Forever Questioning
By: Eden Yarrow
Tags: Identity, Queer, Sexuality, LGBTQ, Gender Identity

In the past decade, I’ve been all around the LGBTQ+ acronym. I’ve tried on a number of genders, pronouns, and sexualities. With a few exceptions, I’ve basically called myself anything under the queer umbrella. I started my years out cis and asexual, later cis and gay, shifting toward genderfluid, to a trans woman and back to genderfluid, and to where I am today: gay, genderqueer, and neutrois.

I don’t typically feel regretful about this either. I know a lot of people feel ashamed if they “get it wrong” or if they identify with a certain gender or orientation that they later back out of. And I fully understand why, it can feel strange to label yourself one way and come back later only to realize you’ve changed, or maybe that you never really were that label anyway. Today especially, this strikes me as very common. Today’s queer kids and teenagers have grown up with an ever-expanding list of identities with matching flags and are free to decorate their rooms, phones, social media, and notebooks with merch for their identity — and I think that’s great — but it can create a problem for people who might feel unsure of their identity, as now labels are so intrinsically tied to many people’s personal aesthetic and self-image.

I typically don’t plaster everything I have in rainbow flags or put trans colors in anything I possibly can. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with that, in fact, I think doing so can look quite cute, but I personally don’t want to put my identity into everything I can. I own a genderqueer flag that I haven’t put up on my wall still and a pin that I wear on occasion, and that’s about it.

My queerness isn’t an integral part of my aesthetic or identity. I don’t think it’s a bad thing if that’s true for other people, if you know who you are I think it’s great to make that clear to the world. It’s all personal preference. I am queer, and the labels I use for my gender and sexuality are tools to communicate that to other people.

Nonetheless, I think abstaining from enshrining flags and labels throughout my life allows me to fluidly change and question myself. I think if I had put genderfluid flags all over my room and on my social media, I would have been more resistant to change labels. The fact of the matter is that I’m not fully sure what labels are correct for me, and I’m okay with that. I feel comfortable with the terms genderqueer and neutrois currently, but if I find something that makes me happier I don’t mind jumping ship. Labels aren’t commitments, they’re simply tools to explain our experiences and feelings to others.

Anxiety around changing labels is very common in my experience talking to other LGBTQ+ people. To some extent, I think that anxiety will always be with some people. Many people struggle to understand themselves and latch onto concrete aspects of their identity to explain themselves to the world. For some people, those concrete aspects are sexual and gender identity. But what happens when those aren’t so concrete? We can feel lost and profoundly uncomfortable when we start questioning ourselves. A lot of us don’t want to even entertain the notion that we could have gotten our gender or sexuality wrong. Questioning your gender and sexuality can be scary and confusing. But I believe that we should be open to that confusing and scary experience. Identity is not stasis. For as much as the phrase “sexuality and gender are fluid” has been overused, they remain true. Sexuality and gender are parts of our lives, and just as our health, interests, beliefs, and politics can radically change over a lifetime, so can our sexuality and gender.

It’s because of that that I’m not hesitant to change the way I identify my gender and sexuality. If I can change my name or my political beliefs, I think my sexuality and gender are open to reässessment as well.