Editorial: If gender is a performance, mine is a comedy

“im probably nonbinary but i have a job so idrc about that rn”. I screenshotted this tweet in January 2023, and it make me fucking cackle.  

A year and eight months later in October, I came out at a time where I wanted to cut off my tits and fill my vagina up with spackle. It was indescribably painful. I thought once I healed my relationship with my body, I could go back to being girly mamasita fishy slay. Of course, as it happens, coming out was the treatment for such a depersonalised feeling. 

Apart from the typical gender affirming receptions like a pronoun change, I found the most affirming actions to be jokes. My friends corrected themselves without making me feel othered. “Hey queen” became “hello monarch”, and “you look gorgeous” became “looking steez bro”. 

Judith Butler theorises in their book, Gender Trouble, that performative utterances construct our social reality. Language creates reality. Just like when an obstetrician yells “It's a girl!” in the face of a distressed new mother, I can unironically say “she loves this thussy” and create something real.  

When gender is a performance, I searched for a stage presence that made me feel whole. I hung up my fur coat and red lipstick for jorts that graze my ankles, and boxers that fit my big dick. I don’t owe you androgyny but when my connection to femininity was painted on with tears, it felt pretty freeing to put down the brush. As the amazing gender theorist, Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, puts it: “Closeted-ness itself is a performance initiated as such by the speech act of a silence”.  

In October 2019, Trisha Paytas came out as a man. Because of their trolling history, many people were upset and thought they were hindering the community. A year later, Trisha delved deeper on the Frenemies podcast, explaining that in their hyper glam femininity they felt like they were putting on drag every day.  

In my 15-year-old bedroom, I watched this and felt seen more than ever. Trisha is no renowned gender theorist like Judith Butler or Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, but Trisha’s revelation clearly resonated with me.  

Looking back at photos from merely a year ago, I stunned myself with what I could pretend to feel comfortable in. Made up like a barbie doll in my ice white bleached hair and floor length dresses, I can’t help but wonder how this fem-baddie did it every day. The closet wasn’t glass, it was steel. When I was presenting in a way that stereotypically aligned with my assigned gender, I was performing more than ever.  

It's been almost two years since I screenshotted that first unserious tweet. Since then, I’ve moved to Wellington, I have met people who are more than willing to validate a reality where my dick is huge, my muscles are bulging, and getting a Chief Keef tattoo is a really good idea.  

Figuring out your gender identity can feel painfully insular. I found that as much as it is a task of introspection and reflecting alone, it is also a community project where the people around you can make something feel real... especially with a good gag.  

—Shows over, Lee