Making Space Makes Space

 

I’ve known since I was five or six that the gender binary didn’t fit me—and I didn’t fit gender. I didn’t have the words for it back then: non-binary, genderqueer, inclusion. But I had the knowing.

 

Culture teaches us early: how to act, what’s “appropriate” to wear, how to perform for approval, and what earns us a seat at the table.

 

I remember hating and refusing frilly dresses. I remember in middle school stuffing a new winter coat in my backpack because I couldn’t bear how it looked on me. I’d freeze at recess, then pull it out to ride the bus home. It didn’t fit—not just physically. It didn’t fit me.

 

 

 

When I came out a few years ago as non-binary, I felt congruent for the first time in my life. There are a million reasons to stay quiet. A million ways the world tells us to hide. And still, I chose to live out loud—with joy and peace in my bones—as the person I was always meant to be.

 

But make no mistake: the cost of being incongruent is high. For me, dysphoria distorts my sense of self. It suffocates. It isolates. And without love, language, and affirmation, it made simply existing feel impossible. Not because of the dysphorias per se, but because the incongruence is oppressive in the face of the gender binary's power and stronghold.

 

Even after coming out, I struggled to find center again—especially in a world full of vitriol and violence aimed at queer and trans folks. I leaned hard on my people, asking: How do you keep showing up to places committed to our erasure? What do you do when the church’s message contradicts the love of Jesus? How do you know when and if putting up with the exclusion and hate is worth staying, teaching, learning, and growing together?

 

 

Last year, I was on my way to teach a university class about gender socialization, the hierarchy that puts men at the top, women in the middle, and trans and non-binary folks on the bottom, I was angry. A vice presidential candidate had just mocked people like me on national television. I didn't want to have to beg for or try to convince anyone of non-binary/trans people's humanity.

 

That day, I had to stand in front of 28 students and teach the very thing I was actively grieving. And I did. Because sometimes, the most radical thing we can do is be fully ourselves in public. I reminded myself: making space makes space. I spoke up and unpacked socialized gender stratification for the queer/trans students in that class, and for myself.

 

 

 

There are days when I want to hide under the covers, not wanting to be a spokesperson for gender marginalized folks like me. So I rest, and am learning to trust myself. But mostly, I think about myself at six years old. Or twelve. Or sixteen. The kid who couldn’t breathe in the gender binary; who only knew what I was being told by society: that there was something deeply wrong, broke, bad, and horrific about myself. I was trying to survive without a map or vocabulary to define my experience and my existence.

 

In a system that reinforces a strict gender binary, gender queer, non-binary, and trans people are a beacon of freedom, of love, of gender diversity that has and always will exist. 

 

A few days after my top surgery exactly two weeks ago, a friend told me her teenage daughter asked her to tell me that I am brave. That meant everything, hearing that from a dear middle schooler that doesn't see non-binary/trans-ness as an abomination. That encourgement from a child is precious; it made space for her and for me. That is love. 

 

Queer and trans inclusion benefits everyone. Our liberation is intertwined and connected. Let's deconstruct this a bit. 

 

When we challenge the rigidity of the gender binary, and the cis-hetero racist patriarchy, we create room for all people to show up more freely, more authentically. The gender binary is not just restrictive—it’s policed. Binary gender is a performance that comes with constant surveillance: Who's “too emotional”? Who’s “too assertive”? Who’s dressing “appropriately”? Who’s allowed to cry, lead, nurture, or rage? Who is strong? Who is weak? Who do we protect and include; who do we exclude? Who's in; who's out? The list goes on and on. 

Even those who seemingly “fit” the binary are constantly judged, rewarded, punished, or excluded based on how well they perform their assigned gender roles. That’s not freedom. That’s control. And it harms us all, even those that fit the gender binary. 

Trans and non-binary inclusion isn’t a threat to women—it protects women. Because when we break open the lie that only certain bodies or expressions are valid, we unearth the shared root of patriarchal oppression that limits everyone’s humanity. The same systems that deny trans people medical care, dignity, and rights are the ones that punish women for leading, for aging, for saying no, or for having personal agency.

 

After all, who really beneifts from a strict gender binary? Does that make cis men evil; absolutely not, if you see the hierarchial system and work for inclusiveness for everyone. 

The gender binary wasn’t designed for wholeness. It was built to uphold systems of dominance, and it requires performance to survive. But our lives, our full, messy, beautiful, ever-evolving lives, were not meant to be performances. They were meant to be lived fully and uniqurely. 

When we celebrate and make space for gender diversity, when we make room for fluidity and truth, when we challenge what we’ve been taught to accept—we are all made more free. Making space makes space.

 

 

So here I am, resting, healing, and breathing deeply—finally coming home into my body. I’m slowly unlearning the cisheteropatriarchy I’ve internalized and healed from; the dance of healing and growing is ongoing and I think it gets easier and more clear as I go.

 

And I’m sending so much love to every one of you who on this path too.

 

To all my non-binary, tans, and gender queer loves:

 

With love and deep gratitude💛🤍💜🖤