Doing Gender
The Monster That I Choose to Be: An Analysis of Non-Binary Resistance
Cas
Introduction
To choose a life of gender non-conformity not only opens you up to the powerful community of people you may meet in the basement bars of London, but in many ways it puts you instantly into an equally powerful relationship with yourself. I say ‘choose’, and I understand the contention in that word. I know for many it is not a word that will fit. Yet for me, choice is a word that crops up again and again within my own journey of gender… (Alabanza, 2022, pg. 67)
Travis Alabanza’s None of the Above: Reflections on Life Beyond the Binary (2022) autobiographical memoir follows a Black transfeminine performance artist and writer from Bristol, England. In None of the Above, Alabanza discusses their lived experience of gender, transition, and living as gender non-conforming. Their memoir does not fit the “Mad Lib” trans memoir narrative – a term coined by Jacob Tobia in Sissy: A Coming of Gender Story (2019). Heyam explains this in Before We Were Trans: A New History of Gender (2022):
The ‘Mad Lib’ trans narrative begins in childhood, with the trans person articulating their early, stable sense that they were ‘in the wrong body’, and conforming to stereotypes ‘opposite’ to those of the gender they were assigned at birth. After a long and traumatic struggle with themselves, they come out, medically transition to male or female, and live a conventional, gender-conforming and heterosexual life (pg. 17).
While representative of the stories of some, this narrative imposes binary notions of transness, excluding the experiences of many gender non-conforming (GNC) individuals. It creates a proscriptive expectation that if one is trans, one’s transition must follow this narrative. As a GNC non-binary person, Alabanza’s transition does not.
I will use the theory of “Critical Gender Kinds” by Robin Dembroff (2020) to argue that the embodiment of non-binary genders can be a form of situational defiance to gendered binary systems as well as one’s internal feeling of gender.
Critical Gender Kinds: For a given kind X, X is a critical gender kind relative to a given society if X’s members collectively destabilize one or more core elements of the dominant gender ideology in that society (pg. 12).
Alabanza’s memoir can be viewed through the lens of Critical Gender Kinds, showcasing the ways in which Alabanza – and other non-binary individuals, by extension – destabilise the dominant gender ideology through their embodied resistance of transmedicalism, definition of gender as a situational reaction, and reappropriation of derogatory terms. The “dominant gender ideology” that Debroff references is the gender binary axis that enforces two genders, man and woman, that correspond to two sexes, male and female. I will be using the terms “non-binary” and “non-binary genders” to refer to those who are gender non-conforming (GNC), genderqueer, gender-expansive (GE) or identify as something other than binary trans/cis. This is for the sake of simplicity, although I recognise there are important nuances between these identities (Erickson-Schroth, 2022).
Gender Non-Conformity in Resistance to Transmedicalism
Transmedicalism awards legitimacy to trans people who have transitioned both socially and medically from one binary gender to the opposite binary gender, while invalidating gender identities that do not adhere to the “binaristic medical model of trans identity” (Johnson, 2016). This is based on transnormative gender ideals that men must adhere to within standards of hegemonic masculinity, and women within dominant femininity (Daniel, 2020; Johnson, 2016).
Hegemonic masculinity: practices of masculinity that justify and reproduce men’s dominant position in society – traits such as emotional suppression, competitiveness, aggression etc. that are the cultural ideal of masculinity.
Dominant femininity: practices of femininity that exist in conjunction with hegemonic masculinity to justify and reproduce men’s dominant and women’s subordinate position in society – traits such as grace, sensitivity, warmth etc. that are the cultural ideal of femininity.
Non-binary identities are inherently incompatible with transnormativity. As they fall outside of binary gender categories, non-binary identities are delegitimised by the standards of transnormative medical transition (Daniel, 2020; Darwin, 2020). Non-binary people are held accountable to both cis and trans standards of embodiment – where it is dictated that they either embody their birth sex, or fully transition to the other binary sex (through gender-affirming medical care). While some non-binary people desire gender affirming medical care, it is problematic when viewed as compulsory to be part of the “real trans community” – when authenticity calls for medicalisation (Murawsky, 2023). Through the rejection of both cis and trans conventions, non-binary bodies can uniquely highlight the pervasive issues of transmedicalism within the trans community through their defiance of binary gendered body standards.
Transnormativity: a hegemonic ideology that structures transgender experience, identification, and narratives into a hierarchy of legitimacy that is dependent upon a binary medical model and its accompanying standards, regardless of individual transgender people’s interest in or intention to under-take medical pathways to transition (Johnson, 2016).
Alabanza positions their discussion of transmedicalism based on those who are “proper” trans and those who are not. Alabanza references an instance in which someone invalidated their transness on the basis that they were gender non-conforming, deeming them “improper” (pg. 31). Proper here can be understood as one who is binary trans, and has accessed gender-affirming medical care, reinforcing the Mad Lib trans narrative. This is an attempt to constrain gender identity further by establishing yet another binary between “proper” transness and transness that is outside of binary gender conceptualisations – and thus unrecognised. It flattens the complexity of transness for the cisnormative understanding and creates a precarious conditional acceptance of “proper” trans people, thereby legitimising dominant gender ideology (Daniel, 2020; Dembroff, 2020).
Alabanza discusses the idea that non-binary identities sit in an uncomfortable place of unrecognition. With this discomfort, society wants to further divide binary trans people and non-binary trans people into “proper” and “improper” respectively, based on “a cisgender idea of completion” (pg. 37). Binary systems are incompatible with any form of nuance. By rejecting the constraints of transmedicalism, Alabanza positions their gender as outside of the binary of gender and dichotomies of “proper” and “improper”. To this, they report feeling “like an imposter” in the trans community, where people base their acceptance on whether or not you “attempt to pass”. One is “deemed a legitimate identity only if [they] are medicalised” (pg. 35). This kind of prejudice is present within the trans community, reflecting a greater transnormative understanding of transition that permeates societal assumptions.
Being a non-binary person who embraces gender non-conformity both visually (through dress and appearance) and physically (through rejection of binary body standards), Alabanza intentionally subverts the ordinances of transmedicalism. Through their rhetoric and embodiment, they problematise the distinction between “proper” (binary) trans and “improper” (non-binary) trans, challenging the idea that there is a proper way to be trans. This serves to disrupt transnormative gender ideology, suggesting evidence for non-binary being a Critical Gender Kind.
To Gender, On Purpose
To speak of gender as an intentional act is problematised because it disrupts the cisnormative idea of how gender works: that it is inherent to one’s identity, that one can describe it in simple terms (man, woman), and that it is a stable construct (Butler, 1990). Alabanza rejects this idea:
I believe my transness is a reactionary fact, not an innate one. I am trans because the world made me so, not because I was born different. I am trans because the systems the world operates through force me to be so, not because of genetics (pg. 26, emphasis added).
Even in trans spaces, Alabanza’s is a radical idea, as many binary trans people feel that their gender is inherent to their identity (notably, this aligns with the Mad Lib narrative as well).
Gender has similarly been theorised as performance by West & Zimmerman (1987), and Butler in their seminal work (1988; 1990; 1993) – argued as far from an innate construct. Butler defines gender as constituted through repeated actions and aesthetics that serve to create the illusion of gender as natural – yet gender only exists through these actions performed, and is unnatural, forced into existence by the binary gender system (1990). Dembroff’s theory, born from this theoretical framework, similarly positions gender as a social performance (2020).
While many trans people feel that their gender is an inherent part of them, gender can also be an external (re)action, disrupting dominant views of gender as innate. Being non-binary is simultaneously an intentional act – “in proximity to having a skill” (Alabanza, pg. 65) – as well as a reaction forced upon us by the omnipresent gender binary (pg. 26). Alabanza discusses the process of being trans – it is forced upon us by systemic gender binaries, which one can accept, or choose to perform “something else” (pg. 26).
We can see instances of the GNC trans people choosing something else: performance of non-binary genders can be observed in online trans communities such as Tumblr, Reddit and YouTube. For example, Reddit user mmv_98 identifies as “a girl in a man way”, while user indecisivepear claims their gender as “bowling alley carpet” (r/NonBinary, 2021). A Tumblr user claims that the “first rule of gender is to have fun :3” (nando161mando, 2024). I would say my gender is whatever is funniest at a given moment. As the options of “man” and “woman” are inaccurate in categorising non-binary individuals, we are free to define our own labels and direct our own gender performance.
Non-binary people thus “perform” non-binary genders by way of dress, pronoun choice, embodiment and labels that emerge from this choice to live beyond the binary. Reflecting upon Alabanza’s “situational reaction” of choosing non-binary, we see the commonalities of non-binary people in choosing creative genders beyond those of “man” and “woman”, and determining our own unique gender labels.
sweatermuppet’s pieces exemplify the re-appropriation of derogatory terms for artistic expression and empowerment.
Trans Monsters
Reappropriating words and concepts is a powerful tool in redirecting stigma against one’s group. It is an act of empowerment for oppressed groups that can change the connotation of negative words (Galinsky et al., 2017). One salient example is “queer”, which has been reappropriated by many members of the 2SLGBTQIA+ community for this reason (and perhaps because it is easier to say).
Trans people have long been called “monsters”, “freaks”, “aliens”, or worse for the fact that we dare to defy nature’s ordinances, choosing to alter our bodies in ways that align with our gender ideals. We are seen as desecrating our natural bodies through acts of mutilation (Stryker, 1994). In response to this, many trans people embrace a kinship with the odd, freaky and misunderstood (Sharp, 2024; Stryker, 1994; Wang, 2021). Are we not Frankenstein’s monster ourselves? If having a body that rejects gender conformity makes us a freak of nature, then freaks we shall be.
Monstering: to identify oneself or others as “monsters” or “monstrous”. Generally refers to the reappropriation of the term “monster”, or the action “to monster” – which is to identify with symbols, aesthetics and labels that are monstrous, freakish and dangerous.
Alabanza embraces this act of othering, defining themself with labels like “monster” (pg. 48), “something beyond” gender (pg. 12), “bearded femme fag” (pg. 70) and “man in a dress” (pg. 101). They discuss enduring violence and exclusion as backlash for their daring to be gender non-conforming in public, and their subsequent choice to embrace their freakishness as a demonstration of power (pg. 65).
Art by transmonstera and toyb0y-tboy represent trans-monstrousness and identification with ‘the dangerous transsexual’.
This strategy of “monstering” is well known in the trans community, most famously from Stryker’s classic text, “My Words to Victor Frankenstein Above the Village of Chamounix: Performing Transgender Rage” (1994), and discussed in countless theories in queer academia since (Pierce, 2020; Sharp, 2024; Wang, 2021). Monstering means transcending the limits of nature to resist the violent enforcement of normative binary embodiment (Pierce, 2020). Monstering reappropriates derogatory terms; to be a freak is an act of resistance and a monster can exemplify ideals of gender euphoria.
Here we see how Alabanza simultaneously rejects the forces of traditional gender conceptualisations and embraces the strength of trans-monstrousness; “why am I caught up in what type of monster I may be?” (pg. 48). We can connect monstering to previous examples of non-binary gender performance: non-binary people claim the act of naming themselves, from genders of “bowling alley carpet” (r/NonBinary, 2021), to monsters and freaks (Alabanza, 2022; Stryker, 1994). Through the identification with monstrousness and the reappropriation of derogatory labels, non-binary people can transcend traditional gender categories and engage in resistance against dominant gender ideology.
Conclusion
Through an analysis of None of the Above: Reflections on Life Beyond the Binary by Travis Alabanza, I have identified ways that non-binary identities destabilise dominant gender ideology – as defined in Dembroff’s theory of Critical Gender Kinds (2020) – and have explored how their memoir diverges from the Mad Lib trans memoir genre. Alabanza’s resistance of binary ideologies manifests in their rejection of transmedicalism, assertion of their gender identity as a situational reaction to binary gendered systems, and their identification with monstrousness. Commonalities exist between theirs and others’ experience performing non-binary genders, unveiling alternative existences that challenge traditional gender hegemony.
Author Positionality Statement – Cas
Cas is a white first-generation university student from a working-class family, born in so-called “Canada”. They have Irish, Welsh and British heritage. They identify as queer non-binary and use they/them pronouns. Their analysis of None of the Above: Reflections on Life Beyond the Binary by Travis Alabanza involves themes of queer defiance to gendered systems, the harm done by transnormativity, and radical reappropriation.
There are some ways in which my positionality may bias my analysis, due to differences in my identity. Travis Alabanza identifies as Black, transfeminine/GNC, and uses they/them pronouns. They live in the UK, where they were raised by their African-American immigrant mother. They have Filipino, British, French and Mexican heritage. They write their memoir for an audience of other trans people, deliberately renouncing the expectation that trans memoirs are an explanatory project for cis people.
I am white and have been raised in societal structures founded on principles of white supremacy. My racial identity causes a power differential between myself and Alabanza and biases me towards certain types of thinking. In this paper, I will think critically about the knowledge I am producing and how I am producing it, while engaging in anti-racist practices – such as questioning my assumptions and seeking diverse feedback (Lane, 2019). My experiences in academia have fostered a hierarchy of knowledge that creates a disparity between myself and the author. With this in mind, I aim to challenge the teaching of hegemonic pedagogies and recognise the value in learning from individuals outside of academic institutions. I will be analysing the memoir of a Black transfeminine person, an intersectional identity which contains complexities that a privileged white transmasculine person cannot fully understand. Through my analysis of Alabanza’s memoir, I will be sensitive, acknowledge the role of my assumptions, biases and ways of knowing, and be critical of how I portray Alabanza in my writing. I aim to centre kindness, community-building and harm reduction in all of my academic work.
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Media Attributions
- MonsterIChose_Pansy © Sweater muppet. Used with permission.
