today is february seventeenth, twenty twenty-three,

it’s 9:34am and i’m standing at a window at the DMV to renew my drivers license, i have to get the new REAL ID and they’ve just asked me what my gender is

go back, 

back to kindergarten, 

were still practicing seeing our identity reflected in the plastic triangle signage 

that hangs on the bathroom doors, 

i was told that i was assigned to the white stick figure 

whose body had a straight downward contour, 

as opposed to the other door sign 

whose body had two forty-five degree angles jutting out 

from what resembled a figure’s waist, 

we were taught to read it as a skirt 

because girls wear skirts,

i’m plucking grass

and making piles on Mona’s knees,

laying in Vianey’s lap

she weaves my hair, 

and whispers something in spanish

that i don’t know

i don’t speak woman

woman, 

who looks me up on the street

who makes me feel less,

less than her,

less than a man

that’s the game i’ve played

and still — i only play with girls,

which is concerning to my 5th grade teacher

Mrs Marquez

she says to my mom,

“i thought you should know”

we’d go in pairs to the restrooms 

and while the teacher continued their lesson, 

my classmate, X and i, 

would go into a stall together 

we’d both pull down our pants 

and examine each others [body], 

their [body] was brown and slightly darker than mine,

their hair was straight, thick, stiff and 

almost black, 

a gene i also get from my dad,

we were both about the same height

and uncircumcised

i remember this as the first time seeing myself in another person's [body], 

you, X, to share reflection, curiosity,

vulnerability in the baring of our bodies

it wasn’t perverse,

instead a learning through 

seeing our relation

stripped of all our clothing

like looking in a mirror

and i’m in it, standing in front of it

our bodies reveal what we really are,

at a specific time, and always expectant to 

[change]

nothing to hide behind,

camouflage, accentuate,

[changed]

a body born without the language to describe what it was to be naked,

i was without knowing that bodies were made up of symbols,

crowding a [body] with information

submerging it in categorization

intertwine and mutate the malleability of a soft embryo

that is to say, that i was gendered before being born, 

before week twenty, before the sperm found the egg, 

before my mother became fertile,

because notions of

gender and sex already

hovered over the womb,

and the womb my mother occupied too

and so to ask where to begin,

is to consider generations of generations,

parents, people, 

prescribed culture

who have left

zero space

for a [body]

to perceive

itself

today is may eleventh twenty twenty three

its almost 11:11am and as of today

22 states allow residents to choose “F”. “M” or “X” gender markers on their driver’s licenses, without providing medical documentation.

gender ‘X’ is a term used to encompass bodies that are not exclusively man or woman, 

A single letter for government documentation to represent infinite ways to identify – 

serving as a weak attempt, 

a government target, 

x marks the spot of a false hope for bodies outside of the binary 

to think they're getting recognized

the future of transness is not assuming form as a third-gender, or third-sex, 

X, is not enough, 

to assume this implication would be to say that man and woman, 

boy and girl 

are a fixed foundation in which our complex gender identities must be categorized around

the tone of your voice, 

the length of your hair, 

how you present yourself each morning, 

clothing, 

objects you own, 

and even internally - the way we feel and express our thoughts, 

all of which, are layered cultural connections that inform perception, 

and what i’ve perceived is that many people are fine with living in the associations made unto them, 

some assimilate as close to what they’re thought to be to avoid judgment, 

some seek to be comfortable within their own idea of themselves 

and completely change from who they were thought to be, 

and by this, i’m also saying that trans men, 

trans women, 

intergender 

and even nonbinary people are perpetuating a continuous criteria for gender, 

the experiences will obviously vary from cis gendered people and views of gender may expand or be blurred from the fights for rights of these communities,

though the very acceptance of claiming gender creates categorization which in return systemically divides and separates ‘types’ of people, 

allowing for similar, if not the same, 

conditioning of gender discrimination that we see today 

and will continue to be put in place as long as we conform to categorizing each other,

sometimes… i feel between all of these ideas 

but ultimately i come back to saying fuck the codes, 

they’re all a collective idea, 

what stands out to me about being gender non-conforming is that it acts as a statement,

simply put - it says “i’m not willing to participate in the idea of gender” 

if i were to try and trace a tree diagram of how i’ve defined my gender and where it started, 

it would be too complex and never ending, 

to go back in the evolution of it would be impossible, 

and to what point, i’m tired of the constant awareness of myself being gendered, 

people saying ‘let’s break the stereotypes’

meanwhile, i’m like 

‘why are we still thinking about living in or out of the stereotypes in the first place’, 

correcting people's perceptions of my identity, 

digging through what people expect me to be, 

not always right away, 

not always vocal about my oppositions, 

but always existing in the eyes of someone else

the agent at the DMV desk asks me,

“what is your gender? you have the options M, F, or X.”

i think to myself

THERE IS NO LETTER X IN TRANS.

i answer, “male”

because assuming form as a third ‘choice’ - as X is not the way i want to be seen, 

i never want to be thinking about whether or not i’m passing, 

but in this instance if i don’t feel like an M, F or X, 

and if none of them are me - 

i might as well have the protection and privilege under the guise of ‘M’, 

sad to say that that is even a thing

i don’t think it makes me a coward and maybe you do think that, 

but i’m an individual who has already been seen within a vulnerable and targeted identity, 

giving me the option to “choose” a letter that oversimplifies how i’m seen to a singular notion - isn’t a choice at all, 

had i said X, i would’ve been acknowledging that i agree to be gendered 

and even moreso categorized with all the ‘others’, 

an outsider to man and woman, 

yeah, unwillingly i’m still agreeing to those terms by listing ‘M’ 

but by doing so there isn’t a literal X on my back, 

and i don’t need state documentation to be a confirmation of how i see myself, 

identifying as X (on paper) is one of the most dangerous things i could be, 

with at least 467 anti-LGBTQ bills having been introduced in state legislatures across the United States since the start of the year — 

i am on high alert for life-threatening concerns surrounding the safety and survival of the population outside of the binary, 

bills ranging from banning books surrounding topics on health and well being for students including those that have LGBTQ+ characters or themes 

to bills banning drag performances thus a ban on performers 

to bills denying educators from identifying or referring to students under eighteen years of age by a pronoun that differs from their pronoun aligned with their biological sex, 

so in deciding whether or not X was how i wanted to be seen, 

particularly in relation to documentation that records and tracks demographics, 

i knew this information couldn’t be rushed even though i was required to renew my ID for my 29th birthday, 

and with a decision bearing so much permanency when an individual is accounted for in data — 

i forgave myself 

for needing more time when i decided to definitively gender myself to a stranger,

so i could on the surface be kept invisible to the government, 

it’s something i’ve been thinking about for years leading up to this point 

because i anticipated the renewal of my ID and how i would have to answer the ‘gender’ question,

X kept repeating over and over and over in my head 

and all i could think about was getting the X’s out,

the information i had started to study needed to be vocalized 

so i released a short zine to some colleagues in a queer feminist critical theory course i was enrolled in

the zine titled ‘transcrypt’,

referring - to be transgender in a hidden or secret recess, an underground vault or chamber, especially one beneath a church that is used as a burial place

unknowingly, it launched my research into what would become my thesis project

in designing the zine

i held my finger down on the letter X of my keyboard

and in repeating them they made up a chain link fence,

since X is a marker for an individual identity, 

i started seeing them each as a person

if people under X make up a fence, 

who are they protecting?

who are they keeping out?

in the same way that i see X functioning, fences (people) are being used to activate the context in which they separate and privilege the binary from the others,

i had to sit with this for a while.

a couple months went by and i had become fixated on posters of two trans people in my neighborhood who had gone missing, 

both of which i didn’t know, i had run into one of the mother’s earlier that day who had asked me if i had seen their child, as i told her “no” a red X appeared in my mind

i went straight to the store, bought red paint

then to my studio

and started repeating X’s on the walls

as they started to fill the space

i wanted to replicate the feeling of being consumed by them

carrying the bucket of paint in one hand and painting with the other

my red dipped fingers drew out X’s that bled on my white studio walls

i couldn’t stop this action

visceral, concentrated

in painting X’s, i rundown myself and the question:

why the letter X? 

the process continued and i put the work into a solo exhibition,

there, i spent more than four hours writing out X’s on the walls leading up to a live performance of the first iteration of this project, where i then spent an additional three hours, without breaks, continuing writing X’s in front of live viewers, 

it was strenuous and physically demanding 

the practice in many ways resembled how i feel when i’m long distance running

meditative and tiring

and when i reach a point of depletion — i know it’s time to stop

so i keep working with it, keep exhausting it

in the most recent iteration, 

using the visual language of the symbol X found in chain link 

it physically and metaphorically continues to surround my body no matter the perspective of the viewer, 

because of the transparency of the image, 

my body remains to always be fixed as fenced in,

to the opposite, using tools in photoshop to imitate the processes of painting, 

the image nearby morphs the body, and suggestions of gender or sex are diffused by conjoining parts, creating new folds, shapes, musculature and genitalia

rendering the body as something, transformable

leading up to my 29th birthday, i have never felt more like myself,

constantly transforming and finding a particular beauty and desire to be ever-changing

i don’t hold onto fear tightly

though you don’t have to look far 

to see the intentions of people who are trying to incite fear

and right now the population outside of the binary is under attack

with so many speculative futures flying so close to the sun, 

i can’t help but be cautious and more importantly perceptive

i shouldn’t have to think about hiding who i am for safety, in-person or on paper,

if X,

how ‘i’ might be interrogated by a police officer if they ask for my ID,

how ‘i’ might be unsafe traveling internationally, and now also in the states

how ‘i’ might risk employment opportunities

how ‘i’ am forced into being gendered

how…

made up is gender?

we built it, so surely we can un-build it

in time / passing

go outside of this 

time

and so let this not be a conclusion but instead an opening

an opening to imaginative futures

for the mind to wander and resist doubt

a place and time undisclosed 

where gender doesn’t exist,

what does that world look like for you?