Ferguson - Me, myself, they: life beyond the binary

Copyright 2019 Joshua M. Ferguson

Published in Canada in 2019 and the USA in 2019 by House of Anansi Press Inc.
www.houseofanansi.com

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

Title: Me, myself, they: life beyond the binary / Joshua M. Ferguson.
Names: Ferguson, Joshua M., 1982 author

Identifiers: Canadiana (print) 2018904957X, Canadiana (ebook) 20189049588
ISBN 9781487004774 (softcover), ISBN 9781487004781 (EPUB), ISBN 9781487004798 (Kindle)

Subjects: LCSH: Ferguson, Joshua M., 1982-, LCSH: Gender nonconformity, LCSH: Gender-nonconforming people
Classification: LCC HQ77.9 F47 2019, DDC 305.3dc23[/.;[];p

Library of Congress Control Number: 2018962108

Cover and text design: Alysia Shewchuk
Cover photo: Brendan Meadows
Typesetting: Laura Brady

We acknowledge for their financial support of our publishing program the Canada Council for the Arts, the Ontario Arts Council, and the Government of Canada.

For Florian

This book is made up of my own experiences. I do not speak for the entire trans community, or for all non-binary trans people. Nor do I have all the answers to questions about gender identity and gender expression. These pages contain my opinions. I am not the sole voice, nor am I the sole authority on non-binary gender. There are many powerful and talented trans people out there working to counter our exclusion, erasure, and invisibility. I would not be able to tell the stories in this book without the generations of transgender warriors a naming borrowed from groundbreaking activist and author Leslie Feinberg who have carved visible, physical, and written spaces with their bravery, insight, and talent. We are united under the banner of our identities. But our various perspectives contain many differences; our community is incredibly diverse.

I acknowledge the limitations and the specificities of my experiences and my perspectives in this book. One such specificity is the automatic privilege afforded to me by being white. Some of the stories told in this book are bound up in this privilege. The specificity of my stories exists, in part, because of this privilege; my voice and many of my stories would not be the same if I were a trans person of colour. So, I give you these stories while also acknowledging the importance of elevating diverse perspectives in our community, especially those of trans people of colour, including non-binary people of colour, Two Spirit people, and Indigenous trans people voices more marginalized and silenced than my own.

I look forward to the day when an entire bookshelf of trans memoirs can exist as a testament to our rich and varied stories.

Leslie Feinberg (19492014) was known for hir novel Stone Butch Blues (1993) and hir non-fiction works Trans Liberation: Beyond Pink or Blue (1998) and Transgender Warriors: Making History from Joan of Arc to Dennis Rodman (1996).

Moments after I was born, my mom asked the delivering physician, What is it?

He replied, Its a girl! She named me Kate in that moment before the physician said, in a curious tone, Oh, wait...

I like to imagine my parents confused faces in that moment. Oh, wait... what? I dont blame my parents if they were confused or curious about what the doctor might say next.

And there I was, as I was supposed to be, without being told who to be, for just a few seconds. But it didnt last. The confusion passed, and soon the declarations of Its a girl! were replaced with you guessed it Its actually a boy!

His name is Joshua, my parents exclaimed proudly.

And just like that, my sex was assigned, wrapped up neatly and adorned with a blue bow and all the gender expectations that came with it.

Looking back, Im thankful for those few seconds when I existed as the true Joshua the Joshua that I would return to in my adulthood. The space contained in that ellipsis, those few seconds, is who I am; it was a symbolic moment, a powerful forecast of my future. Thirty years passed before I found that non-binary space again, before I found me again.

An evolving openness and awareness in discussion of gender and a growing public interest in trans lives is undeniable. The rise of high-profile trans people in the media has helped to elevate trans lives to a mainstream focus. We have become increasingly conscious of the ways in which gender dominates our existence, our identities, and our relationships from birth to death, and even beyond, lingering behind to mark our lives: What a great man he was; What a great woman she was.

But what if Im neither? My life tells a different kind of transition story. Ive transformed my past to get back to who I was at birth, the person I was meant to be: the child who never felt like a boy or a girl. But this child couldnt be that person at all. This child grew without voice, presence, or agency; every dehumanizing word, push, punch, spit, threat, assault, and attack forced the essence of me deeper into the margins, and I lost myself for decades until, through trials and strength and self-examination, I was able to reconnect with that essence, beyond the trauma, and bring me back home to myself.

Me, Myself, They elevates a topic that has only recently begun to receive attention in mainstream discussions of gender: non-binary identity and expression. But the pages in this book arent exclusively focused on my non-binary life. My non-binary trans identity is a part of me, a part of me that I lost, but I want to present the wholeness of my identity, my life, and my humanity, beyond the subject of my gender identity and how I express myself. Me, Myself, They is a full-circle story about how I found myself the lost child within me and how that made it possible for me to become the person I was meant to be. This book is about the survivor I had to become. Its about the empathy that emerged from the transformation of my trauma, and the magical alchemy, stretching out across multiple artistic pathways, that I found within myself to harness and reshape my pain and confusion into power.

Instead of organizing my narrative chronologically, from childhood to adolescence to adulthood, Ive arranged the chapters thematically around different facets of my identity. My stories of the events that made me who I am today these layers of my identity are shared willingly, with an open heart. I want to make vital connections, from one human being to another. I believe this connection is what truly matters. I hope an understanding can be reached as you journey through my stories.

At the very beginning of our lives, we are transformed into human beings: from an it to a boy or girl. For some, this binary sex and gender assignment takes place even before birth on the screen of an ultrasound machine that displays tiny shapes in shadow and light and reveals a girl or boy, to the delight of parents-to-be. And then this discovery is celebrated with family and friends during gender-reveal parties that carve out a babys identity before they can even take their first breath. It happens to all of us; all infants are assigned a gender. But this script fails people who do not fit neatly into the binary. Why does gender matter so much at birth?