Determined Nation Magazine Vol. 4 Iss. 1: The College Survival Guide Volume 4 Sept 2014 | Page 7

C U LT U R E & I D E N T I T Y

up I waved off their demands for an
explanation and didn’t say how mascara and blush made me feel like an
imposter, like I was wearing a mask
and people were responding to it and
not to me. I was fascinated by fictional characters who were gender-neutral or ambiguous, and I fumed when
their “real” gender was inevitably
revealed. I couldn’t have known it at
the time, but what I was experiencing
was recognition; I was seeing people
like myself represented in media and
was furious when it was torn down as though gender non-conformance
was the setup for a joke, never the
whole story.
For years I have floated, uncomfortable, in my own skin without knowing what was missing or why I felt the
way I did.

And then one day I found the word
“nonbinary.” An umbrella term, it essentially refers to the gender identities that are not bound by “man” or
“woman.” There are many different
types, but the one that stuck with me
was “agender,” often defined as the
lack of identification with any particular gender. When I saw that word,
something just clicked in my head.
Was that why I’d felt so out of place?
Did this mean that other people felt
like I did, people I could meet and talk
to? That I was normal - uncommon,
maybe, but normal?
Identification is a complex issue. It’s
different for everyone and has been
better explained by people much
smarter than me, but I personally think of it like this: if you identify
with a group you think “us,” if you

I was born in Harare, Zimbabwe. I’m a non-binary trans person
growing up in the United States. I’m a photographer and writer and
currently working on my first book. -Tino a.k.a Tinotenda
(pictured above)