Edit: Sadly Feminist Writers Festival has shut down. Here’s an archive of my article.
As an AFAB nonbinary person, many feminist and womenโs spaces welcome me โ but often that welcome is itself a form of trans erasure, an insistence on seeing us as the genders we were assigned. I wrote about my uncomfortable relationship with feminist literary spaces for Feminist Writers Festival.
‘Iโm pretty accustomed to not feeling at home anywhere โ this is often a good thing, a productive tension. The can of worms fertilises the soil. But whether itโs Feminist Writers Festival, Facebook writersโ groups, or other feminist literary initiatives like the Stella Prize, I think itโs important to remember that you canโt simply tweak the category of woman to accommodate nonbinary people. Nonbinary disturbs the foundations of binary gender because itโs supposed to. Itโs intentionally an interruption, a question as well as an identity.’
