This video was shot at the end of April 2021. The wider public release date is mid-late June 2021. Patreon, Facebook, YouTube and Subscribers gain access to my videos early.

Transcription:

Hello humans, my name is Lyric, also known as the NeuroDivergent Rebel, and this week, we’re going to talk about my journey of self discovery as a nonbinary human.

 How might one know that they themselves are nonbinary?

 I’m going to share my perspective and hopefully this can be helpful to you.

So let’s dive in.

 Remember in a previous video, we said that gender is a social construct, and therefore a social identity. Someone’s gender is determined by how they feel.  An individual can feel more like a man or more like a woman. They can also feel like both neither or something in between. I tend to float in that in between side of the ether of things.

Gender is, as I said in a previous video earlier this month, not what’s in your pants. It is what’s in your head. 

As I also said in a previous video, non-binary people exist. Gender is not binary and honestly, sex is also not binary.

Remember intersex people exist. This is the I in the LGBTQIA umbrella.

I am a nonbinary human, sometimes referred to as an enby. We are humans whose gender identity does not fall within the strict male female binary that modern society so neatly has packaged and given to us.

 Unfortunately, some people have this misguided notion that non binary gender identities are a new thing that has recently been invented and say, Oh, you can’t make up this new gender.

There are only two genders. There is only man and woman, then you do not exist.

 This is very short-sighted, and quite ignorant, because non-binary gender identities existed in all parts of the world before colonization and the spread of Christianity made a point to erase LGBTQIA and non-binary and gender nonconforming humans from all over the world.

When you say non binary, people do not exist and non-binary gender identities do not exist or are new thing. You are completely ignoring the fact that there has been a genocide of Queer people all over the world because of colonization, essentially erasing and eradicating queer people, in order to make room for this CIS heteronormative white mainstream culture that we have today.

 This has left many of us nonbinary humans with little to no representation in the world. We grow up and a lot of us are discovering our identities very late in life, because we did not know that non binary was an option.

As I’ve said, in one of my previous videos, I was told, when I was very young, that I was a Tom girl and just accepted that because there was no other option that I found that I thought fit me.

I knew for sure that I was not a little girl. I was not going to grow up and be a woman, despite what everyone around me said.

 There was no way for me to explain this, but I didn’t quite feel like a little boy either. I felt a bit like an alien, a lot of the time.

It would have been great to know that nonbinary was an option, all of those years ago, but I grew up in a time where we did not have the access to this information that we have today.

It is so incredibly fortunate, and amazing now that we have this visibility, because representation is so incredibly important. It lets people know that they are not alone, and you’re not a freak and there’s nothing wrong with you because you experience the world, your life, or gender differently.

I grew up and I even knew trans binary people, but I never met a trans non-binary person until finding out I was Autistic and joining the online Autistic Community, and goodness, all of a sudden there were a lot of you and I related and could no longer keep to myself the truth that was becoming extremely more and more apparent to me.

I’m someone who’s never liked living a lie or living in closets, and once I realized that what I had known all along from a very young age was correct. I was not a woman, also, not a man, not a boy, not an alien or anything else, not a freak of nature, just a non-binary person.

Much like finding out that I was not a broken neuro-typical person. When I found out I was Autistic, I found out, Oh, I am an Autistic Person. I am a fully whole Autistic Person. I am not a broken neuro-typical person. The truth. Has set me free.

So what about the truth? You’re out there discovering your truth, and maybe you are wondering or asking yourself, am I nonbinary? Could I potentially be nonbinary?

Well, let me share with you a few things that were hints for me, that I was non-binary that could potentially be hints for you as well.

Hint number one, these things that I’m like, how did I not pay more attention to this? Was that whenever I would get dolled up air quotes, lipstick, eyeliner makeup, all of those things that are socially acceptable to people who are assigned. Female at birth. I felt like I was in an elaborate costume or in drag, as it’s known in the queer community, that excessive show of air quote “femininity” as society expected it always, to me, felt like the lie.

 That was hard. I don’t like living a lie. Though, I actually think makeup itself can be a lot of fun, and I enjoy the makeup I did not enjoy and do not enjoy even now the fact that if I wear makeup, I know that it is even more likely that I am going to be mis-gendered…. although I am using they, them pronouns and society gets really confused by those and can’t seem to get it right and with my voice and small frame, I am pretty much always going to be mis-gendered.

So when I put all that makeup, there goes the ity-bitty bit, of a slight chance, that somebody might have gotten it right. All hope is lost.

Hint number two, two, two, two, that I was non-binary, and didn’t know, it was that I could not stand the sound of my own voice.

 Many people will not like to hear the recorded sound of their own voice back on a recording, because it doesn’t sound like the voice in our heads.

The voice in my head is a much more gender neutral voice, than the voice that actually comes out of my mouth.  Especially, once I started to make videos, and recordings, and podcasts, and things about Autism, I found that I hated hearing my own videos and my own content, and instantly had this visceral reaction to mute anytime I would hear my voice,  and this would extend to, if my partner would watch a video of my voice with me in the room, it was just like, I cannot. I cannot handle this. It just gives me this. I need to escape from it, feeling. My own voice. I needed to escape from the sound of my own voice, because it just shatters this illusion of that’s not the way I sound is it.

It’s hard to explain, but I think other trans and non-binary people might be able to relate with me on this.

Let me know, drop a comment. If you have the issues with not liking the sound of your own voice below.

In addition to avoiding the sound of my voice, I also would find myself avoiding mirrors and avoiding looking at myself on some days there were days.

This was worse than other days, but I remember looking at myself on the screen of my phone. As I went through the airport, one time, a couple of falls ago and my fully makeup face and just feeling like that person was not me, and having that same reaction that I had, to wanting to avoid my voice, to wanting to avoid my face.

Another hint was the fact that being called “she” the constant “Yes. Ma’am” that you are always receiving in Texas, and these other greetings, that are supposed to be  “normal” air quotes, “normal”, “normal”, normal is relative!

Did not feel correct for me, and they felt like part of the assignment that I had been given at birth, this female woman assignment, that I was just going along with, because it was what was expected of me, not because of any of it was actually how I felt or reflected about myself.

If I really was true and asked myself how I really felt about myself, but I was convinced that there was no way anyone around me could possibly understand these complex feelings, that I had been dealing with with relation to my gender identity.

With my gender much, like with being Autistic, there were parts of me that I thought people would not understand that I packed up and hid away, because I thought they were shameful or weird, or I had no words to put out there that I thought would help people be able to see where I was coming from.

Without knowing that there were other non-binary people out there, or that the non binary gender identity was a thing, there was no vocabulary for me to explain all of my feelings.  So I was just other.

When I found out I was NeuroDivergent at the age of 29, diagnosed Autistic, and started to unravel what that really meant to me.

My mask, all the layers of shame that had caused me to hide my NeuroDivergent traits and nature, began to crack and fall away as I became more authentic and open as a NeuroDivergent Person.

In my quest for authenticity, another mask, that I didn’t realize had also been cracked. The mask. That was my gender.

So many things that I had done, as an Autistic, NeuroDivergent, and Queer Person, were for the benefit of pleasing other people, blending in, and not making waves.

I started to ask myself if I was doing things, because I really wanted to do them, or if it was because I thought that’s what was expected of me by society or other people.

And when I really looked at a lot of things with the way I presented gender and those things, so much of that was also performative, and began to fall away at the same time as the mask for my NeuroDivergence began to also crack and fall away.

 Suddenly, gender was this big issue, staring me in the face that I could no longer in good conscience ignore.

That has been my journey of self discovery, as a Queer, non-binary person, with my gender identity.

Thank you so much for hanging out and listening to this personal story this week. I hope this has been somewhat helpful, to those of you who stuck around.

 I’m so grateful if you’re still here at the end of this bit longer video.

If you would like to see this content with transcription and closed captioning, you may view it at NeuroDivergent Rebel dot com.

Thanks to the Patreon subscribers, Facebook subscribers, YouTube subscribers, those of you who do that little bit of help with that monetary subscription, to help me put out this high quality content on a regular basis. I put out new videos each and every Wednesday, thanks to those of you who support this blog.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

Could not do this without you and thank you to everyone who is here, whether you are watching, sharing, commenting, whatever you are doing in the realm of this NeuroDivergent Rebel Community, I am incredibly. Grateful for you.

Thank you so much for your presence for your time, for your energy. I am grateful. You are here.

I will see you all next Wednesday and we’ll talk to you soon. Bye humans!

Help me get the word out!!! – If you like what I do, and would like more, please consider subscribing on Patreon. This blog is made possible by support from readers like YOU!  (Sharing my content is also, equally helpful!)

With gratitude, – Lyric