Forgotten Boy

This is What a Feminist Looks Like

Part of Women in Leadership and Learning is a discussion about how we came to be feminists, and how our activist journey developed. My first talk, I spoke on Judaism and social justice, and how that taught me what feminism was. This year, I decided to take a different route and talk about my journey with gender. This was my visual for that presentation. It represents how my gender has been known to me throughout life, and also how I’ve experienced gender and presentation as I’ve grown up.

The Sword in the Stone

When I was a kid, I wore princess dresses. I loved princess dresses. I had one bride’s dress and one Belle dress that I wanted to wear everywhere. I had high heels that I wore every friday to Shabbat and would show off to everyone. I had these red sparkly shoes, and since I couldn’t pronounce the “s” sound, they were my broccoli shoes. I loved feminine things like makeup and I reveled in things that looked sparkly and shiny.

I also wanted to be the kid that saved the princess. I wanted to be the swordfighter. I wanted to play hot wheels and race cars and barbies while wearing a princess dress. When I was that young, I didn’t think too much of what those desires meant. Boys were gross, right? Those boys toys clearly weren’t what I should play with. Girls don’t play with those, and if I did, I got made fun of.

And on it’s surface, those toy preferences don’t mean that I was trans as a kid. Toys don’t have a gender and the social expectations for kids to play with certain toys of certain colors mean very little in the grand scheme of social justice. I grew up and I forgot about all of those specific toy preferences. I lived life in flowy skirts that I could twirl in and tried to learn to not be bullied (spoiler alert; that didn’t work).

Melting Away

When I got to high school I had a crisis of binary in sexuality. I was convinced I could either be lesbian or straight, and that there was nothing like an in between in attraction.

I eventually found language that expressed who I was in the word “pansexual”. I started attending the Gay-Straight Alliance at school, and met other people who liked rainbows and talked about their identities in analytical ways and wanted to educate other people and celebrate the fact that we were all queer. I became the president of that GSA, and was allowed to bring that same acceptance and love to everyone else.

One of my best friends from 11th grade (who has since come out as a trans man, so I will use he/him pronouns when talking about him) came out as genderfluid. He asked us to use a different name, different pronouns, and to allow him to exist in a way that would sometimes be feminine, and sometimes masculine. I am so glad he was in my life then, because having him ask me to think about gender in a different way made me start to think about how I experienced gender.

For a long period of time that year, I woke up and asked myself, “am I a boy or a girl today?” And depending on the answer, I would change clothing or expression to reflect that. But a problem arose that more often than not, I didn’t have an answer to that question. At first it was frustrating, but after a while I learned to accept it. I felt a bit of my expectations of gender start to melt away. I consider this a sort of burning away of my identity of “woman” that I had held on to.

I settled with “I don’t have to know what this means right now”, and continued to live my life as a woman but with the newfound knowledge that “woman” as a label didn’t fit. I graduated high school and went to college, expecting very little in terms of growth with sexuality and gender identity. I was comfortable with that and felt I had it figured out.

Influencers Who Lit The Fire

The first incredible person I met when I came to college was Nat. They were my first interaction with a happily trans-identified person, and used terms like “non-binary” with confidence in reference to themself. They talked about how man and woman didn’t fit as labels. They talked about how they had an amazing relationship with a partner. They told me about choosing a family and being an activist and wanting to make life better for other people. More generally, they showed me I could live a happy and healthy life outside of the binary gender identities

My sophomore year I attended weekly meetings for UC Feminists. One such meeting we did an activity called “Privilege Bingo”. They randomly called out privileges people have, and then we marked them off and talked about how said privilege or oppression affected our lives. We only marked off boxes in which we had privilege, highlighting how it was easier to get bingo when you had more privilege.

It was relatively simple until we got to gender. I think the direct bingo space said “cisgender”, and it took me a while to decide if I would mark it off or not. When we talked about it, I mentioned how I didn’t feel cisgender, I didn’t feel like a girl, but I presented as one and used ‘she/her’ pronouns, so I had that privilege of presenting as cisgender. My friend Madison (and a leader in UC Feminists) looked at me then and asked, “Do you want us to use they/them pronouns for you?”. And in that moment my entire view of who I am (and who supports me) changed. She didn’t think much of that question, and I brushed it off while we were there and told her no I would rather use she/her. But that question set in motion my social transition.

There are a few more people that influenced my confidence in myself. Their names are Sol, Peyton, and John(na). Sol worked in the LGBTQ center as a graduate assistent. They were a very large and imposing person who often presented very masculine, but contrasted that by wearing makeup and nail polish. Sometimes they wore a flowy skirt and completely fucked with the traditional expectations people had. They showed me how to have that confidence in choices I make, whether they were presenting myself as more masculine or presenting myself as more feminine.

Peyton is on staff at Ethnic Programs and Services. They are brilliant, and we often had conversations about anxiety and mental illness when I was in a hard place. They also taught me that there are jobs out there for people who are non-binary and out. They also taught me that there will be employers and people that call you by the wrong pronouns, and that sometimes you have to suck it up and have faith in the work you do.

Johnna was the facilitator of the trans* support group, kaleidoscope. They showed me the value of being vulnerable. They have a very different struggle than anything I had ever experienced, but they are open about their struggle. They also taught me about safe and fun sex, they knew more about vaginas and sex toys than I could ever look up on google. They consistently remind me (without ever telling me directly) that I am allowed to be trans and have sexual and romantic desires.

Those five people completely shaped the way I see my identity and pushed me to be able to come out as non-binary, change my name to Elliot and use they/them pronouns.

The Ashes of the Fire and the Gravestones of Past Me

I am comfortable now. I am confident now. I never imagined I could be confident in myself and truly love myself the way I do now. I have found the language that supports me rather than constricts me, and I have found people that let me live in a way that is free.

One question I often get is about my sexuality in regards to my gender identity. For a lot of people, those two things are separate and incongruent with one another. For me, my identity of Pansexual matches well with my identity of Non-Binary. If I don’t see gender in myself, why would I see it in my attraction? If I do not live my life in a gendered way, what would compel me to ask for that in other people? Pansexuality is very simply not seeing gender when you experience attraction. I have been able to explain this intertwined identity now that I have come out as my true self.

I went by Julia until Junior year of college, when I started using the name Elliot in mainly social justice circles, and Jules everywhere else. I changed my name on facebook on National Coming Out Day, in a decision that was not fully thought out.

My mom and I have had very thorough conversations about what it means for her to be the mother of someone who is non-binary trans, who rejected the name she chose with care, and is different than what she knew for 20 years. She’s told me how she almost has to mourn the “Julia” she knew, while knowing that I’m still the same person. I’ve reflected to her how to me, it matters more about supporting and loving me as I go through this and how sometimes the misgendering and dead-naming feels unsupportive.

There is a gravestone with the name “Julia Paige Draznin” on it, because that life and that part of me has died. “Julia” always felt like clothes that were too tight, too restricting. I never felt like they reflected who I was. I remember asking my mom to call me Ella, Emma, or Emily, frequently when I was younger. The name “Julia” to me is bright hot pink, a bubble gum flavored color that I never liked because it was always too feminine. E names are a deep reddish orange. I feel like my confidence is reflected in that color.

Individual people brought me to where I am, and gave me the confidence to be who I am. While I still have trouble correcting people who misgender me, I no longer gate-keep myself out of the trans community. All I can hope is that I am the voice of confidence and validation to someone else.