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Few things in life are only one way or the other – and gender is no exception. Jacob learned in high school that gender was something fun and something you could play with. Erin realized in college that gender was a performance and that they could perform it however they want. For both, they learned that they define their gender, not the other way around.
And Trekkies rejoice! In this episode, Phil and Alex discuss Erin’s and Jacob’s stories, their own respective relationships with gender, and how Phil relates their gender to a character in a Star Trek: Deep Space Nine episode.
Transcript provided by YouTube:
00:01
Hey, this is Phil aka Corinne… And I’m Alex Berg. And you’re listening to…
00:13
The I’m From Driftwood Podcast. On today’s show, we hear from Jacob and Erin,
00:21
who both share stories about living outside the gender binary.
00:25
My name is Erin from Cleveland Ohio. My name is Jacob and I’m from Raleigh, North
00:28
Carolina. Six years old, I was at a playground or a
00:33
park and I’m playing with the kid there and their parent comes over and introduces themselves
00:40
to me and is like, “Hey, little guy, like, what’s your name?” And I tell them Erin.
00:46
And you know, he continues on this conversation with me and I knew that he thought that I
00:51
was a boy and I was really happy with that. By the time I was around 16, I came out to
00:57
my parents as gay, right? Like I thought I was done. That was it. And then I started
01:01
doing a bunch of gay activism. And as part of that, I started going to some local LGBT
01:06
events. When I was like around middle school, I kind
01:08
of had my first realization that people are going to judge me by the way that I dress,
01:14
or that the way that I look could say something about like, sexuality. And so I definitely
01:20
went through a much more like feminine phase at that time until I ended up coming out in
01:24
high school. One of the things I went to because I grew
01:27
up in Raleigh and Chapel Hill is like a 40 minute drive away or so. And so I went to
01:32
this conference called the Unity conference. The workshop was facilitated by this person,
01:37
Terry Phoenix, who is the director of the LGBT center at UNC Chapel Hill. And one of
01:41
the things I learned at the very beginning was that not all people use the pronouns,
01:46
he or she Some people use the pronoun, they, or Ze, or here. I didn’t know that there were
01:51
even options that I could choose from. And so Terry used the pronoun “they” for the
01:55
whole workshop. They were saying, like, I play with gender.
01:59
Gender is this thing that I play with. It’s like this game and, you know, some days I’m
02:03
more masculine and some days I’m more feminine and that’s…that’s okay. And that’s part
02:08
of the fun. And I had never thought about gender as something fun before.
02:13
It’s funny. I’ve interviewed Jacob in the past and now if you know, or see Jacob, they
02:18
are, like, well known for being very active in this space and making art and writing books
02:25
and doing all sorts of cool stuff related to nonbinary identity.
02:28
Oh, I love that. It’s so nice to see someone coming into themselves like that. It’s incredible.
02:31
It just makes me so happy. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, and also somebody who
02:35
is, like, now a leader in this, like, it’s so cool to go back and get to watch their
02:40
early story about this. When I was about 15 years old, I had just
02:44
come out to my dad. We were in the basement talking and, you know, initially his response
02:50
was pretty positive. He was asking me questions about, you know, saying that maybe he had
02:57
thought about it before. And he also asked me if I wanted to be a boy. I said, no, pretty
03:04
matter of factly, the conversation continued and he just told me that he loved me and.
03:08
He just wanted me to be safe. He was worried about how much harder life would be for me,
03:12
but he loved me regardless. He cried as well, which is the first time I’d ever seen my dad
03:17
cry. So it was an emotional moment. And I went into school the next day or the
03:21
next week and talked to some of my friends who are also organizing in the GSA with me,
03:27
the Gay Straight Alliance. And I talked to them about like, I learned all these things
03:31
at this conference. I learned that, you know, gender is this spectrum, not this binary,
03:35
that you can play with gender. And I think we should encourage people at our school to
03:40
do that. We should have a gender bender day or, or a gender nonconforming day. Let’s have
03:44
a gender nonconforming day. That would be so cool, right? And the two people who are
03:48
most excited about it with me were these two friends that I had who were dating at the
03:52
time. And they were like, you know, a heterosexual couple, but they were super jazzed about this
03:56
gender nonconforming idea. So when I got to college during freshman orientation,
04:01
actually, you know, we were staying in the dorm and, you know, going around. I met this
04:06
guy and we were hanging out the whole time. We got really cool. Probably day two into
04:12
the orientation and, you know, hanging out that day and we made a stop to go to the bathroom.
04:18
You know, I got a little bit nervous and he heads into the bathroom and he’s like, “Oh,
04:22
are you coming? Do you have to go?” And I was like, “Oh no, I’m fine.” And
04:27
then in that moment, I was like complete panic because I’m like, he thinks I’m a guy. And
04:32
we’re really far in right now. So like, how do I backtrack out of this?
04:35
So I think it might’ve been around like lunchtime that day. I know we were sitting down and
04:39
we just kind of had an opportunity to have a one-on-one conversation. I was just like,
04:44
“By the way, I’m a girl.” He was just like, “I’m sorry.” And then
04:50
that was it. And then from then on. We just continued our interactions the same way. He
04:56
just knew not to invite me into the men’s bathroom anymore.
04:58
It was at that moment where I realized like, Oh, this is going to be an issue. I had like
05:03
recently kinda cut my hair. So it was not completely short, but had these little like
05:08
twists that were like some Kris Kross 90s twists in my hair.
05:13
And so I was like, Oh, if I want people to see me as a woman, I’m going to have to do
05:17
something different with my hair. I’m going to need it to be longer. Because at that time
05:20
I was pretty much like I know what clothes I’m comfortable in, what I want to wear, but
05:24
I just have to present, you know, my face and my actual, like, my body more femininely.
05:29
At this time, I’m still deciding that I’m identifying as a woman and I want people to
05:33
see me that way. And then somebody, like, saying, like, Hey sir, how are you? And it
05:37
just catches me off guard because I’m like, How do I interact with you? Like, what do
05:41
I do now? What Erin realizes that at that moment is
05:44
that this is something that they are going to have to deal with over and over again.
05:48
And they need to find a way to navigate it. When that happens, it is something that throws
05:52
them off and they need to figure out How am I going to be in a way that feels right to
05:58
me and not being mistaken for a gender that I’m not?
06:01
Then a week later, I was hanging out with one of my friends who was the male counterpart
06:05
of the couple. And we were hanging out at the mall and we were talking about the idea
06:08
that we had. And, you know, he says to me, “Do you think we should just buy some high
06:13
heels?” Like I didn’t even have the script to like,
06:16
respond ‘cause I was like, Well, I have to say no, because I’m supposed to say no.
06:19
Like, I’m supposed to brush that idea off as stupid. But I don’t want to say no. Like,
06:22
I want to say yes. And so I said yes. So in that process, I had to start, I think
06:27
like, Whoa, should I just transition? Kind of, am I transgender? Like, what does this
06:32
mean? Do I want to be a man? And so I really, like, did a lot of research. I was looking
06:37
up, like, surgeries and hormones and what all of it meant and what parts were reversible.
06:43
And I knew that I never… for me, it wasn’t an issue of like having an issue with my body
06:49
or, you know, feeling like I needed to actually change anything, but I was more so responding
06:54
to the world outside of me. Like, okay, if I just fully present in this way, then everything
06:58
will be fine. And so we went to Charlotte Russe. And we
07:02
go into the store and it’s an all women’s store. So immediately I’m like, I’m terrified.
07:06
And so we’re sort of breezing past all this various anxiety and the other shoppers and
07:10
we go to the clearance rack of shoes. I find a size 10, a pair of black leather pumps that
07:16
are about five inches. I grabbed them off the shelf and I try them on. And they hurt
07:21
like hell and they – getting my feet in them is a big challenge, but they went on and they
07:26
were the only pair of shoes in the whole store that went on my feet. I found that pair of
07:29
shoes. And then my friend found this pair of, like purple velvet, like, I think they
07:34
had Velcro. They were really weird. And so we’re walking around with our newly
07:38
acquired purchase and about 20 or 30 minutes later, his girlfriend picks us up. And so
07:43
we drive to a McDonald’s, as one is wont to do. We got some food. So we were telling her
07:48
all about the process of buying the… sort of the, you know, the trials and tribulations
07:52
of the store and how people were looking at us or whatever.
07:55
And then we both realized, like, we don’t know how to walk in these things. Like we’d
07:58
never actually walked up and down, you know, more than three yards in them. And so we decide
08:06
let’s learn, right? Because she can teach us.
08:08
For about the last decade or so, my dad has worked in shelters around Cleveland, working
08:13
with the homeless population and people dealing with housing insecurity.
08:16
And he recently was recruited to start doing these trainings for mediation around the country.
08:24
And that turned into doing trainings around kind of LGBTQ competency within your shelter
08:31
and within your space. And he had a training earlier this year and he called me and he’s
08:37
like, “Hey, I want you to give me some feedback.” And as we started to have that conversation,
08:42
he just started telling me about the things that he was learning about gender. And he
08:46
was like, you know, “I realized that I never asked you, how do you identify and what pronouns
08:51
do you use?” And I was just like, Who am I talking to?
08:55
I mean, it was like, I just… just smiled. Like I couldn’t stop smiling. I was just like,
09:01
“Well, you know, this is how I identify. And, you know, it’s like sometimes as a woman,
09:05
sometimes it’s not as either. And I use “they/them” pronouns when I can, and some
09:10
people will use “he” pronouns. I mean, I kind of just like explained it out to him.
09:13
And he was like, Okay, all right. And that was it. I mean, he was the first
09:17
person in my family that I’ve ever told that to. So…. it’s pretty amazing.
09:21
And so we have this kind of runway coaching moment in the parking lot of this McDonald’s
09:26
in North Raleigh and I’m pretty sure I was terrible. I can’t decide if I was terrible,
09:31
just because I know I wasn’t that good and I had to get used to them, or if I was just
09:35
so giddy that I couldn’t focus, you know, I was like an overachieving high school student.
09:39
And so I was staying up late to do homework and my parents would always go to bed before
09:43
me. And so after my parents would go to bed, I would like scurry up to my room and I would
09:48
grab these shoes and I would go back downstairs and I would just sit on the couch, like in
09:52
my heels doing, like, my US history homework and just sitting, you know, like, in these
09:59
shoes that I realize now were too small for me. Like, by a lot. It was so empowering to
10:05
be in my home space finally, letting myself feel a little more like me.
10:11
I have a weird story and it’s going to be weird. It’s like, I’m a Trekkie and I love
10:15
Star Trek. So people are going to be like, That’s weird. You’re going off on a tangent.
10:18
But stay with me. I’m here for the tangent. I’m especially
10:20
here for the Star Trek tangent. It will make sense in just two seconds. Okay.
10:26
So I love Star Trek and there is this one sort of character and one of the Star Treks,
10:30
Deep Space Nine, which is, you know, if you’re a Trekkie, you… Deep Space Nine is going
10:34
down the rabbit holes of Trekkie… of Star Trek.
10:36
It – there’s this one character who is in, in his natural state, a liquid. He’s a liquid.
10:42
He is not a solid. He’s not a human. He’s… he can make himself humanoid with his liquid
10:47
state. And what I found interesting about that story, which reminds me about this, it
10:52
was like, at the end of the day, he would have to go back to his quarters and liquefy.
10:56
And I think that what I… what I think about with the story of Jacob is that if Jacob is
11:03
in their natural environment, a place where it feels safe and it’s it’s home, and then
11:09
they can also bring that part of themselves, which is new and they’re exploring and it
11:13
feels safe to do that, even if the parents were away, that is a powerful coupling that
11:19
I think cannot – that you really have to look at.
11:22
Like many of us don’t, when we’re navigating an identity, don’t have that option of expressing
11:28
identity at home because you just don’t know how it’s going to go. I know I couldn’t. I
11:33
had to be careful with it. I did more of that once I moved out, but like being at home,
11:37
I mean, I think I would have done it to some extent, but I still… I would have gotten
11:41
a little flack for it, right? But I love the idea that they were in their
11:44
home. Yes, the parents had gone to bed. They weren’t, like, they weren’t doing it when
11:48
the parents were awake, but there was something to me about the home and the identity that
11:54
is authentic, and being able to express that in that environment that is so important and
12:00
powerful. I wish that more people were open to the idea
12:04
that your gender identity could be whatever it feels like. And they kind of remind me
12:09
of having… being in a space where you can experiment with that, and that,like, everyone
12:12
should have that kind of safe space where they can be experimenting and figuring it
12:16
out. When I was thinking about this one of the
12:18
most impactful things… statements that I learned about gender was Janet Mock was doing
12:23
an interview once where she, somebody asked her like, “Do you think there are more than
12:26
two gender identities or more than three?” Or whatever… however they phrased the question.
12:31
And she said something to be effective that she thinks there are, like, infinite numbers
12:34
of gender identities and genders that we don’t even know about.
12:38
And I just so strongly believe that. And I feel like a lot of times we hear these conversations
12:44
about, like, just these dominant media narratives that are, you know, of course, like, so binary.
12:49
But I dunno, I just, I want to live in a world where like, there are, people can be whatever
12:53
infinite gender identity they feel themselves to be and that it can change and that, like,
12:58
they have a place to experiment. I love it so much. And for me, I would also
13:02
want to live in a world where that’s possible, but I also want to live in a world where gender
13:05
is shifting. People are shifting their genders at such a pace that it’s basically like, if
13:11
someone’s like, “What’s your identity?” They’re like, “What time is it?” They’re
13:12
like looking at their watch. They were like, “I’ll get back to you. Like, at the top
13:18
of the hour things might shift.” This is the forecast. “5pm’s gender will
13:24
be…” I have no idea. Right? So it’s 3:30 right
13:27
now. At four, maybe talking about something different. And you know what? I’m here for
13:31
all of that. Do you remember the first time you learned
13:33
about non-binary identities? You know, I don’t think I remember it. I think
13:38
that when I think about gender, it’s such a personal thing for me, because I’ve had
13:42
to think so much about my gender and where I am with it that I think… I don’t remember
13:48
the first time. But I will say this. I will say that there can be a pressure. I actually
13:54
experienced this. This is weird. I never really spoke to anyone about this, but I experienced
13:58
pressure from some of my friends to be, like, non-binary, in some ways.
14:02
They were like, “But wait, do you really want to use she/her pronouns? Shouldn’t you
14:06
be…” You know, and I was like, wow. Like, it was like, they were so… they were there
14:11
before I was, and I was just like, I feel like I was being carried along by this current,
14:15
like okay. But like, you guys have to let me work this out.
14:18
And they’re like, “But shouldn’t you be…?” I’m like, “Shouldn’t I decide it though?”
14:23
You know, it’s this thing. And I mean, luckily, I mean, I did, I got there, but like, there
14:27
was definitely this thing of like, Well, you look like this and you dress like this, so
14:33
shouldn’t you… And I’m like, we gotta make room for all of
14:35
it. We gotta make room for all of it. Like there are people, you know, who consider themselves
14:41
women and they, you know, she/her and they want to wear men’s clothing. And I’m like,
14:44
we have to make room for all of this. We cannot define what people’s experience is going to
14:51
be. We have to let them define it. And then we have to believe them when they, like I
14:55
said, we have to believe them at 3:30, at 4 o’clock, at 4:30. We got to believe them.
15:00
Yeah. Yeah.
15:01
That’s how I feel about it. What you were bringing up about people kind
15:04
of like pushing your… or deciding your identity for you or telling you this reminded me of
15:10
the other story. People interpreted them as being male. They’re
15:14
assigned female at birth. People perceived them as being male. And then that perception
15:19
outside of them made them then question their own gender identity and made them wonder like,
15:24
Am I trans? Where should I be going with my own identity? And it just reminded me of what
15:28
you said, because it’s like just how the impact of what other people can say or think, how
15:34
that can have an impact on you. And for Erin, they said that like, ultimately they identify
15:40
as non-binary, as somewhere in the middle. Identifying as trans along the binary – that
15:44
wasn’t right for them. They didn’t feel that way.
15:46
It is… it speaks to kind of what we were just talking about, right, Alex, which is,
15:50
this is a very personal journey and it’s going to look so many different ways. And I think
15:54
what you said about Janet Mock earlier and how there are infinite genders, I think that’s
15:58
true. Because everyone’s going to refine that dial in a way that feels right to them.
16:03
It’s a funny thing, like both for me as a queer femme, for example, sometimes I find
16:08
myself very empowered by the traditional markers of femininity. You know, like, I’m playing
16:15
with those things. But also at the same time, and to me, in some ways like owning that stuff
16:19
feels transgressive because I identify as LGBTQ. So much of, I think, what we’re navigating
16:26
is what people presume about us and who we are and what we’re trying to signal to them
16:31
about who we are. And I don’t even know what it would look like if we didn’t have to do
16:35
that or grew up in a world that had, you know, was less binary. What do you think this all
16:41
looks like for Gen Z? I feel like I do see younger people being really open about gender
16:49
identity. And I even feel like the reason that I now put my pronouns in my bios and
16:54
stuff like that is because I’ve seen younger people do it. So do you have hopes for the
16:59
next generation and their perception and experience of gender?
17:03
Well, you know, being very far removed from Gen Z, I feel like… I think the thing that
17:10
I like about it is that I love that it’s just become so normalized. I love it. Like at some
17:13
point, this is not going to be really much of a conversation to be having. I think in
17:17
that, we will see it more normalized in corporate culture in society in general. Like we’re
17:23
just going to see a shift, But it’s, you know, it’s a gradual shift, but I think Gen Z is
17:27
doing their part to really make that happen. And I love that.
17:30
I mean, you can get a non-binary ID in certain states now, so there definitely has been progress.
17:37
After some time, I just kind of got to a place where I was like, I know this isn’t it. Like,
17:46
I know that I don’t identify as trans specifically in a way that makes me want to, like, make
17:54
any physical transition. And I was just like, I could just be whatever I can be in the middle.
18:00
I can be sometimes I’m woman, sometimes I’m man, most of the time I’m neither, sometimes
18:05
I’m both at the same time. So being okay and kind of coming to terms
18:11
with that, then I just got to a point where I realized, like, gender is a performance
18:15
and I can perform it how I want. And so I don’t have to fit into one side or another,
18:20
and I recognize how I can, like, play around with it for myself and what I can do to make
18:25
myself comfortable. So for me, it was a relief to just be able
18:27
to go into the world and just exist and not really worry about what people saw or what
18:33
people thought. I wish I could show myself at 13 who I am
18:37
now and be like, You’re going to wear gowns. Like, you’re not just going to wear heels.
18:43
You’re not just going to paint your nails once. You’re not just going to put your mom’s
18:46
lipstick on. You are going to wear a gown at a fancy event and at a dinner, and you’re
18:52
going to turn heads in it. Like that’s, what’s in store for you kid, You know, just embrace
18:58
this faster. Don’t be afraid of it. Love it. I think something that happens with people
19:03
around gender identity or the alphabet soup of LGBTQIA+ et cetera is that people get really
19:09
overwhelmed. Just people who haven’t been, like, really enmeshed in the community, or
19:13
haven’t been having these kinds of conversations and I totally get why it can be overwhelming.
19:17
It’s a lot of information, a lot of it’s – it can feel very like philosophical in some ways.
19:22
But I actually think there are super concrete ways that we can get at this just by instituting
19:27
in our workplaces or communities, just making it normal to say what your pronoun is, or
19:34
like putting it on your Twitter account. It just becomes something we all do. And then
19:39
we never have to have another conversation where somebody has to apologize and somebody
19:44
else has to react. And it feels like maybe we’re moving – maybe with Gen Z, we’re like
19:49
moving towards a place where this will be less common.
19:51
Coming from a background of, you know, in a family, like my mom was not particularly
19:56
happy about my gender expression. Like, for me to be able to express it, there’s a freedom
20:01
in that. It’s very much this idea of like, I get to do whatever feels right to me. Being
20:07
able to express myself authentically in my gender. It just feels like… it just feels
20:11
like there are no limits. And I think that for lack of putting in a better way, it’s
20:15
like I can be as masculine leaning as I want or pull it back if I want, and no one gets
20:20
to say how I do that. The I’m From Driftwood Podcast is hosted by
20:32
Phil aka Corinne And Alex Berg, and is produced by Andy Egan-Thorpe.
20:37
It’s recorded as a program of I’m From Driftwood, a worldwide nonprofit LGBTQAI+ story archive.
20:43
I’m From Driftwood’s Founder and Executive Director is Nathan Manske. It’s Program
20:47
Director is Damien Mittlefehldt. I’m From Driftwood is a nonprofit organization,
20:51
and this Podcast was funded in part by public funds from the New York City Department of
20:56
Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council.
20:59
Additional funding is provided by TD Bank and Heritage of Pride New York.
21:03
I’m From Driftwood was created to help queer and trans people learn more about their community…
21:08
Help straight people learn more about their neighbors…
21:10
And help everyone learn more about themselves… All through the power of storytelling.
21:14
Our score is provided by Elevate Audio. The stories you heard today are available
21:18
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21:22
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21:27
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