These are photographs, composites, and drawings that I like. Generally they have no words (or only a few) and convey their meaning visually.
Click on them for notes about what I feel about each one. If you have any suggestions, please let me know – I’m always looking for more!
Posted February 21, 2017:
An impossible choice.
I don’t fit into your binary boxes.
Posted February 4, 2017:
This is one of the first drawings I came across which made me take notice and want to save it. This is how I feel sometimes looking in the mirror – I get a glimpse of my true self looking back at me. Usually, when I look again, I’ve lost it and am back to seeing my reflection.
The blue pills are estrogen, and the dad obviously doesn’t know about his child’s true gender. This is both humorous and sad – sad because the child evidently does not feel comfortable enough expressing their gender to their parent.
I’ve identified with this feeling many times. While other people happily dress as superheroes matching their gender-assigned-at-birth, I’ve longed to cross that gender boundary to dress as one that doesn’t match my assigned-at-birth gender.
Another one I can identify with. I “hated” the other gender growing up, partly because that’s what is expected (girls are friends with girls, boys are friends with boys), and partly because I had a feeling that I sometimes belonged with that other group more than my assigned-at-birth gender.
This is another really early image which spoke to me. Since coming to my gender revelation, I’ve realized that there was a part of me that I’ve kept locked up for my whole life – the part of me that is of the other gender. This image has haunted me ever since.
This is a good representation of the confusion genderfluidity can bring. Every day, you can wake up unsure of your own gender, and question it for the rest of the day. Sometimes you can answer the question, but often, you aren’t sure. And sometimes, you simply don’t know at all!
This drawing is another haunting one – the symbolism of the bodies and the colors (and the colors being forced onto the bodies) is striking. The world tries to force gender roles on us based upon physical sex, and is very resistant to one trying to step outside of those roles.
It’s scary how accurate this drawing is. When my dysphoria is strong, about all I can do is lay down in a ball and cry. Very much like this picture.
This is another mirror picture. What strikes me on this one is the dual experience that the person on this side of the mirror can have – that when I wear the clothes of my assigned-at-birth gender, sometimes in the mirror I see a person of my assigned-at-birth gender in matching clothes, and sometimes I see my felt (not assigned-at-birth) gender in the clothes of the opposite gender. Even more, when dressing as my felt gender, I sometimes see a person of my assigned-at-birth gender in the opposite gender’s clothes. So often, this leads to dysphoria, which is why I tend to avoid mirrors. It’s rare that I can look in the mirror and not feel some disconnection between what I see and what I feel.
Another mirror picture. I definitely identify with the thoughts flashing at the bottom. All of them. Ouch.
Without getting into the bathroom debate, this communicates the conundrum that gender non-conforming people face: their bodies are one way (that society uses to group humans) and their genders are not.
I’ll classify this as a mirror picture, even though it’s not clear that there is a mirror. The figures face each other, looking forlornly at the other (opposite-sex bodied), touching hands in the middle as though separated by a pane of glass (think of a prisoner separated from their love at the end of a visit – touching the glass at the same place as if trying to hold hands). This tries to communicate the longing which can come in when feeling dysphoria – longing for the body/parts you don’t have.
This is an image appropriate for a t-shirt. This is explaining the idea that gender is felt in the mind, not determined by one’s genitals.
This is the same couple, photographed twice; switching gender expression between shots. See more from this series.
Gender World 