I was assigned female at birth and raised as a girl, though I\u2019ve come to understand myself as agender, a non-binary identity that denotes a lack of identification with any particular gender. I now understand that gender is not a binary, nor even one consistent spectrum, but rather a number of intersecting spectrums with infinite possible combinations. There is no universal experience of gender. After years of work to dismantle my learned self-hate around my fatness, I generally feel pretty neutral about my body. I appreciate it for what it is: the vehicle through which I get to experience this life. In this neutrality, there\u2019s nothing about myself that I desire to change.<\/p>\n
But frequently when I meet new people, they look at my body and make the assumption that I\u2019m a woman. It hurts every time. Whenever a teacher walks into our yoga class and addresses the group as \u201cladies,\u201d or a classmate refers to me as \u201cshe,\u201d I feel an immediate physical tightness and emotional distress. I experience second-hand harm even as a bystander to another person\u2019s misgendering.\u00a0 This happens everywhere, but it hits me particularly hard in yoga spaces. I see yoga as a spiritual practice that\u2019s oriented towards non-harm and a search for truth beyond our assumptions, but this is not what I experience when I\u2019m misgendered in yoga spaces. That sharp dichotomy between the perception of yoga spaces as welcoming and sheltered from harm and my lived experience trying to exist within them makes the sting of misgendering feel like a particularly potent betrayal of the supposedly shared ethic.<\/p>\n
And here\u2019s the thing–not only does misgendering make me feel deeply unseen, something I\u2019m hoping to escape when I come into a yoga space, it actually triggers harmful thoughts about my body. When someone looks at me and then addresses me as \u201cma\u2019am\u201d or \u201cshe,\u201d when I feel so deeply unseen, I start to hate those parts of my body–my breasts, my wide hips, my short stature–that I know the other person is drawing on as the basis of their assumptions. This particular form of negative self-talk is particularly hard for me to combat, because I feel like my only two options are to accept the body I have and live with perpetual misgendering or to express myself inauthentically, making changes to my body that I don\u2019t want and shouldn\u2019t have to make. Neither option feels good or just.<\/p>\n
You can never tell someone\u2019s gender by looking at them. There are plenty of trans and non-binary people who, like me, are still searching for a presentation of gender that is both authentic and publicly legible, or who are still \u201cin the closet\u201d for reasons all their own. There are people who don\u2019t feel a need to change their gender expression to match external, constructed expectations of gender readability, but still deserve to have their gender and pronouns respected as much as anyone else.<\/p>\n
Respecting trans people and making sure you\u2019re gendering people correctly is part of a larger practice of non-harm. I recognize that deconstructing our gendered assumptions is an uphill battle and have empathy for everyone who has been conditioned to make these assumptions–fighting our conditioning, regardless of context, is a tough task. It\u2019s set up to be–that\u2019s exactly how systemic oppression perpetuates, by making it difficult to change the status quo and move towards equity.<\/p>\n
If this is a concept you\u2019re just starting to explore, maybe take this moment to ask yourself how many times a day you look at someone and assume their gender. Or, you could think about all the times your gender is assumed by someone else–how often does your yoga teacher greet the class with gendered language, a restaurant worker call you \u201cma\u2019am\u201d or \u201csir,\u201d a public speaker address the crowd as \u201cladies and gentlemen,\u201d an author write the phrase \u201che or she?\u201d You may just be noticing how frequently you encounter this, but for me and many other trans and non-binary folks, it feels omnipresent.<\/p>\n
I\u2019m calling on my fellow yoga practitioners to be our allies in reducing this ongoing harm. Both inside and outside of yoga spaces, practice avoiding assumptions and use gender-neutral language with people you don\u2019t know, help normalize the practice of asking every new person you meet what their pronouns are by doing it consistently, add your own pronouns to your email signature, your Twitter bio, and your next conference nametag. Extend your ahimsa practice to trans folks. Just as you can never know who you might be hurting when you assume gender, you never know who you\u2019re helping to exist in their body when you don\u2019t.<\/p>\n
By Melanie Williams<\/p>\n
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