Essay: What it’s like to be a non-binary musician

I came out as a necessity. Society had long told me one thing, but I felt a completely different thing. I identified as a cisgender homosexual man for 11 years. But my real identity always lived there just on my skin, burning the epidermis down to the subcutaneous tissue. Last summer, it hit me like a lightning bolt. Upon reading actor and producer Natalie Morales’ (of Parks & Recreation fame) moving coming out story, in which she publicly acknowledges her identity as queer, a fluid term also encompassing non-binary, I was encouraged to reflect upon my own truth.

“I don’t like labeling myself, or anyone else, but if it’s easier for you to understand me, what I’m saying is that I’m queer. What queer means to me is just simply that I’m not straight. That’s all. It’s not scary, even though that word used to be really, really scary to me. I know this isn’t some big, life-shattering revelation that everyone will be shocked by,” she wrote in a lengthy piece on Amy Poehler’s Smart Girls. “The reason I decided to share this with you and with the world is because even though me telling you I’m queer might not be a big deal these days, things are still pretty bad out there for people like me. There are gay concentration camps in Chechnya where people are being tortured right this second. In our very country, 49 people were killed and 58 people were wounded just last year because they were dancing in a gay club. Our safe spaces are not safe. I think it’s important that I tell you that this familiar face you see on your TV is the Q part of LGBTQ, so that if you didn’t know someone who was queer before, you do now.”

Heck, even now, I’m moved to tears. Morales’ words are striking, timely and devastating. In 2018, we’ve got a bozo in the highest office in this world; marginalized people continue to be slaughtered; and genderqueer is still a term many people just don’t quite understand (or they refuse to). But the time has come for change, for understanding, for compassion, for conversation.

Here, I want to take a moment to revisit a blog post I published last July titled “I’m coming out, so you better get this party started.” In that post, which I hold near and dear to my ever-rainbow-loving heart, I came clean about my identity for the first time in the public space. I was terrified, and looking back, it might be the single most important event of my entire life. This one particular passage haunts me still:

“Coming from a small farming community in rural West Virginia, you learn to suffocate those parts of yourself that are different or, at the very least, throw down some misinterpreted Bible verses as a shoddy paint job and move on. When I first came out in 2006, I was studying acting at West Virginia University. It was my first exposure to any kind of diversity, from students of color to bisexuals and homosexual men and women. Theatre is naturally liberal, so I felt at home for the first time in my life. The “cis homosexual” label felt right at the time. But I knew there was something else going on in my mind, just below the surface. I mean, I fucking lived it every single day. I was me but not me all at the same time.”

For the most part, the truth has in fact set me free. But my journey was only just beginning then. I settled on the ze/zir pronouns; my heart felt far lighter like a butterfly stretching its wings for the first time out of the cocoon; and I settled into my new-found identity with a confidence I hadn’t exactly felt before. My first date as non-binary, which I won’t get into great detail here, that’s a tale for another time, was an absolute train wreck ⎯⎯ even as inclusive as the LGBTQIA+ community is, there is still plenty to learn within our hallowed walls. So, I then took the next step: telling the people in my life. Most friends and family got it. They trip up sometimes, of course, but I don’t mind. It takes time for full enlightenment to reveal itself. I’m not hurt or upset or angry when the wrong pronouns are used or if folks just assume I’m straight or gay without asking. I let it go, because I know the people who really matter to my life have the best of intentions.

I’m back living and working in West Virginia, and I admit that I sometimes get rather anxious when out in public. I know this state’s storied past of bigotry and hate, even growing up some members of my family used terms like “queer” and “faggot” in extremely derogatory connotations. I find myself having to squelch and snuff out those emotions, trembling unease clashing like waves against greyscale rock through my body. It can be overwhelming, and there are days that I feel completely shattered by a neighborhood in which I was born and raised. But that’s the state of the world, I suppose.

Through exploring the work of and interviewing a few non-binary and genderqueer artists, there is a rumbling in my gut. The confidence is delightfully trickling back into my form, and I’ve never felt more alive. Last month, one of the greatest and most transcendent pop artists of our time, the alluring and bold Rae Spoon, who uses they/their pronouns, as a genderqueer individual, dropped a song called “Do Whatever the Heck You Want” (listen above). The bristled and spitting mid-tempo analyzes gender and sexuality with cutting discernment, allowing vulnerability to frolic from their lips. “Should I be a man or a woman / What does that really mean / Should I be outside of it / Or something in between,” they ponder, stitching the song’s themes of celebration of uniqueness and assertiveness.

It’s that kind of transparency, a missile to dismantle cisnormativity, that changes hearts and does the world so much good. It’s about empathy, at the end of the day, and when you exude such passion, as Spoon does so wonderfully, people connect with you on a deeper, richer level. They later observe agism in pop music, singing, “Should I be an artist / Even after I turn forty / Should I become an accountant / ‘Cause I’m scared of money?” Those pointed questions are asked-and-answered in sly, confident swipes with the repetition of “do whatever the heck you want” in the slicked-back chorus, quaking with scintillating drum work. The real kicker comes much later: “If you are telling someone what the heck to do / If someone else is telling someone what the heck to do / Hurting other people is not part of the deal.”

Boom. Drops mic. Sashays offstage. The end.

Unfortunately, we don’t live in such a simple world in which people will actually listen to what we’re screaming from the mountaintops. Our lungs curdle with blood, but they don’t fucking care. Instead, we have to beat them over the head with how we feel, live, love, breath, act, speak, dream and on and on and on and on and on.

Doing Whatever the Heck They Want

Within their mind, since coming out as non-binary six years ago, Spoon has achieved greater peace and calm. “I have had a wonderful time, internally,” they tell B-Sides & Badlands over a recent email, candidly opening up about their journey. “The idea that there are only two genders has always bothered me on some level. Being able to be openly free of that constraint has made me a much happier person. I work every day to keep myself open to other people’s identities, and I really want to be ready to change my mind if I find something I haven’t encountered before. My gender presentation has also become more free as I let go of the idea of gendered fashion, as well.”

Spoon’s story began back in 1996 when they came out as queer in high school, a monumental turning point in their life. They later came out as transgender in 2011, an action that confirms that one’s identity is not easy to define, bounding behind labels and descriptors. And it takes time to grow, to learn, to know who you are. “Ever since I initially came out, I haven’t seen much point in living life presenting as something I’m not,” they confide.

Similarly, alt-pop rocker T. Thomason, who released his EP, Sweet Baby, on Spoon’s COAX Records, came out as a way for much-needed healing. “I came out based on personal need, I’d say. I was feeling more and more uncomfortable and self-destructive. When I began to realize why and that there were potential solutions to my discomfort, there was no way I could deny myself,” he writes. That rebirth anchored him in a far more truthful way, and “life has felt more…natural since ⎯⎯ like there’s an unfolding happening that feels like it has a course and direction and makes sense.”

Sure, life is still a roller coaster most days (“I mean, a lot of times I have no idea where things are going and what’s going to happen,” he says), but the tranquility and beauty flourishing in his bones soothe any and all discontent. “At the root of it, I don’t feel like I’m flailing around in the dark and smacking into random experiences or relationships anymore. The journey since has felt like I’m in the driver’s seat, even when the road is dark as hell.”

With a new record cocked and ready for release this fall, Thomason takes a moment to consider what his journey means for the music itself going forward. “The first thing that comes to mind is that my voice has changed. It’s gotten deeper as I’ve been on testosterone, and learning about my new range has been a trip,” he says. “I feel way more in control of my voice and confident in my ability to protect my voice when singing live. I think I’ve become more anchored in my body through my new understanding of my voice, and I think this comes through at live shows and in the quality of my voice on the new record.”

Having been born into a troubled household to a schizophrenic father, whose religious beliefs were often stifling, Spoon initially pursued roots and country music. From Honking at Mini Vans to Throw Some Dirt on Me to Love is a Hunter, they are firmly planted in Americana-baked compositions, often marrying rock into the mix. 2012’s I Can’t Keep All of Our Secrets was a transitional period, ambient-pop in tone, and opened the flood gates for their work. My Prairie Home in 2013 and 2016’s Armour leaned further into revamping alternative brews of pop, again their thirst for more was satiated. “I have always been open to experimenting in music. In the same way as I don’t want to live pretending I’m something I’m not, I’m very happy to change the ways I make music if I find something inspiring,” they say. “Although not much of my material is about my gender, the spirit of experimentation is the same in both areas of my life.”

Shawnee, an indigenous performer from Mohawk, Ontario, bares her pain in her song “Warrior Heart,” which goes to benefit We Matter, a campaign aimed at youth who struggle with suicide and mental health. It’s her rallying cry, an emboldening and rather unforgettable performance. “Young blood, are you alright?” she inquires with the searing opening line. “I know that cry / Oh, your wicked scars, they break your heart / Broken down and beat and tired / When breathing’s hard, silently screaming / You’ve earned your stars through all the pain.”

That kind of compassion and encouragement speaks profoundly about her core drive. And her story as genderqueer is as integral to her music. “It sort of just hit me one day. I couldn’t hide anymore, from myself or anyone else. In my heart, I knew who I was, but in my head, it wouldn’t listen,” she writes of her coming out story. “It was sort of all of a sudden after leaving my hometown and being able to remove myself from any pressures ⎯⎯ a girl hit on me and I was like, ‘Yah, I’m really gay.’ So, I came out by bringing my now-wife with me to a gathering and I [said], ‘Take it or leave it.'”

The journey has been marred with its own series of unfortunate events, too. “I ended up losing some relationships after coming out, but in my mind, it’s for the better. In music, there has been some pressures, and I hear things like, ‘Make sure the boys feel invited.’ And I’m like…invited to what? I am singer and a songwriter connecting with people through that expression and story. The other part of my journey has been the road to  discovering my identity as a two-spirit person and learning what that means to me and my ancestors traditions.”

In a PBS documentary called “Two Spirits,” Native American culture is explored in effective depth, celebrating two-spirit individuals and their prominent positions in tribal customs and ceremonies. The Navajo culture, for example, believe in four genders. Filmmaker Lydia Nibley honors sacred traditions and tells the tragic story of one woman’s loss of her two-spirit son. Gender was and is a very spiritual concept for many tribes but has been dreadfully misinterpreted and scorned and discarded by the straight white man’s modern world.

The Way of the World & Safe Spaces

You could say music, an expression of selflessness, was their safe-space and a spectacular landscape ready and willing to envelope them. But in the bigger picture, it’s pretty grim. A few years ago, musician, producer and artist Kindness (real name Adam Bainbridge) remembered an encountered with a prominent blogger that went by the pseudonym Donald Crunk, who wrote a 2005 blog post “talking about me in homophobic and transphobic terms,” Kindness recalled. 13 years is not that long ago, but the culturally-embedded bigotry is alive and thriving. “The industry and the media could take one look at this guy’s blog and see how toxic it is,” he added. “And yet, they embraced him…and they give him a platform where he can now be influencing what happens in music.” [via The Fader]

Spoon’s experience is much the same. “The mainstream music industry is an incredibly bigoted place. I think it’s because of how much it’s influenced by capitalism. As it becomes harder to make a profit off of recordings, music companies take less chances,” they say. “Folks with more marginalized identities often get filtered out like that. I haven’t participated much in that part of the industry.” Even though Spoon’s career is predominantly centered on the indie circuit, they have endured a lion’s share of intolerance, abounding in refusals to book for gigs or to use their pronouns or to play their music on the radio. “[People] tear my posters down because of how I looked, as well as tell me that my identity is not valid.” 

Given such towering and sometimes deadly inhibitions to her life and work, Spoon remains surrounded by “so many amazing independent musicians,” they say. “I love the indie music scene so much.” More to the point, with 20 years of experience of the open road on their back, the stage has been a special home and kept Spoon coming back often. “Music has been something I’ve used as a place to feel safe long before any other identity I came out as. It still is very much that for me.”

On the other end of the spectrum, Thomason confesses to his own privilege within that same framework. “I’ve been really lucky in my personal life and in the music industry. I inherited a lot of privilege as I now pass as a young, slim, white dude or binary-trans dude, most of the time. So, I think that’s meant I’ve missed out on a lot of bullshit that many other non-binary and trans folks face. I will say that it was a very eye-opening experience to observe who was able to handle my transition gracefully within the music industry and who was not. People will surprise you in good and bad ways.”

T. Thomason’s Sweet Baby is alternative in all sense of the term, spacey in part, evocative and grounded in others. More than anything, creating and living onstage keeps his mental health medicated and at bay. “I think getting up on stage is where I’m really able to live out the intensity of the emotions I feel on a pretty regular basis but often don’t allow myself to dig into. It’s a release,” he says.

For Shawnee’s part, she has been met with plenty of bigotry “for being both lesbian/two-spirit and indigenous,” she says. “It is another reminder that we still have much to accomplish in today’s world and that ignorance is still very much prevalent in today’s society.” Through her tireless work to make significant change happen in the world, and “through a very dark and alone time as a teenager,” music saved her life ⎯⎯ and it was the only person, place or thing that could finally keep the shackles from binding her forever. “It kept me dreaming and creating, feeling and pushing for something greater then myself ⎯⎯ something I could give myself and speak a language that could mean something to someone else. Music was and is my medicine when I need healing.”

The Fall & Deceit of PWR BTTM

This time last summer, the LGBTQIA+ community was still reeling from the revelations of abuse targeted at PWR BTTM’s Ben Hopkins. The eclectic alt-pop duo (also comprised of Liv Bruce) built a career on acceptance, diversity and creating a safe space at their shows. All that was destroyed when allegations surfaced online. Facebook user named Kitty Cordero-Kolin laid out the claims in a private group (DIY Chicago), stating, “Ben…is a known sexual predator, perpetrator of multiple assaults, etc., and [you] should avoid going to their shows/boycott their music/not allow them in safe spaces. I have personally seen Ben initiate inappropriate sexual contact with people despite several “nos” and without warning or consent.”

NPR later confirmed the poster’s identity, and Jezebel chatted with them in a lengthy phone call, revealing specific details of their own assault at the hands of Hopkins. “I just felt totally powerless in the situation, first due to physicality because they are so much bigger than me in size and also social status. I was trying to be okay with whatever was going on.”

Reportedly, Bruce, upon hearing whispers about the assault, reached out to Cordero-Kolin. “Their response to me was, ‘I don’t think Ben knows what they did, maybe you should reach out to them.’ Then they never spoke out about it again and continued being in the band.”

Days before the release of their second album, PWR BTTM released a statement that not only minimized the severity of the situation but placed blame and accountability on the victim alone and further cast the LGBTQIA+ community in a harsher light. “The allegations come as a surprise, but we are trying to address them with openness and accountability,” they said. “Unfortunately we live in a culture which trivializes and normalizes violations of consent. There are people who have violated others’ consent and do not know. Ben has not been contacted by any survivor(s) of abuse. These allegations are shocking to us and we take them very seriously.”

Even the follow-up statement seemed condescending and aloof, side-stepping the real issues at hand. “What has transpired over the past several days has been emotionally overwhelming and difficult to comprehend. Last Thursday, I learned that an anonymous individual had made an allegation of sexual assault against me,” wrote Hopkins. “This allegation was devastating to me as it is contrary to the intentional way I seek to interact with those around me. As I digested the allegations, I tried to figure out who the individual might be so that I could try to reconcile what I had read with my memory of any particular sexual interaction.”

Ultimately, the victim’s healing is paramount to any sort of “emotionally overwhelming” backlash Hopkins may or may not have felt. And in the end, this disastrous breach of trust looms like a bad cold. In a reflective think-piece, Pitchfork writer Sasha Geffen expressed inescapable sorrow, saying, “For those who sought much-needed comfort and community in PWR BTTM, the allegations struck a sickening note. This was a band that asked for gender neutral bathrooms at its shows so trans and gender-nonconforming attendees could feel safe.”

She continued, “On record and in interviews, it was as though Ben and Liv were personally taking up the mantle of queer mentorship for their young listeners. But what was a document of queer exuberance has now become a hollow sequence of songs, from a band whose sentiments were maybe always shallow.”

Spoon thinks for a moment on what the LGBTQIA+ community really needs to address moving forward. “[We] need to work so much on our internal power dynamics. So many things like racism, transphobia, femme-phobia and disablism are so prevalent,” they say. “To build a safer space, we need to acknowledge the ways we put other members of the community down. What happened with PWR BTTM was especially angering because the way neither of the members held the offender accountable. The more people are able to be open about assault happening the better. We need to work on making our spaces more accessible and our dialogue around oppression.”

Thomason agrees. “The first of many ways that come to mind is to engage in active listening and self education, then to incorporate what we learn as practices in our daily lives, in the way we do business and at our shows. This can be scary and overwhelming for people who exist with a lot of privilege,” he considers, “and I say this from personal experience. I think once you start truly listening to people who have different experiences from your own, you are unable to avoid being empathetic. Once you humanize folks with different experiences, you can’t deny the reality of their needs, just as you have your own needs. You begin to see your responsibility as someone with a platform to attempt to take what you’ve learned into account as you go about your business (literally) and live your life.”

Genderqueer Exposure in the Media

Growing up in rural West Virginia, the term “non-binary” was not yet in the public consciousness. Even with the importance and groundbreaking nature of Will & Grace, which debuted in the fall of 1998 and starred two openly gay men (Sean Hayes as Jack McFarland and Eric McCormack as Will Truman), the two-spirit identity would be years, if not decades, away from perceived as normal. Even today, in 2018, there remains an overall lack of media coverage on non-binary and genderqueer musicians. With a simple Google search, the progress is…slow, you could say (but shout-out to Billboard for the only semi-current piece). “There is a lack of exposure for anyone who is not a cisgender white straight male. The numbers of them we see on stage and in the media don’t represent us,” says Spoon, matter-of-factly.

The boundaries are certainly shifting and expanding, as Thomason stresses, “I do think it’s starting to come around. I think, in general, the narrative of binary, heteronormative transition is being questioned and the concept of gender itself is being questioned more often. I hope this means that as a society we’ll see more and more non-binary and genderqueer people coming out and being harder and harder to ignore.” Shawnee, who roars pretty loudly with her song “Mirror Me,” a folk-constructed power-ballad, can feel a movement happening, but its nearly-glacial pace is relentless. “There is a lack of focus that celebrates non-binary and genderqueer artists. I would love to see Two-Spirit be more widely known and celebrated. It’s a part of history that is freedom of self identity in the native culture.”

Over the course of the past 30 or 40 years, many artists, including Annie Lennox, Kurt Cobain and Prince, went so against the grain, their stature as pop/rock gods was undeniable. Using such a platform to dismantle and reconfigure archaic perceptions of identity forever changed society and ignited a revolution. “Finding folks with genders that represented mine has mostly been about seeing it in contemporaries. I’ve met some amazing elders since coming out but didn’t have access to them as a teenager,” writes Spoon. “Then again, I thought Lennox or Cobain in a dress was pretty cool. There have always been people defying the standards of the gender binary, and I think I connected to that.”

Shawnee regards her own observations in gender representation, “I think now we are starting to find the language and feeling empowered when the lines of gender norms and regulations are being blurred and crossed. Prince and Boy George back then were’t exactly defined, but they were and are beautiful examples of unapologetically crossing those gender norms and boundaries.”

Remarkably, Spoon has risen as a rebel for the cause, impressing upon even younger generations that celebrating your uniqueness is a selfless and defiant act. Her status as a pop icon is inevitable. “The first time I saw representation I identified with was in 2014. It was a YouTube video of Rae Spoon and Ivan Coyote performing a piece from their book ‘Gender Failure,'” remembers Thomason. The chapter of his very own book is still being written, with the kind support of Spoon, of course.

By living as their most authentic self so fearlessly, their music connects on a much wider scale. “I see a lot of younger folks out at my shows, as well as older folks. I love how music can cross so many lines,” says Spoon, who is set to issue a new album titled bodiesofwater on Sept. 7. “When I started out playing music, I was often the youngest person in the room, and now, I’m certainly not. It’s great to see a lot ages playing music to people of many different ages.”

When tasked with offering a personal moment of impact, Thomason shares one encounter which really enlightened his role as a role model in the LGBTQIA+ community. “I recently met someone at a show who was a lot younger than me but who had been following my music since I’d started out, about 10 years ago (I have three records out under my former name). They had also transitioned and showed me a photo of the two of us taken at a show way back,” he recounts. “We got a new photo that night, and to see the two side-by-side was pretty cool. It’s not up to me to say how my music impacted that person, but it felt really cool to know that they had been following my career, that we had been living parallel experiences, even as strangers, and that they’d seek me out at a show to tell me about it.”

“The greatest feeling I can experience is putting my music out there in the world and knowing its purpose and intention is to lift and give hope. This community made up of survivors, dreamers and fighters stemmed from something like ‘Mirror Me’ gives me strength,” concludes Shawnee.

Rae Spoon, T. Thomason and Shawnee are agents of change, helping tear down cisnormativity one brick at a time. But we can’t do it alone. We need allies. We need champions. We need rabble-rousers to scream as loudly as we are. Maybe then somebody will listen.

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