What would it look like to take a large pitcher of flames and extinguish the layers of names I’ve given myself. Labels attempting to pronunciate the language of my gender. Monikers of my skin.
genderqueer.
womyn.
lesbian.
feminist.
femme inist.
promiscuous.
soft butch.
androgynous.
hybrid homo.
I ask a friend who’s gender politics I admire/ respect/ learn from to tell me what words might identify their own gender identity.
This Human tells me,
“Gender phoenix. Rising from the ashes of the destroyed old, something new.”
And I want to run toward the direction of where the wind gathers, high up with the moon or at least beside some flying feathers and slowly jump down into this newer version of myself.
I perform on a stage with another human who also questions their body. We transform gender through the deterioration of labels. This Human comes at me with scissors, cutting away the caution wrapped around my skin. I want to scream: keep cutting because there is such more to be removed besides this stretched ribbon. And I wonder how many performances must be breathed out in order to feel closest to my self.
There is no permanence in this body.
Today is Monday and I’d like you to be aggressive, but tomorrow I’d like you to ignore some parts that I wanted you to play with two days ago.
As more rings gather in my bark, I transliterate my wisdom through the ways in which I question my self. A magical beast who lives closer to the west coast calls me Animal. We dialogue on gender and sexuality because we are still crafting hybrid variations of what we were taught and need to redraft. And the revision does not have to end.
Tell me your pronoun and I’ll tell you mine and we can run toward the curved wings of the phoenix, guiding us toward our own illustrated vocabularies.
Gender is a construct; so how do you want to be constructed?
Aimee Herman 