Who’s Afraid of a Question?
I am, and I don’t like it.
By Leonoor Post
If you’re ever wondering about others’ perception of you, I would recommend cataloguing what questions kids tend to ask you. Whereas adults just squint their eyes, size me up and inevitably get to some conclusion that satisfies them, children will ask anything they want directly, no matter how disapprovingly their parents glare at them. So it happens that they’re the ones most often wondering aloud what my gender is.
I imagine that “Are you a boy or a girl?” is really easy to answer for a lot of people. However, to me, the question feels like a trap, and I very rarely reply honestly. I can tell what they’ll ask me ten seconds before they do, when they stare at me, a contemplating look in their eyes. To them, I’m either a boy with a soft voice, a girl with short hair, a boy with unusual proportions or a girl with boy-clothes; they can’t make up their minds about it. As soon as the words are spoken aloud, my eyes start flicking around, looking for exits. Subsequently realizing that running away is not a very rational response to someone innocently asking me what my gender is, I try to find a verbal escape. I have a few that I rotate between: shrugging my shoulders, acting like I didn’t hear them, deflecting, asking what it even matters, telling them to guess…
However, no matter how much I deflect and try to slip out of the predicament I’m in, I’m already trapped. The bars have descended around me, and I’m stuck looking at the world from behind this wire barrier that feels like a live burial. To be honest, it’s not the question itself that traps me, but the knowledge that no matter how elusive or non-existent my answer is, they’ll find a conclusion themselves anyway. True detectives, as all kids are, will construct something that satisfies them, not despite, but from my silence.
And who’s afraid of a question? I can’t blame them for seeking knowledge, trying to understand something they do not. They’re faced by some thing (a person, I suppose) that doesn’t fit into the binary they’ve been told is absolute. What’s unfortunate for me, though, is that the very action of asking me that question pushes me into the binary. It punches me in the gut, and I fold over. It only has two possible answers. I despise this categorization that, to me, makes as much sense as saying all humans are either Black or white, tall or short, or engineers or waiters.
I think the fact that I’m asked about my gender so often says a lot about what we teach to children (perhaps unknowingly). Do parents really want the first question that pops up in their children’s head when seeing me to be if I’m a boy or a girl? Aren’t there much more interesting things to ask and be curious about? This tendency is the outward manifestation of the patriarchal indoctrination already locked within the minds of our next generation. In my understanding, there is no separating the strict gender binary from gender inequality. The power imbalance between men and women and the roles and values we force upon them are the reason why everyone needs to be either one or the other. In a world where gender roles would cease to exist, it wouldn’t matter whether I’m a boy or a girl. It wouldn’t matter that I’m neither.
I want to ask a question to the reader too: what is your reaction when you feel cognitive dissonance? Do you force me into something you understand? I can feel it physically, the struggle in your mind. You break me down, turn me around, unfold me and transform me into something you’re able to recognize. Does it matter to you that I’m lying on the floor of one of the two rooms you decided to lock me in, sobbing? because I want my freedom?
Gender is not a long, narrow hallway like the ones in the building W, divided by a monstrous glass door. I don’t want to stand on the threshold my whole life, one misstep away from falling into either category. I want out of the building.
I express myself androgynously because confusion causes me less dysphoria than someone being sure about who I am. Unfortunately, I’ve learnt over the past few years that the human brain wants an answer and preferably one that fits within the confines of its pre-existing knowledge. Though I suppose that is where my control over others’ perception of me ends in any case. I only have control over my own behaviour, and I think I need to get over the selfish part of me that wants to avoid any chance of conflict. I think it’s time for me to be brave. Next time a child asks me if I’m a boy or a girl, I won’t run. I won’t hide. I’ll look them in the eyes and tell them the truth (that is, my personal experience); I’ll tell them, “Neither.”
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