Bi-Gender

[pdogg]

 

 

“There’s a really vibrant L.G.B.T. scene,” Kate Campbell, one of the M.C.’s, began. “However, that mostly encompasses the L.G.B. and not too much of the T. So we’re aiming to change that.”

 

Students read poems and diary entries, and sang guitar ballads. Then Britt Gilbert — a punky-looking freshman with a blond bob, chunky glasses and a rock band T-shirt — took the stage. She wanted to talk about the concept of “bi-gender.”

 

“Does anyone want to share what they think it is?”

 

Silence.

 

She explained that being bi-gender is like manifesting both masculine and feminine personas, almost as if one had a “detachable penis.” “Some days I wake up and think, ‘Why am I in this body?’ ” she said. “Most days I wake up and think, ‘What was I thinking yesterday?’ ”

 

Britt’s grunginess belies a warm matter-of-factness, at least when describing her journey. As she elaborated afterward, she first heard the term “bi-gender” from Kate, who found it on Tumblr. The two met at freshman orientation and bonded. In high school, Kate identified as “agender” and used the singular pronoun “they”; she now sees her gender as an “amorphous blob.”

 

By contrast, Britt’s evolution was more linear. She grew up in suburban Pennsylvania and never took to gender norms. As a child, she worshiped Cher and thought boy bands were icky. Playing video games, she dreaded having to choose male or female avatars.

 

In middle school, she started calling herself bisexual and dated boys. By 10th grade, she had come out as a lesbian. Her parents thought it was a phase — until she brought home a girlfriend, Ash. But she still wasn’t settled.

 

“While I definitely knew that I liked girls, I didn’t know that I was one,” Britt said. Sometimes she would leave the house in a dress and feel uncomfortable, as if she were wearing a Halloween costume. Other days, she felt fine. She wasn’t “trapped in the wrong body,” as the cliché has it — she just didn’t know which body she wanted.

 

When Kate told her about the term “bi-gender,” it clicked instantly. “I knew what it was, before I knew what it was,” Britt said, adding that it is more fluid than “transgender” but less vague than “genderqueer” — a catchall term for nontraditional gender identities.

 

At first, the only person she told was Ash, who responded, “It took you this long to figure it out?” For others, the concept was not so easy to grasp. Coming out as a lesbian had been relatively simple, Britt said, “since people know what that is.” But when she got to Penn, she was relieved to find a small community of freshmen who had gone through similar awakenings.

 

 

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/10/fashion/generation-lgbtqia.html?pagewanted=2&ref=general&src=me