Jinghua Qian, ‘Walking away, backwards; or woman-lite in womenโs lit’, Feminist Writers Festival, 20 November 2020. Edited by Cher Tan.
When I got asked to write something for Feminist Writers Festival, I started to say no. I typed up a new version of the response Iโve sent so many times that I should probably just save it as a template: Thanks for thinking of me! I really appreciate the invitation, but at present I feel itโs not my place as not-a-woman to take this platformโฆ
But Cher and I chatted a bit more, and I came around to the idea that perhaps this conversation is worth having in public, especially in a feminist literary space.
*
Leaving womanhood reminds me of the apologetic way I exited the church โ looking to the altar, sidestepping, genuflecting before turning my back on the cross. I used to be a woman and a Catholic, and it seems that until I commit to a new god or gender, Iโll forever remain a lapsed Catholic and womanish. Woman-lite.
In early 2015, I wrote this poem while on the cusp of leaving:
leaving traces
being a woman costs too much
were it a job Iโd have quit
but thatโs not it, as such
it feels more like kin
like folks I didnโt choose
but begrudgingly belong to
other women make it
almost worthwhile
but thatโs not it as such,
it feels more like a place
that follows me as I leave
like I donโt really speak the language anymore
but somehow it still shows on my face
All these years of wearing
elsewhere in my eyes
can I afford another layer
of answering why I am here
where did I come from
what is my real name
I am solid until Iโm touched
then diaspora
one thousand pieces
of wandering
my face already
conveys
too much
*
Whenever Iโm asked to speak or write or perform for a feminist event, I see myself go out of body again. For a split second, I slip into a parallel life of being a woman and doing woman things. I mean, I donโt know what โwoman thingsโ are โ maybe I never did โ and probably binary gender is a prison even for cis people. Of course I donโt think that feminism is only for women, or that feminist spaces should necessarily be womenโs spaces. But I also know that Iโm accepted by the sisterhood because Iโm seen as woman-lite. Close enough.
Iโm not a woman and Iโm not a man. Genderfluid, if Iโm forced to answer, or nonbinary, though that doesnโt always fit. Itโs okay if you donโt know what that means, because sometimes I donโt either. Whenever Iโm asked to identify with a gender, I offer a string of finicky metaphors.
I grew up as a girl. Iโve been referring to myself with gender-neutral pronouns โ inconsistently โ for the last fifteen years, even when I was cis. I stopped understanding myself as a cis woman around five years ago, but the only thing I did to โtransitionโ was to revert to my birth name. I am still interpreted and interpellated as a woman most of the time. I am not trans enough for most trans people. And I hated writing this paragraph: I hate describing myself in this naked and banal way, but I donโt think any of this will make sense otherwise.
There were two other things I did as part of my โtransitionโ (although that feels like far too momentous a word to describe these reversible administrative tasks). One of them was to ask my friends to refer to me with gender-neutral pronouns. The other was to leave all the womenโs groups I was in โ mostly networks for women of colour. Even when I was cis, I was never white, so I was never all that comfortable in most Australian feminist spaces to begin with.
The following year, I left the continent. By the time I came back to Australia three years later, a lot of these womenโs groups had shifted their remit to accepting various configurations of โwoman and otherโ: women and nonbinary folk, for instance, or everyone but cis men. Effectively, these groups feel like women 2.0 or women* or women+. Women โ which is to say cis women โ and people with footnotes. Women plus women-lite. After all, these are feminist spaces converted from (cis-centric) womenโs spaces, and they show their bones.
I joined several groups for writers and editors that still have names like โBinders Full of Womenโ, though their descriptions specify that genderqueer and nonbinary people are included too. Most of the genderqueer and nonbinary people in these spaces seem to be people who were assigned female at birth (AFAB), like me.
Feminist spaces typically welcome AFAB nonbinary people while freezing out nonbinary people who were assigned male at birth (AMAB). Often, there are more AFAB non-women in womenโs spaces than there are trans women. As a nonbinary person who is not a woman yet easily accepted as one, my presence in feminist and womenโs spaces is often framed as part of a positive shift towards greater trans inclusion: oh, trans people, we have those! But I know the hospitality I receive is frequently also a form of trans erasure โ an insistence on seeing us as the genders we were assigned. The overrepresentation of AFAB non-women in these spaces can reinforce the exclusion and marginalisation of AMAB people.
Everyone has their own interpretation of this. Iโm not necessarily asking AFAB nonbinary people to withdraw from feminist spaces. Neither am I asking all womenโs groups to include nonbinary people. Itโs okay to have things that are just for women, as well as things for not-men, as well as things for everyone who wants to see the end of patriarchy. I get that weโre all still figuring out how to do feminism beyond binary gender โ itโs an ongoing process of collective political imagination alongside individual calibration. But Iโm always reassessing myself in relation to gendered spaces: Is this too woman for me? Am I going to be useful here? Personally, Iโm also pretty accustomed to not feeling at home anywhere โ and 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.
Some nonbinary people would prefer to depoliticise and domesticate it โ to say that my being nonbinary doesnโt affect you and your gender, and that itโs just another identity in a sea of gender diversity, that itโs not an ideology. Thatโs not totally true for me. I do think my gender should make a difference in how you think about yours and vice versa. Gender is relational and mine isnโt constituted in a vacuum. Iโm not sorry for making this complicated. Ask me to do a feminist thing, and I have to ask: What is the relationship between feminism and women? What is a woman?
Jinghua Qian 