Remember back in the day when I used a whole lot of words to try to describe my gender?
“I’m a masculine-of-center womanish type person,” or “I’m a tomboy farm girl.”
Or “When I was a kid, if tomboy were a gender, it would’ve been mine.”
Finally, “I’m a butch queer tomboyfarmgirl masculine-of-center womanish-type person.”
It took an awful lot of words to describe my sense of self.
When I was a kid on our stony farm in the Adirondacks, I only knew about two genders, girl, and boy.
And I had two choices within girl—girl or failed girl, just as with boy there was boy or failed boy.
Where I lived, they called a failed girl a tomboy, and they called a failed boy a sissy.
In the 40 years since, we have developed better understanding, knowledge, and language, and I am empowered to choose the language that works for me and decide what it means.
I’m genderqueer.
It’s one of many words that mean a non-binary gender, a gender that does not fall into the Western cultural idea of man and woman as opposites.
It’s trans, meaning across the gender people expect me to have as a person in a body called female.
Sometimes I use non-binary, sometimes trans.
Language is not something that is fixed and solid like a rock. Language grows and flows with branches and leaves interacting with wind and rain, moving and turning toward the light.
This isn’t new, that language changes.
We don’t say “thee” anymore or call women fizgigs or damsels, maids, or strumpets.
It is simply that this particular change is new to many of us.
Maybe in a few years, there will be another word for my gender that is even better. I look forward to finding out.
People get to grow and change; we believe in the power of naming ourselves, claiming our identity.
You do, I do, everyone does.
Sometimes how society defines “the norm” fits, and you can claim it — not imposed but chosen.
You then can use language to better name yourself.
We all have the right to self-definition.
You also decide how to articulate your identity.
You can be a cisgender feminine-of-center woman, or a cisgender masculine-of-center woman, and understand yourself as woman.
You can be a cisgender man who is feminine-of-center, or a masculine of center cisgender man moving through your life as different types of men.
There are lots of types of men and women, and many ways to express masculinity and femininity in men and women.
And you have every right to decide what word describes your gender.
You can use man or woman, or, like others of us, decide that just specifying what kind of man or woman still isn’t quite right. It’s not accurate enough.
We are something else, something in a different place on that binary of man and woman, or outside that binary entirely, or we move around fluidly and dance with a constellation of genders.
We all have the right to be whoever we are, and we have the right to find and create language to describe ourselves. Language is created to describe something that we experienced.
The experience comes first; then, we cast about for words to name ourselves, to translate our experience to others, to invite them to authentic connection.
I invite you to recognize that this isn’t simply a story about me. It’s an invitation to you. You do not have to be defined by who you used to be, not by who others thought you were, nor who you thought you were.
You are free.
This concept of gender as something that isn’t fixed and absolute may seem strange and new to you, especially if your experience of your gender is consistent with what society suggests it should be.
Gender is not the same as things that are fixed and measurable.
It’s not the same as sex, rooted in biology and bits of bodies, and x’s and y’s in a dozen combinations, despite what we were taught.
Gender is our individual understanding of who we are.
Welcome to this new world and new language, my people. We all get to be specific about who we are. Tell me who you are so I can greet and bear witness to you properly.
Welcome to all the possibilities.
My name is CB. My pronouns are they, them, and theirs.
If you say “she” while you are learning, simply notice, apologize, correct yourself, and move on.
Then maybe practice a little at home. You’ll get better.
[This is adapted from the text of a small video project, c. CB 2017, and uploaded on request and for ease of access today, 10/28/26.]