I realized and came out as non-binary at the beginning of my coffee career. Originally, only my coworkers and my partner at the time knew. The fact that now, 5 years later, I’m known as The Non-Binary Barista is wild. I didn’t even have the confidence to declare my pronouns at first because of the inconvenience, only to be running a blog where I talk about gender and be a source for discussion on gender in the industry would blow my young queer mind.
Gender and sex are expansive topics, one that there is no end to exploration and discovery. I have been contemplating my relationship with the feminine lately and wondering if I have the same distaste for she/her pronouns. Working on bar in my area, I get misgendered constantly, even by other queer people, and to be honest, it does not bother me as much as it used to. It isn’t because I’ve reached some sense of enlightenment but, rather, I’ve reached a point after many uncomfortable conversations with people that my gender is a personal experience for me and I do not have the energy to keep debating with people. That does not mean that I will not stand up for myself and my identity, but that I want to spend less time convincing others and more time discovering myself.
I have given my gender expression so much thought, from the ways I dress to styling my hair and even to how my voice sounds. Some of it, I do not feel like I can change. The customer service voice that so many of us in the coffee industry know well is probably the part of myself that makes me the most self-conscoius. I can hear how high-pitchedit it is so loud sometimes that I cringe but, without intense vocal therapy, it is something that I cannot change. Meanwhile, the way that I dress is so often based on what makes me feel comfortable and safe as well as my hair is the way it is to highlight the parts of my face that I like.
But, in all matters of the self, we are not free from doubt.
The questions many gender non-conforming people ask of themselves or their expressions of their gender can often be met with internalized shame and confusion. The amount of times that I have put on a historically gendered garment such as a dress and felt like I was betraying myself is incalculable because I get hit in the face with so many gender stereotypes, my own skewed conceptions of gender, and I begin to think that I have somehow failed at being myself. There is still this internalized view that if I am comfortable with how I am perceived or allow myself to explore gender in this way I somehow fail at being non-binary.
Even after saying for years that there is no one way to be non-binary.
It was as though it was fine for everyone else, but inside I couldn’t bring myself to accept my own advice.
But, as much as so many of us carry this need to prove ourselves or instead prove to other people that we are ourselves, this journey of who we are is not something that can be reduced to a check list that will somehow confirm our identities the more in line with hypothetically attributes we are. Changing how I look to something more androgenous or off-the-wall might make some others understand my gender identity more but it will only make me personally, more dysphoric. How am I staying true to myself if I am forcing me to move away from what makes me happy?
Here are the lessons that I’ve been trying to work through lately: Growing is not an admission of wrongdoing. Just because you embrace aspects of certain genders doesn’t mean that you are de-transitioning or that you have failed. So much of gender is fluid and every gender non-conforming person’s view of their own gender changes as we grow more into ourselves. Sometimes, taking a hard look at who you are and how you feel comfortable being present in the world means that the words to describe yourself may change. Which, in many ways, can feel defeating when it took you so long to find those words and your own way of being that to change again is to abandon all that work. As though you have to rediscover yourself after you already did. However, as valid as the frustration is, on the other side is also a deeper understanding of who you are.
And that’s beautiful.
Also, if you need to be told and I think we all need to be told at times, yes. You are non-binary enough. Trans enough. Queer enough. Just as you are.
The Non-Binary Barista 