I've featured Andreja on here before – specifically in my second ‘In Vision’ post. But in that instance I used pictures of her feminine boy persona; and news came out this week that she's now transitioned. She describes her journey as follows:
“I figured out who I was very early on—actually, at the age of 13, with the help of the Internet—so I knew that a transition, becoming a woman, was always something I needed to do. But it wasn’t possible at the time, and I put it off, and androgyny became a way of expressing my femininity without having to explain myself to people too much. Especially to my peers [who] couldn’t understand things like “trans” and gender identity. And then obviously the modeling thing came up, and I became this androgynous male model, and that was a big part of my growing up and my self-discovery. But I always kept in mind that, ultimately, my biggest dream was to be a girl.”
Well, I'm happy for her, and pleased that she's come out as trans – but at the same time I'm a little bit sad. As Minnie Bruce Pratt wrote: “I love the contradiction between gender identification and biological sex. I love having the simultaneity, the both/and.” In Andreja's case, that apparent contradiction has now been resolved. The beautiful unmasculine boy (who it turns out she wasn't) is now a beautiful feminine woman. And her personal evocation of the possible, of what "male" can be and mean and look like, is no more.
Why this should matter to me at all is not so easy to convey. But in an (unrelated) article for Slate magazine, Vanessa Vitiello Urquhart wrote:
“I think it's important to keep the boundaries of what can and can't potentially be male or female propped open as wide as possible. It's wonderful that people who feel uncomfortable with the gender they were assigned at birth are gaining strength and visibility. But, it's just as important that young people, girls and boys and genderqueers alike, can have as many examples as possible of men and women who don't conform to gender stereotypes. I like to think I'm doing my part for that by living as an aggressive, competitive, logical, and strong butch woman.”
The hyperlink incorporates the words “a butch lesbian rejects a non binary identity”, but I don't view her piece that way. Rather than a rejection of non-binary identities per se, I read it as a rejection of binary correlations, an assertion of a personal non-normative binary – as well as a political act, an evocation of the possible, of what "female" can be and mean and look like.
Of course, non-binary and genderqueer can be political acts too. As I quoted queer butch Sinclair Sexsmith as saying: “It is a radical, political act to reject the two-party binary gender system, and I like radical acts. I get off on ’em.” And as I wrote on their own blog: “Yes, genderqueer is a political identity for me too.” But I went on with: “But then so is male, given that femme and feminine aren’t supposed to go with male.” It's the second part that's relevant here, and the reason why I'm going to miss "Andrej".
Ah well. Andreja has got on with her life and asserted who she needed to be – and that's infinitely more important than who I (or anybody else) might have liked her to be, which isn't important at all. And she's left us a recorded pictorial legacy of that beautiful unmasculine boy, even if it wasn't who she really was. So, thanks for that, Andreja.
And as she's posted herself: “I think we all evolve as we get older and that’s normal but I like to think that my recent transition hasn’t made me into a different individual. Same person, no difference at all just a different sex . I hope you can all understand that.”
Absolutely :)
