You can be really similar to me
and be a woman or a man,
but I'm just not.
I don't identify as male or female.
It's more about not creating more categories, but questioning the categories we have.
I don't really get this.
I don't really get this, like, fixed idea of binary genders.
When you're growing up people are scared of difference.
It makes you criticise things that are seen as normal.
I knew I wasn't a woman, but I knew I wasn't a man,
and both of those words made me uncomfortable to be put on me.
I knew I was this kind of weird thing. I didn't know there was a name for it.
I don't identify as genderqueer or transgender
but I am genderqueer and transgender.
Cis people aren't asked whether they identify as something.
We don't see Theresa May who identifies as a woman, who is our prime minister.
We just say, is a woman.
This isn't something extra from who I am. It's just all the way through.
OK how can we expand this idea that, like, biology does not matter to, like, the max!
It's not just enough for me to, like, exist happily, and let's make up this third gender
where I exist happily as non-binary.
We need to explore the definition of what gender is.
Gender, we forget, is a social construct that we've created to violently oppress people.
And I think when cis people do that whole thing of, like,
'But why? Come on! Go away with labels!'
I didn't choose to be labelled. I was labelled something the minute I was born.
I was labelled male and it made me feel horrible.
And now I'm reclaiming the agency over my body to say actually that doesn't fit.
Not adding more boxes, but questioning the boxes that are there.
And breaking down the oppression that comes with those boxes.
Not just for trans people, but for, like, women or gay men.
As someone who was challenging gender binaries
just by, like, physical presence and way of being
that was really, really hard as a teenager.
I mean it contributed so much to the abuse I got
and it contributes to people in the streets
who look at me and sort of say, 'I can't tell what you are.'
It's not about wanting to be like I'm this, this, this and this
and over-define yourself.
It's just about seeking comfort among those who are like you.
And going through shared experiences together.
There is no room for my gender or my sexuality in the mainstream
so we have to create our own community
and support each other because no one else is going to do it.
It's a thing that I've always done, it's just that now I have vocabulary and it's, you know,
that thing about representation – 'You can't be what you can't see'.
And I was like, 'Oh! It's a thing!'
The idea that people outside of the gender binary or challenging the gender binary
all need to look a certain way, is a very lazy piece of journalism.
You can be assigned female at birth, and you can be non-binary
and you can wear nothing but pink flowery dresses.
I don't have to drop the trappings of femininity or whatever,
in order to try and be non-binary
or even gender neutral because what is 'gender neutral'?
Everyone's idea of gender neutral is, actually, just masculine.
I also identify as trans femme and trans feminine
but it was a femininity that wasn't assigned to me at birth.
Taking femininity away from the body.
The really femme-phobic attitudes I had when I was, like, a baby queer,
was that if I wanted to be real, I had to be less femme.
Like, I shaved all my hair off, and I was very, like, I need to rid myself of this because
everything that's feminine is, like, weakness.
Femme-phobia, I guess, is, it's linked to misogyny obviously.
But it's a dislike of the trappings of femininity.
You know if I go to a cis guy and say 'Can I paint your nails? And he's like ...
Even though gender and sexuality are separate things and they should be studied separately,
there is also a lot of intertwining within them.
I think a lot of people when they start questioning one thing, have to start questioning another.
And I think our partners have to do a lot of questioning, which is very hard and something
I found throughout my life is that people who were attracted to me
would often then say, 'You're confusing me'.
And gay also didn't really encompass my attraction to multiple genders or lack of genders.
And someone will then want to interrogate me and be like,
'But who are you attracted to?'
And I'd say, 'No, I'm queer!'
And that's, like, a really beautiful power for me to take back and say,
'I know I'm not straight and I'm telling you I'm not straight
'but your obsession with what genitalia I'm attracted to
'or what gender I'm attracted to, I can beat that off by just saying I'm queer.'
And do of that what you mean.
It's really exciting to me the way that 'they' and 'them'
has entered common language in the most recent years.
And it was very dispiriting to have to choose between he or she, both of which
just didn't encapsulate who I was at all.
We all know, no matter who you are, language is so important.
You can't just chuck this thing away of 'it's just a word'.
You can ask anyone, people will be offended by different words.
I get really scared when people reduce my trans-ness to my pronouns.
'Travis Alabanza who identifies as them/they.
And I'm like, 'Mmmm no you've missed it right!'
And what that tells me is the whole image of me has been singled down to my pronouns.
For me the pronouns are like the English language is limited and thats the best bit.
And we just move on.
When I talk about this happy politics that everyone is like ,
'Look it's all happening we've got a gender-neutral clothing line at H&M'.
Actually no, trans people are still dying
and we are not getting the healthcare we deserve.
I want homeless LGBT youth to have somewhere to go,
our mental health services to be improved, I want the gender identity clinic to not be
gatekeeping trans people's healthcare and denying people crucial healthcare.
People could do with looking at how they view the world in general and thinking,
do I have all the answers?
Have an open mind and don't judge people without knowing all the facts.
I'm still on that journey of learning to unlearning physicality and gender.
And that's why we should be in a place where we can all feel comfortable
and it can all be easy for us.
But then I go out in the streets with makeup on and I will be harassed.
And then I'm reminded of the kind of world I live in.