A man: What is it?And what is a woman?For years the dominant culture (not only in the West) was responsible for making it clear.On the one hand, men do not cry and are brave;They like cars, football and light blue.On the other, women must be princesses who also cook, wash the dishes, criticize the children, stay skinny and identify with the pink color.Everything that does not fit these rules is considered weird.In some countries it can even become illegal.
The strength of that idea was such that we grew up convinced that it was not a cultural construction, but our DNA that told us how we should behave, dress, go through this life, following the rhythm that indicated what it would hang - or sink -Among our legs.
But there were always people who rebelled.The rejection of dividing the world between what we know as "men" and what we know as "women" existed since the world is world.Beyond grades and theories: what genre was, for example, Chavela Vargas?Does it matter when we surrendered to the deeply human regret of her voice?"Woman is not born, she gets to be," Simone de Beauvoir once said.
Being a woman, just like being a man, is a cultural construction, a way to label us to organize our community life.In recent times, thanks to the feminist wave and the claims of the LGBTIQ collective, the cracked walls of the society governed in this way they finally seem to crumble.
Humanity travels the 21st century determined to rethink if these binary categories still serve in a society that already suffered too much forcing the idea of a world divided between the light blue and the pink color.Countries like ours, which since this year allows us to process a national identity document (DNI) with an X, but also Australia, Bangladesh, Canada, India, Nepal, New Zealand and the Netherlands, as well as some states of the United States,They recognize the non -binary genre.And it is the youngest people who proudly raise the flag that Otres, before Elles, brought with blood, sweat and tears to this day.
Viva gathered four “centennials” who tell why and how they decide to decide for the X for their document, instead of the Menculin or Female F in the Sex section.
Fran, or the pleasure of flowing
“As I grew up, my discomfort became bigger in front of the people who treated me like a woman.I felt a lot of pain, even physical.My belly hurt, I had anxiety attacks.It is very painful not to know who you are or know and that others deny it to you, ”says Fran, twenty -four years, a student of social communication with the desire to devote himself to literature.
He was born in Tandil, but lives years ago in La Plata.The first to know that Fran was no longer identified with the pronoun "She" was her younger sister, artist and music, who had also had a conflicting relationship with the idea of being a woman as the expect society."The labels can be used to define, but they cannot limit us," explains Fran, who writes a newspaper where his discomfort with binary genres was clear years ago.
In his childhood he liked the girls and passed adolescence by hiding it.He had to wait a good time before accepting it and making it known, but there was something else: he looked "very minita" and it wasn't like that he felt.
A couple of years ago he lived with a trans boy (assigned woman at birth) and that made him start watching movies, reading theories, getting together with diverse people, and realizing that there were other ways to be in this world.
A reconstruction process began: he shaped his head, he used a girdle to flatten his chest, changed his way of dressing and built an identity that could not adjust to the idea of "male"."It's hard to have a non -binary identity," he says, "because your only model are you".His process was very lonely;The people around her insisted with seeing a woman where she had not."Identity is a spectrum, just like sexuality," says Fran, who opens roads as he experiences, encourages and shares.
His parents are engineers in systems and barely travel forty years, but their youth and their modern attitude was not enough to tell them who really was."It took a long time to tell them.I felt that, especially my mother, I was going to break her dream bubble, her ideal of having three daughters women. ”.It took almost a year of soul pain but also from the body to face it and tell him that he identified with neutral pronouns like "Elle".
Despite the advances and that the State itself endorses the existence of the non -binary gender, inhabiting these identities is insecure."Rapar my head, leave my legs of my legs or armpits, wear non -feminine clothes, are all aspects that some people generate violence".Nothing farther from Fran's smile, from his frank and open gaze, from the joy with which he has how much he enjoys being free to exercise his identity and sexuality as he wants.
Bel, or the power of confusion
At twenty -six years old, Bel doesn't bother him that sometimes they call her Bethlehem.A few years ago, Draguea "(wears men's clothes) for a show where the established male behaviors are parodied.In large part, that scenic experience was the one that promoted his search in real life.
He was born in Lobos and it was always difficult for him to inhabit the cultural construction we know as "femininity".“I realized that I was not closed to be a woman, but I was not closed to be a lesbian that followed the binary norm.Now, inhabiting possible non -binary identities, I feel better with me and with the idea of whatever femininity and masculinity, those qualities that are apparently opposed ”.
As in all cases, it was a slow process that needed family support."My mother clearly asked me what I was, my dad understands and flows between pronouns and my grandmother is always there, just like my brother, who accompanies me in looking with other eyes the possible masculinities".
Actor, rarely actress, performer and interpreter, Bel also writes theater, and that allows him to reveal what he feels, what happens to him and what is his happiness."The act of writing is revealing.He helped me reveal what I feel, what happens to me, and what is my happiness.The words contain and finally name anything, but they are necessary to give struggles and conquests ”.
He always fought with the idea of accepting, giving up and forcing himself to look like a woman.Sometimes it feels trans non -binarie (it is perceived as a male with characteristics that do not match what we understand by "masculine"), other times flow between male and women and others is agenero, that is, it dispenses with any label.
In your case, use all pronouns."Sometimes I name and name me and I feel discomfort.Some people think: ‘Ah, ready, it's no binarie, then we use the inclusive and that's it’.And it also generates discomfort living in a normalized world.Or that people transmit in acts the discomfort of not knowing how to name me, for fear.Everything is binarized and sexualized from a male-woman perspective.The world does not bank the processes or searches chosen that imply not knowing.Or mutability.That hurts.But confusion is somewhat beautiful and full of power ".
Myth, neither a beard nor dress
"I couldn't pretend all the time to be a man.Being in a kitchen working and thinking that it was chabon, ”says myth, that he once worked in the kitchen of a restaurant and only listened to heavy metal, and today, at twenty -five years old, dance dance hall, sings lyrical, cuts the hairand study management for artists.
The search for an identity beyond the man/woman binomial began to his fifteen, when his dad - engineer of Venezuelan origin - left home and with him, the image of the patriarchy.So far he considered a male, he felt attraction for women but also for men.Then some questions began to ask.
He attended gender talks, met diversities, learned the difference between sexual orientation, gender identity and gender expression."When they ask me what I am, I say no binarie because it is an umbrella that covers different subdivisions, but my genre fluctuates: I can be male cis, trans women or other genre that I didn't even ask myself.".
The way myth is shown before others is independent of gender or their sexual orientation."I don't have to behave like others assume that she is a woman or is a man," he explains..Sometimes they ask me why I consider myself a woman I have a beard and I do not use dresses, but my beard is a woman's beard, and there are a thousand women who do not wear dresses.There is no way to show that I am a flow.It's like water, which is adapting to different containers.When they ask me what I am, it is something very uncomfortable, because many times I do not know.Sometimes I'm ‘he’, sometimes ‘she’, sometimes ‘elle’ ”.
Son of a conservative mother, myth was hard to say at home that went out with men, much worse when she arrived with her lips painted.There were also friends who insisted on talking about football, cars and "mines".And couples women looking for a “chongo” that fulfilled the assigned role.
In these years, his birth name was falling behind to become what is known as a "Dead Name" (dead name), as well as his binary forms of walking, dancing, speaking or having sex."All those are dead concepts in me.I have been killing parts of me a decade that tied me to binarism ”.
Far from feeling sorry for these losses, myth transmits the feeling that today is a much longer person than what was when they forced him to fit into conversations that men had allegedly had.His case is particular: there are not many birth men who choose their way.
Account: “In men there is more resistance because when you live in a society that rewards to be white male, cis, heterosexual.It is easy not to want to run from there, no matter how happy you are happy with the impositions that touch you.That is why I hope that in the future it is not necessary to ask if things are for men, women or non -bulinies, which also ends up being a stereotype in itself.Gender is important, but should not define us ".
Marico, a genres galaxy
Marico was born in 1998 as a baby they called Maite.Today he is twenty -three years old and adopted that name that emerged from a game on social networks.“I am the youngest of three brothers, I was born in schoolboys, read as a woman.I say ‘read’ because it was a general interpretation imposed.I have a record of my childhood in which I have enough connection with who I am now.Later, in adolescence, there was more repression, and I tried to fit into what it was to be a woman for me.But in my childhood my genre flowed.Then came the repression ".
Maric's story marks a characteristic that those who embrace non -binarism usually share: years passing something very imposed, which later reaches a childhood with childhood.
“I had a bigger brother and a bigger sister, so I inherited all kinds of clothing and toys.I had both options in my house and fluctuated between them.At times I felt a girl and at times I took to bathe and put my towel around the waist, like the men, ”he says.The questioning was expanding: “I asked me those questions: why was there a way of putting the male towel and another woman?What covered me if I had no tits?And I also wondered by my name, I played that I had another ”.
Of mother occupational therapist and artistic producer, both traveling the fifty years, his brothers were a bridge.They marked the error when they insisted on nameing Marico as their HJA.“It is important to have allies that make you some connections, or talk if they are within the family.My brothers helped me a lot for my parents to get used to.My sister called my dad and made it clear: ‘Treat it in masculine and don't ask anything’ ”.
Marico identifies with the male and neutral pronouns and, according to the street, they interpret it as a male."I choose to see myself as a boy so that they do not confuse me with a girl, but there are people who do not break sopoet published by the future poems problem and participated in the last Nikki Nicole video clip.
“It is a lot of work to be clarifying all the time, but there is a great relief in which others treat me as I am and how I feel.It was very forced to respond to what society expected of me as a woman, ”says Marico.
And he adds, perhaps, one of the most necessary reflections for a society accustomed to labeling and simplifying everything: “The important thing is to understand that we can all be binary.It is not something that only happens to others.There is no line where the man is on the one hand, in another the woman and in the middle the non -Binaries.It is better to think of a galaxy where there is a man -man, a woman woman and many other alternatives ”.His conclusion question us all: “I always wonder what would happen if we are boys, they would not force us to respond to gender mandates, if they allowed us to choose our options.Surely everything would be more natural ".
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