Jade Sylvan’s previous work for The Toast can be found here.
In high school, my parents said I went through “phases.” I would cut my hair short, lift weights, and dress super butch one year, then I would grow my hair out, get highlights, go on diets, and wear tight dresses and heels the next. Sometimes in my butcher phases I’d smash down my breasts and deepen my voice and actually try to “pass” as a boy. Sometimes in my femmier phases I’d go to a perfumed, penciled, plucked extreme and joke that I was a female drag queen. Everything felt like a costume, but it all also felt like it was expressing something essential in me.
Sometimes I dreamed of marriage to a man and a nuclear family. Sometimes I dreamed of falling in love with women. Sometimes I dreamed of pan-gender glitter orgies. I didn’t know what this meant. I didn’t think I was straight, but all the gays and lesbians on TV at the time said they’d “always been this way.” I never felt like I’d always been any way. I didn’t know what I was.
My first boyfriend did not believe that I liked girls. “Maybe you were bi-curious when you were younger,” he said, “but really, you’re just a boring old straight girl.”
In college I went through various gender presentations, from something like soft butch to nerd-femme. For five years I dated a feminine man who liked to dress in drag and didn’t mind me sleeping with women for the most part. We also had occasional threesomes. While I was with this person, I tried to tell my mother I was queer, and she didn’t (or wouldn’t) believe me because I was dating a man.
Eventually, he and I broke up. I was a slutty unicorn for a few months. I made out with boys, girls and couples all over the place. I wore polo dresses and eyeliner but also vests and ties.
When I was twenty-five, I still thought that I could never really share my fluidity with my family. A part of me was sad that I didn’t think I could have what my parents or my brother or so many of the people I went to high school seemed to have: one clear, simple relationship that had all of the rules laid out beforehand. And they had a family. I kind of wanted a family.
I met a dude and I femmed up. For over two years I was perceived as a monogamous straight woman.
During this time, I’d tell new friends that I was queer, and they didn’t believe me. They thought maybe I’d experimented in the past, but I must “really be” a straight girl since I fit into the role so well. It actually didn’t really bother me. I was playing a part out of sincere desire, and the fact that they labeled me “straight” meant I was playing the part well.
Immediately after this dude and I broke up I started wearing vests and ties again. I started dressing as a man for performances, and sometimes just to go out.
I slept with lots of different people. I slept once with a female friend who I’d met in my femme phase. As we lay naked in bed, she laughed and said “Oh, you really are bi.”
Friends told me I seemed like I was truly “being myself.” “Of course I didn’t believe you were bi when I met you,” said another close friend. “But now I know that’s because you weren’t really being yourself when I met you.”
I told them I was playing a part, just like I was when I was femme, and that it doesn’t make either time in my life less sincere. I’m not less me because I’m choosing myself.
I’ve only slept with women for the past three and a half years. This does not mean I’m not still attracted to men, I’ve just become way more interested in women lately. I’ve also tailored my gender presentation to communicate that that’s what I’m looking for.
These days I dress generally in a genderqueer dandy way:
But occasionally, I still dress like this:
And now that I’m consistently dating women, several close friends (even close friends who knew me when I was dating a men) refer to me as a lesbian. “Now you’re finally being yourself,” they say.
I was not a closeted lesbian when I was dating men. My relationships with men were not a lie any more than my relationships with women are a lie. One of the biggest fears when you’re sexually fluid or gender fluid is that people are not going to believe you. That people think that the fact that your desires and/or image of yourself is protean means that you, your passion, and even your love are insincere.
I adore that word, “protean.” It’s the only word I’ve found that means able to change easily that doesn’t have flaky or mistrustful connotations. Protean is not a very commonly-used word. We assume we can’t trust something that changes.
The sexually fluid and gender fluid don’t necessarily stand up with the rest of the TV-friendly, marriage-campaigning queers and say, “I’ve always been this way.” I understand that descriptors like that align with how many people have experienced their gender and sexuality, but I have always experienced these parts of me as mutable things that I had some degree of choice in expressing. I do not feel that my having a choice in these matters should mean my gender and sexual expressions are less “real.” And it definitely does not mean that my love is not real.
I do not invalidate a friend who tells me that even though she was born with a boy’s body she has always known she was a woman, so please do not invalidate me if I tell you I truly feel like I want to be a man one day and a woman the next. I take a friend who says she’s always only been attracted to women seriously, so please take me seriously if I love a cisman* one year, a transman the next, and two women the year after that.
I did not choose to experience my sexuality and gender as a choice. I did not choose to be able to change. I’ve always been this way.
*Edited
Tags: art, gender, identity, jade sylvan, lgbt
“I do not feel that my having a choice in these matters should mean my gender and sexual expressions are less “real.””
Yes yes yes yes yes perfect.
This is awesome. Thank you.
I was not a closeted lesbian when I was dating men. My relationships with men were not a lie any more than my relationships with women are a lie. One of the biggest fears when you’re sexually fluid or gender fluid is that people are not going to believe you. That people think that the fact that your desires and/or image of yourself is protean means that you, your passion, and even your love are insincere.
Yes x10000000.
Jade, this is fucking awesome. I understand that human beings are very eager for order and labels and the “known,” and that’s probably why your friends keep saying “oh NOW I get it, you’re [X].” But it still really bums me out that people are immune to nuance and can’t wrap their heads around the fact that, since gender is a construct, so much of it is performative.
Unrelatedly, you look TERRIFIC in every single one of those pictures. I hope you keep on doin’ you.
A while back, I realized “You know what? We live in a universe where light is an electromagnetic wave that sometimes likes to act like a particle. Of course we can’t explain or understand all the facets of gender beyond hand-waving and mumbling ‘wibbly-wobbly… fuzzy category… stuff’. Human psychology is exponentially more complicated than physics, and a lot of the stuff we know in physics we still don’t *get* on a gut level.”
You know what? We live in a universe where light is an electromagnetic wave that sometimes likes to act like a particle. Of course we can’t explain or understand all the facets of..
I love this.
This is cool. On your closing remarks, though, I’d like to add that “being a woman” != dressing femme, and “being a man” != dressing butch. I’m always uncomfortable when some discourses on gender seem to go all the way back to gender essentialism.
PROTEAN. This hit me right in the gut. Thank you.
side note: I feel a little funny about differentiating between “men” (cismen?) and “transmen”–I can’t speak for all/any transmen (because I’m not one) but it caught me off-guard in a piece I enjoyed a lot otherwise.
Thank you for pointing this out! I agree and it has been changed. <3
Every time a gender or sexually fluid person can make their voice heard in the din of ‘born this way’, my heart grows three sizes. I got so much of that ‘who’s the real you, are/were you lying, be yourself but only in the ways that make me comfortable’ crap when I identified as bi that I just gave up and started identifying as queer to confuse people from the outset. Keep crushing it Jade.
+1
Earlier I started a comment about how arguing biological determinism is actually a poor way of showing support for the LGBTQ community, but you nailed it with your comment.
side note, is your avatar/username after Saint Olga?
Yep! I am generally not about the spread of Christianity but the Drevlian uprising stuff from the Primary Chronicle felt misandrist enough to appeal to me.
From the Wikipedia synopsis: “The Drevlians sent twenty of their best men to persuade Olga to marry their Prince Mal and give up her rule of Kievan Rus. She had them buried alive.”
You made my day.
😀 Always happy to bring awesome Russian history to the table.
Prince Mal, played by Nathan Filion.
Word. As someone whose first relationship was with a boy who was gay-except-for-DrLadyBusiness, I always appreciate the acknowledgment that there are a million ways to be queer as fuck, and identity is not, like, some destination that you “finally” get to inhabit once you settle down (or whatever). I feel more militant about this the older I get tbh.
YES.
As someone who has recently been thinking a lot about presentations and being read and people not believing in my desire, this is much needed. Go Jade go!
YEP THIS IS PERFECT I love every word
I have always experienced these parts of me as mutable things that I had some degree of choice in expressing. I do not feel that my having a choice in these matters should mean my gender and sexual expressions are less “real.” And it definitely does not mean that my love is not real.
Well said.
Oh, hell yes.
Here I was, thinking I was a straight lady, but then Jade had to go and put on that flannel & those suspenders. And that mustache.
(Maybe my sexuality is actually just “attracted to people who want to look like lumberjacks from the 1800s”)
“attracted to people who want to look like lumberjacks from the 1800s”
legit
I’ll agree that my sexuality is apparently at least partially this.
I needed to read this today, I think. Thank you for somehow reading my mind. 😉
Yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes
Yes
It’s funny how tied we all are to defining the limits of people. Nothing we all like more than to diagnose how a person will act or be or is, and use that to encase them in permanent state.I had a friend say she hates to come home because all our high school friends still relate to each other as if we still all have the personas we were putting on at age 15, despite the ways we might have changed over the years. When I look at a photo of me in the past I feel love and loathing- she’s me, but I’m not her, and some of her choices astonish me.
Jade, I think you live in a more realistic time than a lot of people, because you are actively embracing all these facets we all pretend we don’t have, it’s like a cubist persona- you try and show all the many shifting ways you can be seen at different times all on one plane.
Yes.
I really enjoyed this. I am hoping that the conversations we have about gender and perception these days is going to mean that by the time my children grow up, it’s not going to be so much an issue. I know change comes slowly, but I really think that it is possible, that people can be whomever they want to be… and labels aren’t so important anymore. I’d love it if we could just love who we love, and everyone could be fine with that.
Perhaps I’m asking a bit much for it to happen in the next 10-15 years, though. At least in some circles :/
Sigh. I have such issue with labels, tbh. I even struggle with the label ‘mother’. It… bothers me. Even though I like being one.
Anyway. Loved your post.
I really enjoyed this. I am hoping that the conversations we have about gender and perception these days is going to mean that by the time my children grow up, it's not going to be so much an issue. I know change comes slowly, but I really think that it is possible, that people can be whomever they want to be… and labels aren't so important anymore. I'd love it if we could just love who we love, and everyone could be fine with that.
Perhaps I'm asking a bit much for it to happen in the next 10-15 years, though. At least in some circles :/
Sigh. I have such issue with labels, tbh. I even struggle with the label 'mother'. It… bothers me. Even though I like being one.
Anyway. Loved your post.
This is wonderful and really speaks to me. Thank you!
This is wonderful and really speaks to me. Thank you!
Thamk you so much for this article. I had a very visceral reaction while I was reading this because I think I have never before read a description of how I always felt. I have never really understood people with a binary gender and sexuality, but it never crossed my mind that this non-binary nature could be my normal. It was like scales falling from my eyes.
Thank you again
I’m having this same wide-eyed feeling, like, woah, other people feel this way, and understand this? I’ve had a similar trajectory though now I present as a straight, femme, married lady and people think I’m making a joke when I refer to my persona as a “costume” or “mommy drag”. (I might have waited too long to take this costume off?) But it’s absolutely true. Anyway, thank you thank you.
Hell yeah, hell yeah, hell yeah. My life has been a version of this that I’ve been more or less comfortable with since I was 12. The less comfortable moments generally come when other people don’t get that not all of us can define ourselves so neatly on one place on the spectrum.
If only more people got it, but, I’m so grateful for the ones who do, and even more grateful for people like you who can put it into words so well. Thank you.
Jade! You look like a super-hot, extra-androgynous Robert Downey Jr. in the mustache pic! *swoons*
I really love this post. I’m not gender-queer, and my sexuality isn’t fluid: I’m a gay ciswoman. But I have a real problem with the “born this way” doctrine that’s taken over the discussion on gay rights the past few years. It’s frustrating for me, because I fit into a lot of stereotypes about gay women, but I don’t think I learned to weld when I was 14, or enjoy Home Depot to an unhealthy degree, or have owned up to 5 pairs of overalls at a time because I’m gay. It’s not an act or a presentation, it’s just me, and who I am. Being gay is important, but it’s not my primary identity. It’s not the most important part of myself.
It disturbs me to think that if my sexuality became more flexible, somehow I would lose the social “right” to keep on being the person I am. It’s aggravating for people, straight or queer, to comment on my appearance, because if I’m wearing a dress I’m not “going femme.” I’m the same person, wearing a dress. And when I’m wearing jean cut-offs and a tank top and hiking boots, I’m not “butching it up.” I’m wearing more of the varied clothes I own.
I’ve never felt any way but gay sexually or romantically, but that doesn’t mean I had to be born gay to have my feelings and rights respected, and I hate feeling pressured by other queers to commit to a doctrine of hard-wired biology to justify HAVING rights. We’re doing a significant portion of our community a disservice by committing to a “gold star” hierarchy just because it caters to the black-and-white mentality of the dominant straight culture. “Born this way” isn’t aimed at queers: it’s aimed at being palatable and catchy for straight families to accept. And maybe that’s what our culture needs right now to climb the equality mountain, but that doesn’t make it true.
Yes, yes, a million times yes. I’m stuck on bail, having to live with my transphobic father and I *sooooooooooo* want to show this to him so he can see that I’m not alone in being able to fit into my assigned gender some or most of the time, but unable to tolerate being trapped in it all the time.
(But I don’t want it as much as I want to preserve our current truce on the subject–at least until I can go home, or get dragged off to prison.)
Thank you! So helpful! I have avoided labels for fear of being stuck with one and then wanting to switch or try out new identities and risk being judged by others as being inauthentic. You have given me much joy and hope that I can be myself, truly myself because here you are being yourself so boldly. Thank you HUGELY.
"I take a friend who says she’s always only been attracted to women seriously, so please take me seriously if I love a cisman one year, a transman the next, and two women the year after that."
As someone who was married to a cis man for 8 years, in a relationship with a cis woman for 2.5 years, and currently dating a trans guy, thank you thank you thank you. Your article makes so much sense to me and validates so much of what I feel about "presentation."
Each of my "presentation" choices is as valid as the next. Each of my romantic encounters is as valid as the next.