Me, Myself, They: Life Beyond the Binary by Joshua M. Ferguson

Even as I was buying my copy of this book I sensed that it might be somehow a bit different. How wouldn’t it be, of course? Every one of our stories is unique and Joshua M Ferguson’s is yet another unrepeatable offer in the great trans supermarket of Life, but there is more than the life-details in here to distinguish it from other trans memoirs. We can, above all, note that it’s not about trans but about non-binary, - its subtitle is “Life Beyond The Binary”, - and that is a distinction which animates the whole book. We may be interested that Ferguson is a Canadian, and therefore from a country which doesn’t so easily, in world media-terms, get publicly wrought-up about gender-issues. And when we start to read the text we will be alerted by the author to the non-linear way their story is told, to the sequence of role-themed chapters, eg, The Child, The Empath, The Film-Maker. It’s something that works up to a point, of which more later. Out of the discussions of their growing awareness of not fitting the gender binary Ferguson brings to the surface some nice and new distinctions to deepen our awareness of ourselves as gendered beings. Some quotations may help here,- “I wasn’t born with an awareness of my gender-identity……. I wasn’t born with a gender identity, because gender is self-determined. The “born this way” narrative is necessary to challenge the less acceptable view that we can simply choose our own identities….. If we are all born with a gender identity, then how do some of us change this identity throughout our lifetimes?....... It is in the act of coming out that we declare our identity, one that was there from birth and usually remains the same throughout our lives. But I think we can come out multiple times, because change is a part of what makes us human.” “What sort of sexualities emerge in relation to non-binary trans subjects?” “There is a difference between how I think about my sexuality and how I feel my sexuality.” So non-binary, as explored by a non-binary, queers the discussions of gender, sexuality and transitioning, and that’s no less than we deserve. Joshua M Ferguson finds a freedom for all of us in fluidity. Would it all have happened – would there have been a “they” - if they hadn’t had such a tough start in life? Well-meaning but ill-matched parents, fierce latent prejudice in a small Ontarian town, murderous attacks, disfiguring prejudice and bullying at school, and here a description of gender-conversion therapy at work, laid on them by their parents’ choice of medical intervention, - all steer Josh towards outcast status. Was it, though, also, we might wonder, a matter of a particularly strong ego-defence system? Many trans memoirs are about various degrees of capitulation, but here as soon as the young N/B starts to understand what makes them different they really go for it. And later they wear their scars with a kind of resentful pride. It all reaches a climax in the long chapter “The Advocate” in which they fight for and win the right to be issued with Ontario’s first non-binary birth-certificate. More acknowledgement of non-binary status under many jurisdictions surrounds their break-through. Ferguson’s antipathy to order has prevailed, and the law, usually the hardest barrier to overcome, has been changed. The self is a wonderful thing but as a basis for telling ourselves it can be a bit limiting, a touch prophylactic. Joshua M Ferguson’s account of themselves is like a recital on a beautifully-tuned and modulated instrument which exudes inwardness. Every aspect of self is made into a chapter-heading, explored, documented and philosophized upon. The result often feels like a masterpiece of self-pleading, deeply fascinating but a very special case. It is so much a “my” story not an “our” story. And yet it can’t be said that they don’t offer a disclaimer early on – “I give you these stories whilst also acknowledging the importance of elevating diverse perspectives in our community, especially those of trans people of colour, including non-binary people of colour.” Fair play to Joshua. It is a very sophisticated account of a life-so-far, and contains additional information to widen its perspective. If I have one other dispute with it I suppose it’s around the category of “non-binary”. I have friends who won’t entertain the idea, and I know that it has always seemed to me a provisional term, holding a place until such time as we have got a better purchase on gender in society and deconstructed the binary more fully. Meanwhile a self-definition based on a “non-”, whilst it may fit into various philosophical constructs, does feel to me perverse when so much of what we are and feel we are comes to us through a sense of actuality; we are so much our bodies and our sensations. To which end I will here offer my own version of a category-affirmation. Another way of seeing non-binary is as ‘gender in suspension’, or ‘suspended gender’, - both in the sense of being supported between two separate poles, and as hanging from a particular point rather than resting in a particular location, mobile rather than fixed. That combination of supported weight and weightlessness seems a good state to be in, between and beyond, and a “so” rather than a “non-“. Everybody in a way might aspire to a gender in suspension. That’s my contribution to the debate for now, a debate which is less of a debate, certainly less of a confrontation in some confected “culture-war”, for texts like Joshua’s, It’s written in dignity and out of self-respect. Read as many trans-stories as you can, but read this one.