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Thursday June 6, 2019
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com MICHIGAN IN COLOR

Pride month feature: “Not my binary”

When I was five years old, I found myself
on a muddy, cold football field. I was in kin-
dergarten playing flag football in Saginaw,
Michigan. I was the only girl. That day, I
didn’t think about being the only girl on the
field, I only remembered being forced onto
my back by an illegal tackle and scoring a
touchdown the following play. My anger
seemed to propel me to the end zone, my
father screaming for joy when I crossed the
threshold unscaved.
From five years old, I’ve loved the rug-
gedness of contact sports and the masculin-
ity associated with such sporting events. I’ve
found solace in the volatility of a basketball
game, the ebb and flow of organized sports.
I fell in love with the way my father com-
municated with me through the analysis of a
turnover or a missed shot. Sports was my lan-
guage, my love. But, as I became older, I real-
ized that my masculinity was only supposed
to be regulated within the lines of a basketball
court or flag football field.

Growing up, I always felt more like one
of the “boys” than the “girls.” Back then, I
thought my masculinity was weird and wrong.
It was often times critiqued by the extremely
heterosexual, feminine Christian women
that I grew up around. I was not girl enough.
To them, my body language screamed mas-
culine, while my body screamed feminine. To
them, my actions screamed man, while my
words screamed woman.
At that age, I didn’t
understand the magni-
tude of the restrictions
being placed on me, of
the incorrectness asso-
ciated with those state-
ments, and how they
would affect me in the
future. It took me sixteen
years to perform the mental gymnastics to
evade the language spewed to misinform my
true identity, and it may take me many more
to stick the landing.
At twenty-one years old, I can say with
complete assurance FUCK THE BINARY!
The binary system that we’ve created within
our society is trash. In this regard, it focuses

on gender, but we’ve done ourselves a great
disservice in every aspect of binaristic life.
We live in a world where there are usually
two choices: right or wrong, good or bad,
straight or gay, man or woman. We restrict
our mobility so much that our muscles begin
to atrophy into binaristic semblances of once
healthy tissue. Life cannot be a binary wheth-
er you’re talking about gender or anything
else. The shades of grey
that we live within are so
vivid, yet society hates to
admit that they exist.
My biological female
frame does not inform
how I must live my life;
I don’t have to reside
within the confines of
a socially constructed
binary to fit the aesthetic of “woman.” I am
womxn because I feel innately womxn. I
am womxn with the coarse hair that grows
throughout my body, with the wide hips that
extend back to generations of Black bodies. I
am womxn with my snapback and my baggy
shorts. I am womxn with my tight black shirt
and my close-fitting denim. I am womxn with

oversized hoodies and loose-fitting denim. I
am womxn with a constant sweater-to-boot-
to-tennis shoe ratio.
I am womxn without a fresh face of the lat-
est foundation. I am womxn without groom-
ing my eyebrows or shaving my armpit hair.
I am womxn with my stud earrings. I am
womxn with my thick 4c hair. I am womxn
with braids extending from the front of my
head to the very back. I am womxn with mini
twists that morph into gorgeous locs. I am
womxn without manipulating my tight curls
after I arise from my slumber. I am womxn
with a freshly shaven bald head. I am womxn
with my arms wrapped around another
womxn, she/them lying on my chest in the
warmest embrace, our heartbeats producing
a melodic symphony of revolutionary love
and anti-binaristic, holistically-loving badas-
sery.
I AM WOMXN BECAUSE I SAY I AM.
And however my masculine and femi-
nine energies decide to reside in my biologi-
cally female frame, I’ll let them. Since I was
five years old, my body restricted the binary
because it was never made to live within it,
but wherever it wanted to.

I AM WOMXN
BECAUSE I SAY I
AM.

DIERRA BARLOW
MiC Podcast Editor