an exploration of gender through photography and dialogue
Am
How old are you, and where are you from?
27. Mesa, Arizona.
How would you identify your gender?
There are about 15 words that seem to work, including genderqueer, gender non-comforming, non-binary, androgynous, agender, and trans*.
What presentation made you feel most like yourself? Why?
The Rage Against the Machine shirt and cutoffs. It shows off my tattoos and my gender non-conformity in a way that is just right.
What presentation made you feel least like yourself? Why?
The black dress and the white shorts/short shirt one. I hated looking that feminine. I thought I looked ugly, and old, and weird. I also felt like a boy in a dress, which is not a good look.
Did you borrow clothes from anyone for this project? If so, how did that make them feel? How did that make you feel?
I borrowed a lot of clothes and bought a lot of clothes, and shopping for female clothing was really scary and hard. It almost made me have a crisis like I used to have when I was 12.
Did you gain any perspective on gender identity/expression in other people during the project?
Yes. It is really interesting for me to talk to people who don’t think about gender all the time and hear how this process feels for them because their emotions are so different than mine. I think my primary emotion is scared, and theirs is new or different, or weird or curious or uncomfortable, but very few people have said that they are scared.
Was there a gender identity/presentation that you wanted to try but hadn’t before this project but didn’t have the chance to do until this project?
Yes. All of them, really. I wanted to see how I looked/felt in hyper-masculine and hyper-feminine and everything in between. It is so weird that in the end I felt most comfortable in the 3 middle ones, but I guess it isn’t weird after all. That is who I am, and this project only validated that more to me.
Did you gain any perspective on gender identity/expression in other people during the project?
So much. Everyone has had an experience with gender by doing this project, and it would take me days to explain all of the perspective I have gained on gender identity/expression by being a part of all their experiences. I will say one thing - it has been extremely cool to hang out with transpeople, genderqueer people, genderfluid people, and cisgender people who want to explore gender identity. I feel like my eyes have opened a lot to all of the possible ways that people express their gender.
Are there things you would be more willing to do now after modeling for the project that you wouldn’t have done before?
Yes. Since this project, I started binding, wearing more androgynous/masculine clothes, and altering my mannerisms to be more masculine in a way that feels like social transitioning. I had wanted to do this for a while before this project, but I was too scared to actually act on it. This project gave me the ability and motivation to finally try it.
What do you feel is the most salient aspect of your identity (the part that shows the most on the outside despite the clothes you are wearing)? How do you feel that this part of your identity was represented and/or misrepresented in this project?
My gender identity is very obvious. People ask me all the time if I am a boy or a girl. Sometimes people tell me I'm in the wrong restroom. The people at TSA rarely know if they should push the male or female button on the scanner machine. So people notice my androgynous presentation before they notice most things about me. I think that my gender identity was represented well in the project, considering the entire project was built off the premise of explaining my gender identity to the world.
Was there anything about the project that made you feel angry or uncomfortable or other negative emotions? If so, what did you feel and why?
Yes. I hated when people saw my feminine photographs and said, “Wow, you look really pretty.” I’m like, “That’s not the point and that offends me because I feel so uncomfortable like that, but it is more normative for you so it makes you feel like you have the right to say it.” But they don’t have the right to say that, so it bothers me a lot.