The Spectrum of Gender, Nonbinary Living and Sikhi

A few weeks ago, I had the privilege of interviewing prabhdeep kehal on what it means to be nonbinary and the conversations on queerness being had today. prabhdeep goes by the pronouns they and them and their name is purposely written in lower case for cultural reasons. My writing reflects both. 

My stance in self expression is a liberal one – to each their own being the motto at heart – and I understand, perhaps even envy, the explorations of fluidity in sexuality of today’s youth. But as I witness a friendlier game of hopscotching one’s way to and fro the gender lines and the changing language that necessitates gender nonconformity, I begin to question ways in which my children will experience these nuances and how the fluidity nudges my own definitions of womanhood and femininity.  

For all the identities I have struggled with, moved through and redefined in my life, I have never once had to question my inherent belonging in the realm of gender. I have undoubtedly, uniformly associated myself as a woman and a hetero one at that. Sure, being a girl, lady, woman and she, in it of itself comes with its ever evolving cycles and breakthroughs - physical, emotional and chemical shifts to and within my body – but no matter how those versions of myself play out, no one could take away my place in this realm. I simply own a spot as a woman. But now through my chat with prabhdeep and reflections thereafter, I realize that I inherited a spot in my own version of womanhood.   

I stress that it is my own version of womanhood because what is it that actually defines a woman and her experiences in order to belong to that cohort? After all, “No woman’s womanhood is going to be akin to the other person’s,” says prabhdeep when during our interview, I questioned my own claims to this realm while trying to understand how members of the queer community formulate their own definitions. How can I, a cis hetero female, coexist in this realm with a people who at times explores femininity in a way that feels outdated and restrictive (i.e. by wearing highly promiscuous clothing and very tall heels). It’s not a question about sex or gender for me – to each their own, truly - but I can’t help but feel unease that being feminine to some still means relegating our species down to colorful, sex objects, a portrayal we push daily to move away from (or at least be more than just that). But prabhdeep reminds me that there isn’t anything inherent to the characteristics of a label e.g. being brown, South Asian, Indian or in this example, a woman and we all move through these definitions within our own skin and in our own time. Okay, I can get behind that especially when I’ve been told many times, even recently in jest, that I’m “white” for the company I keep, the music I listen to, or even the way I think (oh hi, mom!)

They say “when we talk about gender and sexuality, we sometimes end up erasing the subject.” This then begs the question of who is doing the gendering? What they insinuate by this is that context is important. Gendering and the binary system have been set up to define a line between us and them, the norm and the foreign. As I dig further into the answers for myself, I understand that labels and definitions by which we deem as normal within our social construct are person-made. When I first described my own visual for what a nonbinary person looks like (admittedly overly simplified), that visual read as a gay man who cross dresses. In their calming demeanor, prabhdeep responds with a nuanced reminder: A lot of times a way in which one dresses may be in part due to how one identifies but sometimes they can simply be expressions. For example, they say, "a person may very well express themselves exactly the way that I do in the world and I identify myself as nonbinary. I understand myself as nonbinary. And that same exact person who expresses themselves and may be read in the same exact way does not identify as nonbinary." I let this example truly sit with me as it requires more than a simple nod of acceptance. I can hear Plato's wisdom chirping in my ear yet again: "Things are not always as they seem; the first appearance deceives many." How do we really keep ourselves from judging what we see, from breaking down our pre-existing notions and seeing the world not just as identities to be bucketed and pocketed for easy processing and storing but instead simply as self-expressions for the sake of an expression.

As I play back the interview, I cringe at the moment I described my nonbinary visual knowing how uninformed I sounded as the words left my mouth (I was!). That shortsightedness kept me from visualizing any being that chooses to denounce a binary way of adopting gender roles and affections; an idealistic expression both in physical and emotional. What would it mean for you to close your eyes and meditate on a self-image but you were incapable of envisioning a man, a “he,” despite being referred to one your entire life. What if you could not envision a lady, a “she,” in all that it is defined within a binary social construct? You are neither he nor she, but you exist in the most humanly form; therefore, you are. You exist not as no-thing but in the infinitive spectrum of expressions of both things. It is not relegated to how one dresses or one’s sexual preference but instead relates to an ideal of both male and female, wading in the tepid waters of neutrality. You are a “they.”  

The changes in language and attitude aren’t supposed to be an imposition on a standard. prabhdeep says, "This isn’t an imposition that because you do not dress or act in a particular way therefore you are. This isn’t an identity we want to impose on people as we have done with other oppressive identities whether it’s race or class or caste or religion in a negative way." prabhdeep goes on to say further, “Gender nonconforming as a phrase, as a culturally legible label gained prominence maybe in the last few decades or so but that does not mean people who we would call gender nonconforming or trans or nonbinary did not exist prior. They maybe had a different label or maybe they didn't label at all. So is the anxiety about having to name a change or is it anxiety about having to learn something new? Folks have existed in all sorts of variations. So this idea that we are one homogenous whole that should act in one particular way when you have billions of people and hundreds and thousands of cultures across the globe [doesn't exist]."  

Now more than ever I find the urgency to widen our current parameters and reconsider the worldview we adopted from our parents and peers. Not every form of dress, speech, color, mannerisms, and physicality of the human body function within the same definitions that we were once taught. The world is changing and as hard as it is to recognize at times in the current political climate, it is changing for the better. I see freedoms of choice and expressions in my children and the youth around me that never existed before. What I have learned through my chat with prabhdeep is that a shift in language is where I can start broadening my scope for a more inclusive society. prabhdeep reminds us that these sorts of gender discussions are not just pushbacks on the status quo for no rhyme or reason but that they should be opportunities, “generative invitations,” to reimage our worldview and to tap into our own robust value systems to find better all-encompassing language in daily conversation.  

I think to gender specific language more broadly now. No matter how many times I have questioned male dominant language to describe a body of people (mankind vs humankind or man-made vs person-made as I used above) for the first time, I feel the urgency in changing the status quo rather than begrudging it but then just dealing with it. While the nuances might not matter to some of you reading this, maybe privilege plays a hand, know this: language matters. Labels are an agreed social construct, and prabhdeep reminds me that it is not just a discussion over the label or identity but the meaning assigned to each wherein lies the importance. What is the context of the language? What is the intention behind the context? Again, who is doing the gendering? When we get to the crux of it, we might agree that the intention can be harmful. According to The Handbook of English Linguistics, gender specific language “has historically treated men as prototypical of the human species."  I can go further in saying that using gender specific language implies inequality in society and if we ask why male centric language is the default; we can argue that it was done so to oppress women or a sex other than male.

I digress, yes. This isn’t a diatribe for the cause of feminism, no. Indeed, that would just swing the pendulum to the opposite side, maybe in hopes for us to drop off in the center, but not without many more decades of compartmentalization, isolation and displacement. Just as much as the spectrum of femininity is widening so is that, too, of masculinity as we redefine these traits all around. All these reimagines and re-assessments of our worldview illuminate the involuntary practice of superiority and oppression, but that knowledge can be used to alchemise a harmful system into one of overarching love.

Yes, language matters and so does the history of identity. As I continue this journey to know my history be it my own family tree, religious history or brown people at large, I do so with the desire to give my children a foundation. This is a direct desire from the way I was raised or perhaps despite it. I have learned that those willing to know their own identity and roots fare better in an unknown terrain over those allowing one to forsake that knowledge in order to fit in. Like the caulk used to fill the voids in a white wall, no matter how it is pressed in and blended, the color never quite matches. It will always be looked upon as otherness, an eyesore. And in the context of buying our son his first bike and insisted that it be the color pink (not that we pushed back on him), I see the gendering of clothes, words, colors, mannerisms and the physicality of the human form more so as a socially constructed, arbitrarily defined arrangement in order to enforce a binary gendered human race, heavily entwined with politics and power and therefore purposeful discrimination. And on a more serious, societal importance, we see the politics and power playing out now (happening right now!) in our Supreme Court with the hearings of a transgender woman being fired for coming out to her employer. This case is riddled with nuance because we don’t have laws in place to protect transgendered folk. 

One point I want to bring up on this hearing, while there are many of grave importance, is a statement made by the employer’s lawyer (ref. NYTimes article in the hyperlink above): “John J. Bursch, a lawyer for the funeral home that fired Ms. Stephens, said a ruling in her favor would have vast consequences. It would mean, he said, “that a women’s overnight shelter must hire a man who identifies as a woman to serve as a counselor to women who have been raped, trafficked and abused, and also share restroom, shower and locker room facilities with them.” 

While perhaps before my interview with prabhdeep, I would have had to take a moment to find a defense in this argument, my first thought now is that you can’t see this person as a man! She is not a man and she bets her entire life and soul on it! This goes back to the fact that I have never had to question myself as a woman. I have no idea what it feels like to literally be in the wrong body, to feel so incredibly sure about that sentiment that I would go through the fires of hell to change it, risking every single relationship, every single professional endeavor and above all risking my life just to be seen as the gender that I want to see in the mirror. Maybe the future goal is that we all become a little more gender neutral so that going through such extreme changes to fit into the binary system won’t even be necessary anymore. Or at least one can hope.  

And yes, language matters but in the end if this is all too overwhelming for you or you are still trying to grasp the ideas put forth, I’d like you to walk away with this thought centered around love and oneness from prabhdeep who reminds us that they care more about what one’s practices are towards differences or how one understands difference above the focus on using the right key terms and phrases. “One can make up and act the role without ever really meaning anything but can be really violent and harmful to folks. This is what folks always say about racism. If you are trying to change minds and hearts you’re never going to get anywhere. Sometimes it’s just a matter of changing the relations or the social relations of society so that people can have whatever thoughts they have in their mind. But it’s what are they able to do via society what are they able to do via the legal system what are they able to do via the labor market in order to enact those thoughts and ideas which may actually harm someone else’s existence." prabhdeep goes on to paraphrase a quote from Stokely Carmichael which in full reads, “If a white man wants to lynch me, that's his problem. If he's got the power to lynch me, that's my problem. Racism is not a question of attitude; it's a question of power. Racism gets its power from capitalism. Thus, if you're anti-racist, whether you know it or not, you must be anti-capitalist. The power for racism, the power for sexism, comes from capitalism, not an attitude.”

And in the end of the day we all have the right to be here. And if I haven’t driven this point home already I leave you with Billy Porter’s acceptance speech at the Emmy’s last month where he quoted James Baldwin’s 1960 essay They Can’t Turn Back. “It took many years of vomiting up all the filth I’d been taught about myself, and half-believed, before I was able to walk on the earth as if I had a right to be here.” 

“I have the right,” Porter said. “You have the right. We all have the right.”