OP/ED
10 | OCTOBER 2021
Hawkeye
What I’ve learned o G
ender was a foreign concept to me as a child, something I never paid much attention to until crisis came and smacked me in the face. Like most of my peers at the time, my biggest concern was waking up early enough on Saturday mornings to catch old Pokémon reruns, but unlike a lot of my peers, I felt Nico Francois overly self-conscious CO-EDITOR-IN-CHIEF about my gender and how I was perceived. Growing up in a cisnormative society was a lot for my walnut-sized child brain. The gender binary was everywhere, from unnecessarily gendered products like gardening tools to frequent offhand comments from adults telling me that the way I sat “wasn’t very lady-like” or that my male friend “threw like a girl.” I could never fully comprehend any of it. Did the way in which I sat in a chair or my clothing choices really dictate my gender? It was a confusing topic for me, and I only knew that I wanted to fit in, so I mimicked the behavior and style choices of those around me despite how uncomfortable it made me feel. I continuously hoped that this “gender” thing the adults seemed to care so much about would make sense sooner or later. Sooner then became later, and later then became never as I hit my teenage years. The discomfort I had felt as a child was enhanced tenfold by the time I hit puberty, and all I felt was constant frustration with myself for not feeling comfortable in my own skin. I constantly questioned why it was that whenever I saw women draped in elegant dresses and gleaming jewels, I thought they were stunning, but whenever I saw myself donned in anything similar, it just didn’t feel right, I didn’t feel like “me.” I tried my best to brush off any discomfort, because for the longest time I thought, “Ah, yes, this is just teenage insecurity, the type that every girl in those cheesy coming-of-age movies feels. I’ll have some weird epiphany and poof, it will vanish.” The one functioning brain cell I had left failed me once again in this regard, as the “coming-ofage” realization I had was not one in which all of my insecurities disappeared and were replaced with unwavering confidence, but one in which I had realized, “Oh, refusing to look at myself in the mirror and hating being treated like a girl maybe isn’t normal… Hmm, weird.” I wouldn’t have come to this realization without the help of my consistent and trusty friend, a friend who had never failed me once before. Well, I guess it did tell me on occasion that I had some incurable disease or something, but other
GENDER DY
than that, this friend, by the name of Google, had always come through for me, and this was no exception. I spent hours typing symptoms into the search bar and clicking on the corresponding articles, and finally, at 2 a.m. I connected the dots and realized that what I had been consistently feeling was gender dysphoria. The bold black definition on the National Health Service website was as clear as day. “Gender dysphoria is a term that describes a sense of unease that a person may have because of a mismatch between their biological sex and their gender identity. This sense of unease or dissatisfaction may be so intense it can lead to depression and anxiety and have a harmful impact on daily life.” Although further research solidified the fact that trans people don’t need to experience gender dysphoria to be trans, I found the symptoms of gender dysphoria relatable to my personal experience. Having a label for the feelings I had been experiencing was nothing short of exhilarating, and in the coming weeks, I formed a stronger bond with Google than ever before. I found myself spending night after night researching and reading through various articles and posts, hungry for more information to explain how I was feeling. Finally, after many articles and much thinking, I realized that I was comfortable and somewhat confident in labeling myself as nonbinary and using they/them pronouns. Unfortunately, I was only comfortable using my preferred name and pronouns in the comfort of my own mind and closet, as coming out wasn’t an easy task for my interaction-fearing self. After months of constantly bickering with myself, I came to the conclusion that I should
NICO FRANCOIS | HAWKEYE
