by mx. kade

As I shift into a new phase in my life of young adulthood, I've been looking back at the experiences I've had as a queer person in the community for over a decade. I've always considered myself an optimist, proud to go with the flow as long as I have the words to explain how I'm feeling and I definitely feel as if I've carried that throughout my life within my identity. I remember feeling this constant and deep fascination for the concept of love and the fluidity of relationships, knowing that I wasn't destined to follow the traditional path in life that society would have preferred. 

That's why I found it so challenging when, at 13, I discovered the term "bisexual" and proudly wore it until my mother found out and told me I was "too young" to put a label on my identity like that. Suddenly this term that I loved became a taboo topic in the household, knowing I couldn't mention it without it causing a debate about what it meant to be a 13-year-old bisexual.

Obviously, I wasn't having sex at 13 but for some reason that seemed to be the only thing people considered when I mentioned bisexuality. I had the support of my 14-year-old girlfriend who was learning things from her cousins and I unfortunately learned quickly that I was on my own when it came to my identity. It felt like unless I followed the traditional path of being cis and straight, it wasn't going to be respected and even more unfortunately, I had the misfortune of discovering that I was right a few years later when I came out as agender. 

In the grand scheme of things, there's one girl that sticks out in my mind as someone who aggressively encouraged me to embrace my identity. Just after I started saying I considered myself genderless and used any pronouns, she drunkenly insisted on using they/them pronouns for me the entire time we hung out and it filled me with euphoria I didn't know I needed, and I want to bring that encouraging energy back to the world. It's no surprise that there's been an onslaught of anti-trans laws cropping up in the USA and UK, and we're definitely far more fortunate here in Canada but it's terrifying to watch. Strangers are taking to the internet to debate the genitals of other strangers for the sole purpose of "gotchya" memes when we're asking for the basic, human respect and dignity awarded to cisgender people on something that affects our everyday lives. Unless you experience gender dysphoria, it's easy not to notice how gendered our society is but when you're being reminded on a daily basis that you don't fit in and you KNOW you don't fit in, it makes life so much harder.

That's why we should start aggressively encouraging people to explore their gender and sexuality, work with them when they start asking questions and give them the grace of learning. Transgender people spend so much time thinking about their own gender and it's so frustrating hearing people try to convince us that we're wrong. We know ourselves better than anyone else, and there isn't a reason to force people to use labels that they don't want. 

Mx. Kade is a queer, genderless author who has been an active member of the queer community since they were 13 and writing since they were even younger, bringing their experiences to life in Lavender Aberrations, their first novella in their Labels collection featuring realistic life stories of people from different spectrums of the queer community.