GENE MONTEITH MCKECHNIE
This rejection of the norm proved to be an obstacle growing up. It didn’t help that I was also growing up as an Asian in rural France. Everyone around me disliked the fact that I existed and, as somebody naturally loud and opinionated, I had
G
a hard time making myself as demure and invisible as everybody expected an Asian girl to be. In retrospect, I’m glad that being silenced was anoth-
ender is, at its core, an impression, a
er thing I was bad at. When I realised I was trans,
feeling. It’s an arbitrary collection of traits and as-
I thought I had it figured out. I thought that try-
sociations that influence how you move through
ing to get people to read me as male was the ul-
society, a collection that has strayed so far from
timate, immutable end goal. And it did work, on
being based on physiology that it no longer has
occasion! Cashiers would see the tight navy dress
anything to do with one’s body. Owning your gen-
shirt and call me sir, and those moments would
der is a response to a culture that seeks to place
be rewarding. But between the binding and the flat
restrictions on you based on your body. I don’t
muted clothing and the ineffective voice exercis-
think I’m entirely a ‘boy’, per se. I’m non-binary but
es, trying to pass as male did nothing but make
in a boy-way. I’m boy flavoured. I’m a boy-scent-
me miserable.
ed, gender-free candle for £1.29 at Wilko’s. But
I don’t think it was an epiphany all at once, it
that’s not what this is about. This is about how I
took me years to get to where I am now. At some
didn’t think I was allowed to be a gluten-free boy
point, though, I got sick of baggy jeans and dam-
by-product in the first place.
aged ribs and repression. I figured out that, now
Being a girl never felt quite right, though it’s
that I knew what I was, the reason I was so bad at
hard to put into words why. I think a lot of it was
being a girl was because I was never one in the first
growing up seeing everybody around me adhere,
place. I could do whatever I wanted. Whether or
more and more strictly, to these invisible rules
not I was a boy (or a part-boy, part-transformer, an
about what you could be and how you could act if
employee of boy enterprises, or a boy-milk latte)
you were a boy or a girl. It was realising I wasn’t a
didn’t depend on whether other people saw me as
part of those rules, that I didn’t want to be a part
one, and it still doesn’t.
of them and didn’t know how I’d even started being
I know who I am. I don’t have to bar myself
a part of them in the first place. I grew up wanting
from practices considered feminine, because I
to distance myself from the feminine as much as
have no reason to distance myself from those now.
possible. Since I didn’t realise not being a girl was
I dress in bright, goofy clothes, no matter which
an option, I did everything I could to be a girl poor-
part of the store they come from. Security in my
ly. This, as it turned out, sucked. It was an angry,
gender identity gives me the freedom to ignore all
frustrated way of expressing myself. I was telling
the obsolete social conventions I used to worry so
the world who I was by the negative space I didn’t
much about. I paint my face with makeup every
occupy. Defining yourself by what you aren’t is
day, and the makeup spells out ‘boy makeup’, be-
never productive.
cause I am a boy, and I’m wearing it.
