"In my day, you were butch or you were femme" (2024)

Part of the Gender Issue of The Highlight, our home for ambitious stories that explain our world.

Bobbi Ullinger was browsing an online support group when she first saw the word bi-gendered. “It was like the lightbulbs went on, the choir of angels was singing, and the light was shining down on me,” said Ullinger, 64. “And that was really the first inkling that I had of the gender spectrum, that you didn’t have to be one or the other. You can be both or neither.”

The past decade has ushered in visibility for people who identify as nonbinary, meaning their gender is neither male nor female but somewhere in between, fluid, both, or neither. Thirteen states now offer a nonbinary gender option for driver’s licenses, and stars such as singers Sam Smith and Janelle Monáe and Queer Eye’s Jonathan Van Ness have come out as nonbinary or gender-fluid in recent months. They/them pronouns have entered the national conversation, and the dictionary.

Much of the focus from lawmakers and the media around those who don’t fit into a neat gender box has centered on young people, in part because today’s youth are simply more likely to know somebody who uses gender-neutral pronouns — 35 percent of 13- to 21-year-olds, compared with 16 percent of Gen Xers and 12 percent of boomers, according to a 2018 Pew study.

Left out of the conversation is how older nonbinary people, many with already established lives, are navigating an increasingly accepting world.

Photographer Annie Tritt traveled across the country to explore the lives of five nonbinary and gender-fluid adults. Many mentioned finally having the words to describe their experience. Others expressed sadness over the years or sometimes decades spent hiding a part of themselves.

“If I had discovered this freedom and clarity in my 20s, or if I was 20-something now, I would have a completely different outlook,” said TL Thompson, 42. “This young generation of queers were socialized very early in their development [to understand] that they could be whatever they wanted to be.”

For the adults interviewed for this project, coming into their identities later in life added complications to their established careers and relationships with partners, children, and their communities. Yet the stories that emerged were ultimately about resilience and love.

Bobbi Ullinger, 64, audio technician in Kent, Ohio

I can remember when I was little, really little, I would go to bed at night and say a prayer that I would wake up as a girl in the morning, and when I woke up in the morning, I’d be very disappointed that I wasn’t a girl. But there were also times I would be very relieved that my prayer was not answered, because I still wanted to be a boy, too.

I went through cycles where I would sneak into my mom’s closet. I would feel good dressing in her clothes, and then I would feel very ashamed and swear that I was never going to do it again. That went on for years — for most of my life. Even up until the time that we [Bobbi and her wife, Cathy] were married.

In the early days of the internet, there were just bulletin boards. Doing any kind of rudimentary search with the terms that I knew — cross-dresser or transvestite, transexual — even after the internet started to come around, all you would get was page after page of p*rnography. I knew that wasn’t me, and that put me further in the closet.

And then came the movie The Silence of the Lambs. It was about a guy who’s transgender, but the way he expresses himself is by killing women, skinning them, and sewing their skin together to make his own. And all I could think of is, this is what people think that I am. If I ever get caught, that’s what they think I’m going to be: a monster, a freak. That put me in total denial.

It wasn’t until I was in my mid-40s that I finally found a website called GRITS, which is an acronym for Girls Raised in the South. On there were stories of people, stories that sounded a lot like my story. And that was really the first time that I knew I wasn’t the only person like this in the world, that I was not some terrible freak.

From that website, I found another called Gender Tree, run by a trans woman named Sandra Stewart, and she was at the time in seminary. And she would take these verses that Christians used to clobber us over the head and tell us we’re going to go to hell, she would break these Scriptures down and show that they didn’t mean what they were being used for. That was my first inkling that maybe this is okay with God, that I’m not going to be condemned to hell.

So I ended up making a deal with God: This was okay to do, as long as it didn’t interfere with my relationship with my wife, Cathy, and my family, and with God. And like most of those kinds of deals with God, it lasted about six months or so before I started to feel guilty about keeping this thing from her.

The first thing [my wife] said [when I told her] was, if this has been going on for that long, then it’s obvious it’s not going to stop. So let’s figure out how to work through it. We had been married for 30 years.

I originally identified as a cross-dresser. It was in an online support group for other cross-dressers that somebody used the word bi-gendered. And it was like the lightbulbs went on, the choir of angels was singing, and the light was shining down on me.

That’s what I am. I feel both masculine and feminine. That was really the first inkling that I had of the gender spectrum, that you didn’t have to be one or the other. You can be both or neither.

When I’m talking to a group of people, that’s how I identify myself: “I’m Bobbi, and my preferred pronouns at this point are she/her/hers,” although that’s because right now I am presenting as Bobbi 99 percent of the time.

But for a long time — and I still am comfortable presenting in the middle — for my preferred pronouns, I had two asterisks and would say, it’s contextual. If I’m presenting masculine, he/him; if I’m presenting feminine, she/her; if I’m presenting in between, they/them.

As far as being gender-fluid, I still have those shifts, and I have no control over it. And it can just kind of pop up no matter how I’m presenting or the circ*mstances that I’m in. And I guess the best way that I can describe it is like a mental itching powder. It can really throw me off balance; it catches me by surprise.

One time in particular was really very awkward. I was dressed to the nines. Cathy and I were going to a small cabaret-style theater up in Cleveland. We walked in, got a glass of wine, sat down, and all of a sudden I’m feeling very, very macho and very masculine. I had a hard time really enjoying the play, because that was preoccupying my mind. There have been other times when I have been doing very manly, macho work and all of a sudden felt very demure and very feminine.

I’ve gotten better at being able to focus through that. And that’s kind of how I work my way through it — just really focusing on what I’m doing.

TL Thompson, 42, actor in New York City

My mom always took me to my aunt to get perms, or she would straighten my hair on the stove with an iron. She was really invested in making me the woman that she had grown up to be. This is what you do with your daughter, she probably thought. And I was just like, I love you, Mom, but I can’t. So at 11 or 12, I shaved my head. I was a little fearless and reckless in weird ways.

I loved Dirty Dancing. I was totally Patrick Swayze when I would act it out in my room. I was like, “Oh, my God, I can do that. I can act like I would want my life to be onstage in front of people. This is amazing. And you’ll pay me?” My mind was blown.

I come with a socialized female experience, and I think the combination of that experience, and the way that I look, and — people have said this to me before — the openness in my spirit makes it an interesting thing to watch.

As an actor, I’ve done roles where I’m wearing heels and a dress, and I’m a water nymph, and it’s like, yes, this feels right. I just did this web series called These Thems, and I play a DJ named TI, and they’re this smooth, nonbinary person that loves love and loves sex and is poly. And that feels good, too. That feels right, that feels true.

But while there are more specifically nonbinary roles now, the roles that I have traditionally gone for, the call sheet said female. I can play a small guy, maybe a scrappy guy, maybe the mischievous one. But I’m not going to be the leading football player dude. I’m never going to be that guy.

Men have a really hard time placing value on what trans masculine and nonbinary people are. They can’t get things from us that they would normally want from a feminine body, so our value is less than — it’s less than male, it’s less than female. So of course we’re not in media. Of course no one’s writing roles for us.

If I had discovered this freedom and clarity [to be nonbinary] in my 20s, or if I was 20-something now, I would have a completely different outlook. This young generation of queers were socialized very early in their development [to understand] that they could be whatever they wanted to be, more often than not.

I was at the end of the generation that had to work very hard to even be acknowledged as queer or nonbinary. In my day, you were butch or you were femme. There wasn’t even language in the mainstream that gave voice to the nuances in sexuality. I come from the generation of trans performers that had to pick a gender where roles were concerned.

I believe that the arts are a way to make social change. There’s so much beauty in a painting. There’s so much joy in a song. So much activism in theater. It’s always been that way. From the time we could tell stories, that’s the way that we change. And I think that’s absolutely why I’m an artist. That’s how you change the world, baby!

Leland Koble, 62, retired nurse in White Haven, Florida

I didn’t know I was a girl until the age of 5, when I went to kindergarten. My parents never, for whatever reason, had judgment, or asked me about my gender or my sexual choices. I don’t have one of those sad stories of being judged and oppressed. I grew up in a great family that allowed me to live my life like me.

When I was 54, I guess I came out in a different way. Because I found out then that my grandmother was Seminole Indian, and that’s why she used to call me “two-spirit.” At the time, I thought she meant I’m a Gemini. My grandparents were wealthy, and on Easter, they used to always have a party and all the little girls would be dressed in little bonnets. I was always playing with the little pigs [at their house]. My aunt used to say it’s disgusting, but my grandmother used to always say, you just need to leave that child alone. She’s two-spirit, and she’s going to do well.

Charlotte Kesl for Vox

I grew up in a little tiny town, with only, like, 12 kindergartners. Everything was fine until we went to phys-ed. The teacher said, “We’re going to play dodgeball,” so all the little boys lined up over here and all the little girls lined up over there. It was the most defining moment in my entire life. I ran over to where all the little boys were. I’ll never forget it: The teacher walked over to me, grabbed me by the arm, and said, “Kathy, you’re over here.” And she took me over to these screaming, giggling little girls. And I thought, these are not my people.

They called my dad to come to the school. When I went to the principal’s office, my dad was sitting there, his arms crossed. The principal said to my dad, we have a situation with your daughter. She refuses to play with the little girls. She’s always with the little boys. I’m going to have to request that tomorrow, and from then on, your daughter comes in dressed in the dress code, which is dresses down to knee length.

My dad stood up — I’ll never forget it — and just said, “Come on, we’re going home.” He looked at the principal and goes, “That’s not likely to happen.” And I never wore a dress to school again.

In a small town like that, where everybody knows everything, nobody wants a hassle. I really wasn’t judged much until I had my breasts removed [at age 54]. The transgender community tried to put pressure on me to make a decision about changing my gender, taking testosterone, and declaring who I was. I didn’t have much relationship with the community before surgery, except for a few trans friends. After surgery, there was a lot of pressure from certain patients to declare my gender and also about my non-use of testosterone.

Charlotte Kesl for Vox

I think using they/them pronouns is still really hard for people. Using they/them doesn’t make any sense to country folks. And they’re not having it. But you’re in New York? Okay, well, that’s completely different.

I think that acting somewhere in between a man and a woman, it’s still just inconceivable for more than 50 percent of the populace. It doesn’t make sense to them.

Darren Rosenblum, 50, law professor in New York City

For law school, I started out at CUNY, then transferred to the University of Pennsylvania. About 30 percent of the time, I was wearing dresses and skirts. At CUNY, people were really, really supportive, like vocally supportive, almost a little bit oppressive. And then at Penn, there was a small group of people who were really supportive in a cool way and then everybody else was just civil.

Once I graduated and worked at a law firm, I would trot out my dresses every now and then, but it became less and less. I put them in the back of my closet. I went to some interviews wearing a professional skirt and jacket, and I didn’t get any callbacks. Maybe it was that, or maybe it was just my own awareness, but I really shied away from [wearing dresses] throughout much of my career.

Then, five years ago, I started reintroducing women’s clothes into my wardrobe. It was maybe about two and a half years ago when I started wearing it [when I was teaching at] law school. There was an incident where this anti-trans activist from the Federalist Society came to debate me at school about bathrooms. And it felt like I really had to wear a skirt to represent.

The first time I wore [women’s clothes] to teach broke it open for me. And I did it more and more frequently. But I realize that my body is a man’s body. I’m not under any impression that people think that I pass as a woman. It means people probably think of me as a man wearing women’s clothes. I think of myself as more gender-fluid or nonbinary.

My daughter, I think a part of her thinks that this is natural and that’s who I am. And she sees me in a context where I am treated as completely normal for dressing this way. But I do think kids who are 10 are very aware of what’s normal for themselves and for their families. And so 10 is the age kids become very embarrassed of their parents all the time — and not just when their parents are gender-nonconforming. So whatever resistance she has is really just age-appropriate. But I know that she knows that this is who I am, and she’s playful about it and supportive about it in her own way. It’s not ever, “I wish you wouldn’t dress like that.”

I do think there’s more freedom for people today to be themselves at work and dating than I had when I was their age. That makes me happy. Although I should say, there’s a little sadness too, because I feel like being [LGBTQ] is so normalized now that there’s not that kind of camaraderie there used to be when I came out. You would see somebody who was visibly gay, there would be a sort of smile that you would share, and you would greet each other. And now that sort of doesn’t happen so much anymore.

I wear what I want, and I feel very feminine in what I wear, and I enjoy that. And that’s why I feel like “gender-fluid” might be more appropriate than “nonbinary,” but I don’t care about the labels. I think there’s some value in it, but the label isn’t a core part of what I’m doing.

Addison Rose Vincent, 27, activist in Los Angeles

When I was 21, I officially came out as nonbinary. Dating for me was incredibly hard. I just saw this post the other day saying that straight privilege is being able to date in middle and high school. I completely agree. I feel like at 27 years old, I’m still learning how to make friends, and how to have a relationship. I’ve had to not only navigate all that queerphobia and transphobia, but also so much social anxiety. I’ve had to unlearn really toxic and unhealthy representations of the community.

Until just this past year, I didn’t have a beard, and I presented in a way that many people would read as a trans woman. I was very feminine. I tried dating apps, like OkCupid, and if I put things like nonbinary on my profile, I would get so many questions, and so many people invalidating me, sending me horrible messages. Questions like, do you have a penis or vagin*? What are you, male or female? A couple guys were interested in me, but they didn’t really want to take me out on a date. They just wanted to hook up.

So I felt a lot of shame around who I was, because I felt that the only type of love or attraction that I was capable of receiving was if I was seen as a sexual object. It made me feel I was never going to be capable of dating.

Then I met Ethan, and everything kind of changed. He taught me that I’m worthy of love and affirmation beyond just being treated as a hookup. Which is how I’ve gotten to the point of really embracing my expression that I have now. For the longest time, I felt I had to keep shaving my beard and keep plucking my beard to get rid of it. And it didn’t really align with what I really truly wanted. But I felt that I had to do it. I had to do it to be attractive. I had to do it to be accepted. I had to do it in order to be palatable.

About a year ago, I started growing out my beard, and it was probably the most exciting thing that I had done in a long time. I felt that I was going against the norm and I was paving my own path. I had a lot of resistance. I felt it from people within the community, especially older trans women, who were my mentors and whom I looked up to. I’ve learned so much. I’ve grown a thicker skin now more than ever to people’s reactions, but I’m still really vulnerable.

When Ethan and I got married in July, we went to Puerto Rico for our honeymoon. We had been talking about how I should look, not because it was uncomfortable but as a matter of “How should we navigate this in order to be safe?” I decided that I needed to remove my beard.

My beard grows in extremely fast. Knowing that, and knowing we were outside of our home city, knowing that if I don’t blend in and look like a cisgender woman, we felt that I may experience violence. I ended up plucking my entire beard. It took me about four hours to do, and my face was extremely puffy.

Something that I talk about with other queer and trans people is just how fear can sometimes control our lives. But I’m in a place and in a time in an era where it’s a lot safer to be who I am today. Yes, there’s a lot more visibility, and with visibility comes violence, but I need to sometimes just learn to enjoy the moment and be present — be present with my fellow community members, with my siblings, with my family, with my partner, with my friends, and in the world.

We’re nothing new. We’ve been around for thousands of years, and we’re not going anywhere.

Annie Tritt is a New York-based photographer who seeks to create spaces where viewers have the potential to experience transformation. They have previously photographed and interviewed nonbinary youth for Vox, and their work has appeared in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Billboard, and Variety, among other outlets.

CREDITS
Editors: Karen Turner, Jessica Machado
Visuals editor: Kainaz Amaria
Copy editors: Tanya Pai, Tim Williams
Design: Amanda Northrop

More from this issue of The Highlight

Annie Mok for Vox

• The Assimilationist, or: On the unexpected cost of passing as a trans woman
• How baby clothes became a pink and blue battleground
• The pungent legacy of Axe Body Spray
• Opening a Pandora’s box of truths about rape kits