Navigating the world as a non-binary queer disabled Gen Z

“Life has always been a race for me—a race to catch up to able-bodied intimacy, able-bodied pleasure and able-bodied gender norms”

I like to think that the difference between my birth name (Anusha) and my chosen name (Nu) is that Anusha was someone who was ashamed of their identity and would hide their physical disability by wearing long skirts, hiding her crutch in group pictures, and not recognising their disability as something to be discussed, or dwelt upon. Or even be proud of.

Nu is my identity after Revival Disability, the collective of disabled and queer folx (a gender-neutral term) in India that I founded two years ago at 22. The act of starting a collective made me realise my identity and helped me become more of myself every single day. I am not self-made, I am community made, and I firmly believe in collective healing and joy.

I identify as a non-binary, queer disabled individual. My assigned gender at birth (AGAB) was female. But, somehow, I never truly fit into the norms that were prescribed for me. I always felt like I never truly belonged—always ill-fitted and neither here nor there. These differences became more prominent when I became disabled due to a medical condition. As I grew up in a hetero, ability normative environment, I began to question everything around me.

Creating my path

I'm still becoming more and more of myself every day. But just because I've realised my identity doesn't mean I've entirely accepted myself.

It's been two months since I've realised I find comfort in being gender queer—in not conforming, and I'll tell you why. My identity gives me the freedom to choose, freedom of agency that I've never had regarding my medical condition or mobility. There are things in life that I can't control, like my disability, and then there are things where I get to carve out with my own curved disabled fingers, like my gender identity and the history of communities I want to be remembered by. All my life, I've spent catching up to people, able-bodied norms, even gender norms. My non-binary identity is freedom from all of that.

Reaching this conclusion, however, wasn't easy. When I was in the process of questioning my gender, I remember feeling guilty and fearful – my mind was full of doubts and questions. The biggest amongst those feelings was my guilt of privilege—I was privileged enough to question my current reality and rebel against it. I remember continually asking myself, "Do I deserve to be non-binary?"

The reason I was feeling guilty was because I have the cis privilege. Cis is a person who feels comfortable with the gender they're assigned to at birth, e.g. cis-man and cis-woman. A lot of this has to do with appearance. I "look" like a woman, but I still am not one. However, I won't be discriminated against in public because of being non-binary. That part of my gender is not visible. A visibly trans person, on the other hand, would be subject to violence in public for not conforming to society.

My advent into non-binaryness

I feel like cutting my hair was the start of realising my identity in a cis dominated patriarchal world where access to empowerment has gatekeepers. I've started to call my non-binary identity a Nu kind of non-binaryness because I'm non-binary, in my own unique kind of way.

So, again answering the question: what exactly is non-binary? By definition, it indicates that non-binary folx are neither men nor women. Well, then what are they? We are whoever we want to be. We don't conform to gender norms of either male or female, so we've created this fabulous place in-between. I imagine it's a mixture of yellow, white, purple and black (the non-binary pride flag colours!).

How is gender identity different from gender expression?

Gender identity is feeling uncomfortable in the gender you were assigned at birth, unlike gender expression. So, for example, a man doesn't become genderqueer just because he puts on nail polish or wears earrings—he has to identify as genderqueer.

Some genderqueer folx feel uncomfortable with processes that their assigned body at birth undergoes, such as menstruation. Gender queerness goes beyond genitals—it lies in the freedom to create one's own fluidity whether one wants to be known as a man, a woman, a person in-between or neither.

Last year, I realised that I would like to be addressed with they\them pronouns, and that made me really joyful. Two years ago, I would've felt differently about cutting my own hair; I thought I had to "look", "move", and "talk" in a certain way to achieve able-bodied femininity: a kind of femininity that always looked down upon me and mocked my disabled body.

For example, my non-disabled classmates in school would never really include me in conversations surrounding sexuality and pleasure. It was automatically assumed that I was sexless because I was physically disabled. This made me feel resentful towards able-bodied norms of gender and sexuality. I began to loathe my disabled body because they were incapable of "looking", "moving", and "performing" in a certain way. Gender is, at the end of the day, a performance—one that I haven't really been able to live up to.

Finding joy in the form of community

It has taken me a long time to accept my gender queerness, along with my disability. I'm 24, and for the past ten years of my life, I never felt like I belonged in any educational institution or under any label that society imposed on me with its expectations of how I should use that label. Until I found my community, disabled folks who have taught me to sing, dance and sit with my disability—not try to get rid of it or fight it. To leave it be. Queer folx have taught me how to embrace my sexuality in my own imperfect, disabled way. There is no right way to be queer or disabled. Everyone who identifies as queer or disabled is enough for themselves and the world.

Most of all, my community has taught me joy—the joy that comes with realising that I'm finally in control of what I think about myself and my body. And no one can change that.

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