A man hangs his laundry at night High up in the sky On a cold December line. Does he think about The crunch of his clothing? His hands must be freezing. Water droplets turn into Icicles On hislinens. He hangs up the last shirt. His washing is suspended above The whole neighbourhood. Is he aware of The spectacle he’s making? Has he read The poem I’m writing? Has he noticed that The moon is waxing?
He must have looked at the moon On this cold December evening And thought, Ah, yes, that ought to do it.
Gender invites comments, questions, and suspicion. Gender invites opinion. Gender is individual, yes, but it is also social. Gender has been forced upon me, and gender has been withheld from me. I’ve been free to explore my gender, and at the same time, it has imprisoned me.
I have a complicated relationship with gender. I think we all do. I resent it, yet I have it. I don’t want it, yet I need it. It can make me feel incredibly euphoric, and it can also make me feel like shit.
Gender is something I can explore on my own, but this is not a solitary activity. Gender is individual. It is identity. Gender is also socially constructed. It is society.
There’s the gender I understand myself to be, and there’s the gender society understands me to be, and these are different. The gender other people see me as does not dictate the gender that I am. Society does not get to select my gender. At the same time, the gender others see me as determines how I am treated.
If my gender appears confusing to others, if it raises eyebrows and question marks, I can be on the receiving end of stares, saliva, and slurs, as well as inappropriate comments and invasive questions. If my gender doesn’t cause confusion, I can hide in plain sight. I can have access to a higher level of safety. Who I am is erased, yes, but I’m less likely to experience people’s anger and distress over my gender.
If I look like a man, a whole host of privileges become available to me—more so if I’m read as a masculine man and less so if I’m read as a feminine man. If I look like a woman, I experience different kinds of harassment. If I’m read as a feminine woman, I receive sexist forms of attention. If I’m read as a masculine woman, I draw less attention, but that’s also when the homophobia slips in.
What does it mean to be a queer non-binary person that the world sees as a lesbian? That’s the positionality I’ve been embodying lately, and I’m grappling with the relationship between who I am and how I am perceived.
Your gender is your own, but it does not exist in isolation. Gender is interactive. Whether you like it or not, your gender or lack thereof will inviteinteraction. The kinds of interaction and its impacts depend upon how the world sees you.The more normative I look, the fewer eyebrows I raise, the safer I will be, and the more privilege I will have.
Gender is individual and social. Gender is innate and constructed. Gender is real and totally made up. Gender is exhausting, and it is exhilarating too. I often grow tired of gender, yet I do not want to live without it. I just wish it didn’t invite so much comment.
There are days when I can write a 2,000-word essay in one sitting, no problem, and then there are days when I struggle to get a single coherent sentence out.
Welcome to being a writer. This shit’s hard.
I can’t compare the good days to the bad ones. Expecting myself to write a 2,000-word essay before I’ve put down a single sentence will prevent me from being able to write anything at all.
Take this morning, for example. I’m tired. I just moved to a new city and am having some significant challenges with my living situation. I’m stressed about money, getting a job, and finding a roommate. Because I’m unemployed, I expected this to be a prolific writing period for me, but the stress of figuring out my situation has been interfering with that. I’m managing to get these sentences out, but the masterful and profound 2,000-word essays will have to wait.
And that’s fine. I can only do what I can do.
This is also the first time that I’ve sat down to write in over a week because of how life got in the way. I normally write at least three times a week. Coming back to the page after a dry spell is tough. I no longer have a routine. The words don’t flow as easily. They’re buried deeper inside. It’s more work to reach in and pull them out, and when I do, there’s more gunk on them to clean off, but hey, at least I’m writing.
My expectations for myself as a writer often don’t align with reality, so I make do with what I have. I always give it my best. Sometimes, my best is 2,000 words, and sometimes, it’s just two.
A good life involves at least a little wandering. A good life involves at least a lot of questioning. A good life involves not always knowing where to go or who to be. A good life involves motion and stillness in unequal parts. A good life involves a mix of hard reality and playful fantasy.
A good life involves a healthy dose of rejection from yourself and others. Rejecting what you’ve been taught. Rejecting the idea that there’s only one way to live. Being rejected and moving past it. Learning to be rejected and loved at the same time.
A good life also involves embrace. Embracing yourself and others. Allowing yourself to be embraced. Embracing the unknown. Embracing ambivalence. Embracing rejection.
A good life involves figuring out what makes you fall in love and doing it over and over again. A good life involves falling in love with people, art, activities, communities, or ideas again and again. A good life involves the pursuit of love in all its forms.
Of course, what a good life involves varies from person to person. There are universal aspects to the making of a good life, but we all add our own tweaks. And while I may be living a good life only some of the time, importantly, I am learning what a good life means to me.
I have created pieces that no longer resonate with me.
I have made arguments in essays that I no longer agree with.
I have forgotten the meaning behind some of my poems.
I have created something one moment and felt perplexed by it the next.
This used to frighten me. I used to feel like I had to erase, undo, and delete my old creations. I would see something I made that no longer reflected who I was, feel disturbed by its existence, and want to tear it up in response.
I think this is because I felt like my art had to represent me as a person, but it doesn’t.
Our creations exist in their own right. They are not extensions of us. They do not tell the world about who we are today. They do not capture all of our complexity. They stand by themselves—the product of the past, the product of a moment, the product of a part of who we were then.
I have learned to respect my old creations, these misrepresentations of my present-day self. They still make me uneasy, but I no longer rush to unmake them. I believe they have the right to exist, but that they do not define me. My past work cannot define me, only the parts and pieces of who I once was.
If someone decides that an essay or poem of mine from years ago represents who I am today, that’s more about how they’re choosing to see me rather than the truth of who I am. I do not have to conform to these old versions of me, my old ways of being. I do not have to be the person who created that art then. I can only be who I am now.
I do not have to fear the past selves, pieces of whom can be found in my past art. I can learn to live with them. I can learn to let them live in the world. They do not define me, and I do not have to define them out of existence.
Sage Pantony 