Walking Through the World Non-Binary | Jesse Lueck | TEDxRanneySchool

are you a boy or are you a girl this is the question that I've been followed around with for the majority of my life and for most people it's probably a preposterous question that they wouldn't imagine that strangers on the street would just come up and ask them little children sometimes would make comments and that's not a big deal but it's more so the adults that would really just not be able to let go of this concept of needing to know what my biology is and therein is why the question is so shocking to me they're not actually asking what my gender identity it is they're asking what I was assigned at Birth they're asking what my physical parts are which when you think about it is a really creepy question so I'm gonna go over a little bit about what we're talking about when it comes to gender and it's not just your biology gender has many levels and on each one of these levels it's a continuum you could fall anywhere on that continuum from one end to the other or anywhere in between and it does start with your biological sex which is what you're assigned at birth when you came out and the doctor said it's a boy it's a girl based on your biology now you could be on one end and be male you could be on the other end to be female or you could fall in the middle and you could be intersex and there are over 27 different ways that people could be intersex and fall in between the actual biology of what's male and what's female on the next level down is gender identity and this is actually how you feel on the inside how you identify on the one end is men on the other end is woman and then in between are folks like myself we identify as non-binary sometimes they use the term gender fluid or genderqueer which I think sometimes makes people cringe because the word queer is still a little bit on the brink of a lot of people thinking that is derogatory term I used to refer to myself before I knew any of this terminology as a gender bender I just thought it sounded me kind of rond it was kind of a funny little thing and I would make jokes and I would say to my co-workers yes it's me I'm here I'm your official gender bender at your service underneath that is gender expression and that's what you're showing to the world now the way I present myself to the world is on the more masculine of the spectrum but still closer to the middle so there's masculine on one end - feminine on the other and all kinds of levels of androgyny in between underneath that is gender presentation and this is the thing that I have no control over whatsoever that's how I'm being perceived by the outside world so even though I'm presenting myself in a more masculine way that's not always what's perceived I've had instances where I've been sitting in restaurants with my wife and people are staring and they're whispering or they're pointing or they're looking it's obvious they're talking and a lot of times I can take that with a grain of salt I'm not even really noticed but there are other times where I really just want to turn around and say if you have a burning question would you please just ask it so we could all move on with our day that would be great so gender presentation is sort of one of those levels that I wish I had a little bit more control of and I don't really have the time to walk around addressing every single person in the room and saying this is what I want you to see so I just let people see what they want and go on about their day it's fine with me I'm not bothered if you see me as female I'm not bothered if you see me as male because I exist right in that gray area in the middle of feeling like I don't explicitly subscribe to one end or the other when it comes to that continuum and on the last level of sexual orientation and this of course is who you have feelings for who you like or love and again that's a spectrum you could be attracted to women you could be attracted to men you could be bisexual you could be pansexual and that has nothing to do at all with how you identify yourself gender wise each one of these levels are completely independent they're not in any way involved with the other levels you can be on one end or the other end of any one of these are in the middle and they're not really related to each other so that's just sort of the background on this whole idea and now I'm going to take you through my gender journey so that's me I'm about two years old maybe closer to three I was really obsessed with rainbows completely coincidental by the way nothing to do with the fact that I'm gay and when I came out my mother was shocked and surprised and she like couldn't believe it and then I look bacchanal these childhood photos and everything is covered in rainbows and I'm just like mom you didn't do that to me I picked those things out we're Clues along the way maybe a little bit there I am I'm about five years old there and at about that age I was completely obsessed with dresses I had to wear a dress every single day I had a specific favorite one it was pink it had a panda on it and my mother had to wash it every single day because it's the only thing I would wear and I would always joke around with her and say mom see a person is only given so many days in their life that they want to wear a dress I just used all mine up in one year and then I was spent I'm about ten years old here and this was the year that our around that time I begged my mother to let me cut my hair I think everybody in the early 90s had some version of that bowl cut and I thought it was so awesome because now I didn't have all this kind of hair getting in the way I was really into soccer and I wanted to play all the sports that boys played and people would actually ask me do you just want to be a boy and I used to look them squarely in the face and say I do not want to be a boy but I want to be treated like one and now looking back on that it's interesting that at that time and at such young age I was noticing the differences in how boys were treated and perceived versus girls I was constantly being told that I couldn't do all these things that I really wanted to do because girls don't do that want to play with Legos they're not for girls I want to play hockey that's not for girls can I go out for the football team no that's not for girls I want to wear a white suit on Easter that's not for girls drove me crazy and I went to Catholic school my entire life so I did have to wear a dress every single day for years and this really was a sort of sticking point for me because I even went to the Dean and had this big argument about how in the dress code it did not explicitly say that the girls had to wear the girl's uniform just that we had to be in uniform now I feel like that was like you know open book there for me to go and buy the boys uniform and we're technically I'd still be in uniform I wasn't allowed to do that though I got in big trouble when I turned about 13 I sort of allowed myself to float back on that continuum towards presenting more feminine that was about the time where the teasing hit critical mass and I just couldn't take being picked on anymore it was really difficult I was a late bloomer and so the girls would tease me and the boys would tease me about my appearance so I grew my hair long again and I started wearing clothes that were a little more traditionally from the girls section and it worked the teasing pretty much stopped and when I went into high school I was mostly hanging out with the athletic popular girls I was friends with all of them nobody teased me there were no questions and have any problems but I felt like I was wearing a straitjacket every single day and it brought me down to a level of depression where I started thinking that I was never going to be allowed to be the person that I wanted to be that I didn't really have a choice because if I was the person that I wanted to be I would have to go back to those times when the kids would just relentlessly pick and tease me and also my mom had a lot to deal with because there was a lot of judgment where she was concerned people would look at her ask her say why are you letting your kid dress like that why are you letting your kid do that and so she took a lot of judgment from people that she didn't necessarily know or even people that she thought were friends of hers that she couldn't believe would come up to her and be judging her decisions on her parenting based on the way that her child wanted to be treated or wanted to behave and I have to give her a lot of credit for for the most part really standing up and allowing me to join and do most of the things that I wanted to do the rule was always I will let you try out and if you don't make the team you don't make the team but if you make the team I'm gonna let you play so that was really great on her part that she allowed me to really branch out and try all the things that I wanted to try there was a lot of compromising where clothing was concerned because I went to a very strict Catholic school we had appearances to keep up and when it came to specific holidays and events we had to do a lot of compromise what I was allowed to wear so maybe I was allowed to wear those white pants on Easter but my shirt had to have some level of flowers on it and then we balanced it all out when I hit my college years that was really stepping out into a new time in my life my senior year of high school I became so depressed that I made this decision that I was never since I was never gonna be able to be who I wanted to be that I just didn't want to be alive anymore and that was the year that I attempted to commit suicide I had lost all my friends I had been fired from my job all the girls that I worked with had got together and wrote a letter to my boss and said that they didn't want to work with me anymore because I made them uncomfortable they just didn't want to be around me so I was fired so I had this situation where when I was in school no one wanted to talk to me or sit near me and when I went home I didn't have my job anymore and I didn't have anywhere to go and my mom would often ask me like why aren't you hanging out with your friends anymore and I couldn't look at my mom and say like I'm not not hanging out with these people because I don't want to hang out with them like I'm not hanging out them because they don't want to be my friend but I couldn't say that to my mother I knew that would just like break her heart so I just thankfully the suicide attempt did not come to fruition and I told myself that if I could just push through the rest of my senior year and make it to college I would be able to just start a new life and be myself and that's what happened I went away to college I met other people who are in the LGBT community for the first time I made real friends for the first time who knew fully who I was I started to be able to experiment with wearing what I wanted to wear and being who I wanted to be with no judgments and this was a huge breath of fresh air for me because it was a really hard few years in a Catholic High School where at least once a day every day I had someone in a position of power standing in front of me saying you'll go to hell if you are this you know there are rules that are written in this book that we read every day and we go through and we talk about how this is wrong and this is not what you're supposed to be and this was the first time that I had broken away from that and saw a whole different part of the world and it was amazing and it was a feeling that I never to lose and I made the decision right then and there that I was now going to live my life being my fully authentic self no matter what people said no matter what obstacles came in my way I was just going to be the very best person I can be and I discovered that I am my best self when I am myself the only way that I am successful and achieving and capitalizing on every opportunity that comes my way is when I'm my authentic self and putting my authentic self value because I can tell you right now if I was standing on this stage in a pink dress I would be extremely uncomfortable and I'll guarantee the rest of you would be just as uncomfortable looking at it thank you [Applause]

Channel: TEDx Talks

Views: 82,649

Keywords: TEDxTalks, English, Life, Gender

Id: OKJjwTEfaKc

Length: 11min 56sec (716 seconds)

Published: Wed May 09 2018