was an argument going on about whether poly people need “a social movement” or affiliation with the LGBTQ+ community. Now, I unequivocally believe the answer to that question is “yes”, because at the end of the day, we poly people and the LGBTQ world at large are generally fighting for the same thing- to have our identities and our relationships treated equally and fairly, and for the right to live and love on our own terms, and not face legal discrimination or cultural stigmatization. Unfortunately, I was met with hostile disagreement from people who think that poly is a “lifestyle choice”, and that if we were to “co-opt” queer spaces, it would end with lots of cis, straight men seeking multiple wives “claming” queerness for themselves.

Now, this is presumptuous for several reasons. A: It relies on the assumption that polyamory is a choice, when for many of us, it is anything but. B: It stereotypes poly people across the gender binary, painting poly men as misogynistic horn-dogs, and poly women as subservient concubines. C: It erases the sheer vastness and diversity of the poly community, again, pointing fingers at a minority of us to create stereotypes and ignoring the reality that polyamory is about more than just casual sex and threesomes. Our love is just as valid as anyone else’s, and society currently marginalizes us, seeing us as freaks, perverts, liars, and cheaters, and our relationships by and large do not have the same legal protection as monogamous, married couples and families have. That is something that by and large unites us as a community, and we should be working together to fight against it, but if these stereotypes (currently coming from fellow poly queers, mind you) continue to go unchecked, then we can kiss our dreams of social and legal protection goodbye for good.

I should also state that I am posting this on the last day of Bi Visibility Week, and that as a panromantic person, I very much feel a kinship with the bi+ community, and that obviously comes with its own set of stigmatization and erasure, as well. While I have never personally partaken in any “Discourse” surrounding bi+ identities, I do face a lot of internalized struggles with my very fluid romantic orientation, and often question if I am even “qualified” to call myself panromantic, since often times, I fear that my attractions to men and masculine-presenting people aren’t even there.

I didn’t discover I had the capacity to be attracted to men until I was twenty, and my close friend came out as a transgender man. I had always had a bit of a “thing” for him, and as he came out and as he transitioned, my feelings for him did not go away. For monosexuals and monoromantics, this is quite rare, and I know plenty of straight folks who date genderfluid people, and are always more attracted to them in their presentation that resembles a “different” gender from the gender of their straight partner. This was not the case for me, and so I started to question my romantic orientation. For about two years, I didn’t really use a label for my romantic orientation other than “romantic”, because I was not really sure which term fit me best. I did start to notice myself finding different types of people attractive more and more, but I still wasn’t sure how much of that was real, and how much was me convincing myself of something that wasn’t there. Eventually, a friend of mine, when asking me about my sexuality, used the word “panromantic” in a questioning tone, asking me essentially if that was what I was, and I said yes. That was the moment I started adopting that label for myself, and really trying to own it. Now, the kicker here is that those questions didn’t go away, and I have been calling myself this for over a year now. Lately, I have been trying to gain more romantic experience with men and masculine-of-center people, but despite meeting some very nice, attractive people, that chemistry was by and large not there in any of my attempts. That doesn’t mean the theoretical possibility of dating a man isn’t there, but I feel like I ‘need’ to have this experience in order to classify myself as “truly” panromantic, and that is a load of crap.

Like so many of my bi+ cohorts, I feel like I am constantly battling with this idea that I am not “queer enough” or that I must be “at least this bi” in order to classify myself as such, when that is not the case. I like who I like, and I’m not going to limit myself to just pursuing one group of people, when there is so much beauty out there for me to enjoy! Also like many of my bi cohorts, I am tired of feeling invisible, and like I do not belong anywhere, because I do not fit into these narrow boxes of “straight” and “gay”.

So, as you can see, I have to play a lot of defense for being who I am as unabashedly as I choose to be. Now, I am very much proud of my identity, and I make no efforts to hide who I am, but in times of stress, and I am essentially forced to speak up for myself because nobody else can speak for me, I get exhausted and frustrated very quickly. Too often do these types of discussions result in me getting shouted down, and the longer they go on, and the longer I go without being believed or listened to, the more my anxiety skyrockets, and I have gotten bad panic attacks numerous times in the last couple of months over this type of Discourse. It is immensely painful when you are told that your identity is invalid, and your struggles are trivial, and when you are a genderfluid, polyamorous, panromantic asexual, you hear that a lot.

I hope you all enjoyed my lovely rant, and if you found anything I discussed at all relevant to your life, or if you can relate to what I talked about at all, please feel free to let me know! I will see all of you lovely people again soon with another post!