Prologue

This worked so well last time – we gained SIX new St Patrons of the Nonsense: Ugochi, Kell, Ryden, tannith, Michael, and Mel – that I’m once again reminding you of a simple way to show your support for Featured Voices and amplifying non-binary stories. To quote myself,

Tell all your friends it only takes a dollar to join the most colorful revolution! Or if you’re like me and have no friends, then you can talk to your stuffed animals and pretend they’re listening to you too.

April: SOFFAs

SOFFA = Significant Others, Friends, Family, Allies. 

From personal friends to fellow bloggers to random strangers who sought fame and fortune by submitting a post to this humble blog, all the stories were overflowing with emotion.

Featured among the many voices were superstar partners supporting their loved one through surgery or illness, two loving mothers trying to make sense of their teenagers coming out as agender, and one seasoned mom looking back on her kid’s burgeoning genderqueerness. We also wrote about ourselves: understanding the questions our family and friends have during our transition, questioning what it means to be a good partner vs a bad partner, questioning our own self-worth in the eyes of a lover, and questioning what it means to love us.

• 5 Ways to Be a Superhero Supporter, by Yasi
• Loving My Agender Child, by Libby
• Welcome Moms and Dads! …And, Uh, Partners, by Paige Schilt
• Growing Up Agender, by A Loving Mom
• Husband and Wife, by Micah (Yours Truly)
• Reflecting Gender, by AJ
• We Aren’t the Only Ones Transitioning, by Cameron
• In Dialogue, by K&H, queer couple
• You Have a Gender Too, by Leah
• Titanic, by Julie Tarney

Seriously, if you did not shed a tear with at least one of these, your heart is colder than mine.

So thank you to my personal friends, fellow bloggers, and random strangers. Thank you for believing that by sharing a very intimate piece of yourself, you can touch the lives of many others who are – like us, like me, like you – simple mortals trying to make sense of the wonders of gender.

May & June: Out at Work / School

Will they use my new name? 
Will they use my pronouns?
Will others even understand what I mean by non-binary gender? 

Coming out at work or at school is perhaps one of the scariest steps one can take (so scary, in fact, that I never ended up doing it). And it’s also a process that is distinctly different for those of us with a queer gender than our binary trans peers.

For the next month-and-a-half, we’ll be hard at work following the coming out of many professional non-binary people. They are experts at being themselves, though for many it has taken years, sometimes decades, to finally build up the courage to be candid with their colleagues, supervisors, peers, or teachers. Still others have felt empowered by the choice to not tell anyone about their future (or their history) with a different gender.

If you have a story to tell – I’m sure you do, I can hear you typing already! – submit your idea or draft or poem or video or comic strip or expressionist dance to me via email: micah AT neutrois.me.

July: Role Models

Non-binary genders have yet to experience “transgender tipping point” of visibility in mainstream media that plain ol’ transgender people seem to be gaining. In spite of this, we continue to craft our own version of gender, of transition, of purpose. I started this blog precisely because I couldn’t find anyone out there who was like me.

So, who has inspired you to become YOU? Was it a flamboyant artist? A gender-bending celebrity? A revered friend? A blogger, or a book? For example, this theme was inspired by commenter reikelian.

You have a full 6 weeks to ponder this question and get back to me.

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