It is a community that has been largely left of representation and conversation about the LGBTQ+ community. When they have been represented, the trans-non-gender conforming (TGNC) community has time and time again been represented in the same way through media. It is usually in the form of a white, petite person in men’s clothing.
This representation, while accurate for some, does not begin to cover the wide variety of expression and bodies that make up the TGNC community. TGNC people are among the most diverse community and that diversity needs to be showcased. The following profiles strive to highlight the diversity in the TGNC community by highlighting four TGNC identifying people, who do not fit neatly into media representation.
Victoria Agunod
Victoria Agunod is queer and uses they or she pronouns. While non-binary is a fine umbrella term for Agunod, queer is one that resonates with most. Agunod can be heard coming for several feet away.
The tell-tell clack of their heels always enters the room before they do. Their presence in a room takes a much more space than expected for someone who stands at Agunod’s five-foot stature.
For Agunod, the way that they have chosen to express themselves outwardly to the world has changed over time.
“I used to try really hard to look ambiguous and to have that basic queer aesthetic,” Agunod said, “small, thin, flat-chested, white.”
Now, Agunod has reached a point where their gender presentation for other people does not really matter to them. They chose to engage with their gender presentation when they are with other queer people. The only other time they have made the active decision to engage with their gender presentation with other is at the after-school program they intern for.
It was important for Agunod to create a space where gender fluidity could be comfortability expressed and discussed. The safety that of the spaces that Agunod is trying to create comes from a fear of being able to express their own gender fluidity in everyday life.
“I don’t want to put myself when I don’t have to. If I can spare myself some pain then I will,” Agunod said.
Agunod found a way to turn their anger about not being able to be supported by society into something that they could use to take care of themselves and others. They have come to see that using their anger to build and uplift the queer communities is more effective and productive than arguing with people who do not want to understand.
In their work, Agunod has tried to complicate and challenge people’s views of what transness looks.
To them, it about ensuring that people understand that transness is not just white and is not just binary. It is diverse in so many ways. What Agunod wants people to realize more than anything is that gender changes. For Agunod, gender changes for people like many other aspects of a person’s life do.
Charlie Pollard-Durodola
Charlie Pollard-Durodola is a genderqueer person who uses they/them pronouns. For Pollard-Durodola, they gender expression is not about outward appearance.
“My gender expression is less about presentation and more about emotionality and intellect,” Pollard-Durodola, “It’s less about forms of expression that people can read and more about how I carry myself”.
This means creating empathic, helpful spaces to help those going through crises. When those spaces are not available within existing LGTBQ+ communities Pollard-Durodola does not try and force their existence. They have reached a point where they put their effort trying to find and create spaces, where they’re identity, is included instead of fixing those where it isn’t.
“For me, you have to have the people you want to see at forefront of the creative process,” Pollard-Durodola said.
They also believe that in order for these spaces to be created that there must be several people involved that want to and will allow for their voice and voices of other TGNC folks at the forefront. Pollard-Durodola has already come to understand that the U.S. is not a place that puts the voices of marginalized people in the spotlight of conversations
“Being Black in the U.S. and learning a lot about race before I learned about gender made me less prone to feeling like I should ever expect good things from U.S. governing bodies,” Pollard-Durodola said.
This outlook has allowed Pollard-Durodola to focus more on community building with other TGNC people which has, in turn, become the main mode in which they express their gender to the world.
Em Katzman
Em Katzman is a non-binary agender person and uses they/them pronouns. They change their hair color almost as much as they change their outfits. Their outfit choices are a whole story of their own. If anything is noticed about Katzman when they walk into a room, it would their outfits. Every outfit they wear has been carefully picked out with involved makeup look to match. Dressed down for Katzman is what most others would consider dressed up.
The way they dress is a large part of how Katzman expresses themselves. It not about gender expression, but rather an expression of their essence. Their style is not feminine or masculine, it just Em.
“I know that people see my clothes as feminine or masculine, but to me, they are just clothes,” Katzman said.
Katzman has come to a point their life where they style themselves with their happiness in mind. The comfortability of other with their expression stopped mattering to Katzman. For Katzman, their style has become much more about what makes them like their most authentic self. Anyone who cannot understand it can move along.
Rey Santamaria
Rey Santamaria is a non-binary person who uses they/them pronouns. Their personality is what enters the room first which is sometimes followed by a large pair of hoops if they chose to wear them that day. For them, gender does not and should not matter.
“The only reason you want to assign gender is so you can assign things that associate with that gender to someone,” Santamaria said.
These assignments that Santamaria referring to here are the ones that society automatically connects to man or woman even if these associations do not actually fit. A large part of Santamaria gender expression is pushing back against these assumptions.
“I’m a shit starter. If I know I’m going somewhere where they are going to be a lot of masculine people then I wear bigger hoops to push them,” Santamaria said.
Beyond pushing people’s comfort zones in this manner, Santamaria uses their access to being read as a cis-man to challenge cis-men in the spaces around them to realize the way that gender constructs hurt them as well. Santamaria employs this tactic often with members of the fraternity they are a member of. Santamaria is always pushing their brothers to think about the ways that strict gender roles have hurt them.
Santamaria wants them to realize not only that gender society hurts them, but also come to understand that the amount that society is gendered is weird. This over gendering of society has led to the harm for so many people and that thinking outside of it may be better overall.
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