Ask a Dyke: lessons in nonbinary love from a Quaker

A painting of the Public Universal Friend with a yellow and purple tint Credit: Painting: Museum of the American Revolution; Edit: Selene San Felice/Creative Loafing Tampa Bay

Dear Dyke, I’m in love with a girl and, for the first time in a long time, I’m feeling sapphic. I consider myself a nonbinary trans masc, but I’m feeling a bit girlypop. Engaging with my femininity in a queer way has been kinda nice. It feels sexy to be a nonbinary sapphic making out with my dream girl—but I’m scared. I don’t want to go back to being a girl. And I don’t want to regress to the terrible time in my life when I was a girl. How do I navigate being a dude guy who feels a little fruity while kissing girls!—Sincerely, W.L.What?

Hi W.L.What,

If your role in the bedroom was dictated by how you live your daily life, every barista would be a service bottom. You’re telling me you can’t do some femme-for-femme tonguing just because you wear a tie to dinner?

Since gender existed, there have been those who refuse to conform. The archaeological record suggests that priests and oracles of prehistory often broke from sex and gender ties. Older than the United States is the Public Universal Friend—an eccentric Quaker preacher who, after a severe fever and near-death experience, rejected all gender and pronouns and went only by “the Friend.”

For the past 50 years or so, we’ve started using terms like “genderqueer” rather than lumping nonbinary people in with all homosexuals or transsexuals. In the past few decades, the formal acknowledgement and acceptance of gender nonconformity has hit mainstream channels, as evidenced by the (much-debated) “X” gender marker on state-issued IDs.

Before mainstream recognition, if someone assigned to the female sex could manage to eke out a half-decent life as a “girl,” it usually wasn’t worth the persecution to identify as anything else. That sucked, and while it hasn’t been fully fixed—as you surely feel through queerphobia you’ve experienced— things are better now.

While painful, holistic self-analysis was once required to even consider gender nonconformity, more people are now offered the chance to break their gender journeys into smaller steps where they can experiment and confront gender questions as they come up.

“Even the butchest lesbians and hairiest bears can be girlypop when they want.”

Jane Dyke

Now, a question has come up for you. Confronting this conflict will probably feel like a small reprise of the initial moment you attempted to understand yourself as nonbinary: you have an internalized assumption of what someone with your gender is allowed to do or be. To get past it, you have to identify the rule you think exists and intentionally break it.

I suggest you actively seek out cognitive dissonance. If something feels “wrong” but not bad, lean in. If you find that you aren’t into it, stop and reset. Remember that things can be fluid and change day-to-day.

Of course, this applies to more than sex. You can be a generally masculine nonbinary person and still relate to a partner through your feminine, even sapphic side. Even the butchest lesbians and hairiest bears can be girlypop when they want. It’s the first amendment of the homosexual bill of rights.

In fact, you can do whatever you want. The whole point of being nonbinary is that you get to order a la carte off the gender menu. You are allowed to cherry-pick every aspect of your identity, and how you conceive of yourself with a partner doesn’t change who you are.

The Public Universal Friend walked so you can RUN. Though the Friend preached sexual abstinence, times have changed and you have every right to sip from the delightful cocktail of gender strangeness and a premarital sexual relationship.

Yours in love, Jane Dyke

Got a burning question? Ask a Dyke at sapphicsunfl.com/ask

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