Finals season always causes a tremendous amount of stress, understandably so considering the entirety of a semester of study comes down to a single two- or three-hour exam. This past semester, I fell into the same routine as my peers when finals rolled around, locking myself in a quiet room to revise outlines, whiteboard rules, and drink way too much coffee. But since it was the end of my 3L year, I suppose I figured, why not mix it up and throw in a full-blown identity crisis?
I am a queer, nonbinary person. I have always been a queer, nonbinary person. But it took until the final months of this past semester, as I’m fast approaching the age of 30, to realize that latter part. I have vivid memories as a child of feeling uncomfortable as I tried to conform to a rigid binary that I could never fit within. I’d always hoped that feeling would just go away or at least lessen with age, but it never did. I’ve never entirely felt like a woman, with all the connotations that come along with the word – traditional ideas of femininity, grace, and delicateness, to name a few – but it was something I could scarcely put into words. How exactly do you express something that only you know with absolute certainty?
Earlier this year, I began researching nonbinary and gender nonconforming identities. I sought out content by these folks, many of whom are within the transgender community. It began as a journey to educate myself more about this section of the LGBTQ+ community, but as I read more and listened to others’ stories, I had a sudden realization: this is me and it has always been me. And if I had to try to put into words what being nonbinary means to me, it is exactly that: I am just me.
My pronouns are she/they, as in she/her and they/them. Although on the surface these are not likely to change the way I’m addressed by others – for example, “she insists on making dad jokes” is very similar to “they insist on making dad jokes” – but the inclusion of “they” has a much deeper, personal meaning to me. In many ways, I do identify with the woman I’ve grown up as, but in so many other ways, the binary female gender does not fully encompass who I am. “They” feels like the perfect complement to the “she” I grew up as.
As one might imagine, it was particularly difficult to concentrate on topics like the correct level of judicial scrutiny the Supreme Court would apply to an Equal Protection challenge after having made this realization. I was excited to fully discover who I was for the first time – it had only taken almost 30 years! But as excited as I was, this revelation was also terrifying.
It’s a frightening time to be a queer person in America. Across the nation, state legislatures have introduced nearly 500 anti-LGBTQ+ bills. In particular, the transgender community has been disproportionately targeted by this legislation. As of this date, the United States Supreme Court has only extended intermediate scrutiny to cases challenging instances of unlawful discrimination affecting queer and transgender persons in the context of Title VII. Bostock v. Clayton County, Georgia (2020) 140 S.Ct. 1731.
But as frightening as the current climate is, I still wouldn’t choose to deny myself the right to live authentically. I’m still just me – the nerd and geek who loves comic books, games, and sci-fi, the student and future legal practitioner with a passion for studying the law, and all the other parts. And the joy and sense of freedom I’ve felt throughout this journey is worth sharing, in the hope of perhaps inspiring others, who, like me, weren’t having an identity crisis but instead were simply looking to name something they’ve known about themselves all along.