With Eyes Wide Open | by Andee Bautista
Sometimes I look into a mirror and stare at the nine moles that sit on my face and I wonder if I’ll be recognizable if those moles go away. Sometimes I read back things I wrote from my journal from all the way back in 2015 and wonder, is this really me? Sometimes, I change my voice whenever I speak out loud, thinking, I’m playing a character, this is not me. Maybe I stop somewhere, faced with a decision, desperate for one or the other options to say: which is the most me decision?
“Who am I?” is probably a question that crosses my mind a lot. I don’t really know who I am; I’m just me because I’m not everyone else. Everyone else isn’t just everyone else either, because everyone else is made out of their own ‘them’s and ‘you’s and ‘me’s. Our identity is ourselves.
Identity is something that builds, from the moment you’re born, to the present. Your identity is made up of the choices you’ve made, the people around you, your environment, your beliefs, how you express yourself, how you see yourself. It’s everything that makes the kaleidoscope of you so interesting and unique.
What we see; in the mirrors and in our heads
There are four ways we can look at identity in the LGBTQ+ context: biological sex, gender identity, sexual orientation, and gender expression. Margarit Schindler (2016) made a video briefly introducing the queer community with these terms of identity. Similarly, AMAZE Org (2019) made a comprehensive video on the range of gender identities. Both elaborate on how the four aspects are defined, like how biological sex refers to the physical anatomy one was born with; gender identity essentially deals with the way someone feels about themselves and how they feel and experience their gender based on the spectrum of being male, female, both, or even neither.
Sexual orientation is the gender one is attracted to based on their own gender, and this can be further divided into different types of attraction, which can include sexual or romantic. Finally, gender expression is the way someone presents themselves, how they present their gender to everyone else. This can mean how they speak, how they dress, sometimes even their body language has tells.
It’s something obvious, but still needs to be said that all these things make up one entire you. You cannot be pinned down by a single aspect of these things, because not only are they parts of a whole, but that you are always so much more.
That said, it’s also alright to be confused among terms. As said in the AMAZE Org video, “you don’t need to fully understand someone to respect them.”
Time and growth
As we grow older and choices become more complicated and outcomes more long-lasting than we felt when we were kids, we often find ourselves standing at a crossroads, sometimes looking back and asking who we are and how we got to where we’re at. There are those who look at the mirror and ask themselves if they really are who they thought they were, and others find themselves at a new realization every other day.
There’s no harm in questioning and exploring interests and questions that lead you to discover something new about yourself. You become a step closer to becoming a person that you want to become.
You are you
It’s important to remember that you are you. You define yourself, you have control over who you choose and want to be. You are valid, and just because someone else’s experience is different from yours doesn’t mean that you don’t matter either.
This becomes the crux of what the community is all about because the LGBTQ+ community is, what it is at its core: a community. It’s a community of love, and a community of acceptance. It’s a community of pride and self-love, who knows what it means to be true to yourself, to want to be true to yourself, even those who want to know who they are. It’s not without hardships or struggle; where we are today is a work in progress, but a work in progress that brings about a change to a future where love wins, for everyone, especially, for oneself.
Bibliography and References
Intersectionality
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EXJ4Dbdm1ks
Gender Identity
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DE7bKmOXY3w
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xCMmZUu07IQ
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i83VQIaDlQw
https://www.ted.com/talks/france_villarta_the_gender_fluid_history_of_the_philippines/up-next
https://www.wired.com/2011/11/humans-social/
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S074756321630437X