What gender do you consider yourself to be? How do you feel about terms and labels? How do you feel about your body in relation to your gender identity?
These are some of the questions Rhea Ewing has been asking people all over the Midwest as part of FINE, a series of interviews about gender Rhea puts together in graphic novel format. The initial project was a zine that can be read online. Now FINE is becoming a structurally ambitious, full-length book. The curious can follow its progress on Tumblr, Twitter, and Facebook.
As the interviewing stage nears completion, I got to turn the tables and ask Rhea some questions of my own.
Lately I've been thinking about the process of coming out and identities/shifting, and how for so many of us it's an ongoing/lifetime process. In part because we as individuals change, and/or in part because our environment changes, and/or in part because our identities can't be read on the outside, and/or because some of us feel the most comfortable in those in-between spaces yet sometimes feel compelled to "pick a side" (so to speak/referencing here the dualism so prevalent in mainstream Western culture), because the struggle to have our identities validated (or even finding language to define ourselves and our experiences) simply becomes too much work. But then when we "pick that side," we might eventually feel the weight of that boxed-in identity start to hurt, so we begin the process of coming out again... Or geez, to put it most simply, because things just change...