Can you see me beyond the binary? Three poems and three invitations

Abstract

These three poems sought to navigate and share my experiences as a non-binary person within two institutions at different time points. The first two were written to the same educational institution several months apart, with the second coming in the wake of the April 2025 UK Supreme Court ruling. The third was written during a hospital admission one month on from the same ruling, a changing and cold landscape of care that felt increasingly unsafe for a gender diverse person in this moment in time. I am a human being; I am fully living in existing beyond the binary. I’m asking you to see me, and look at the world with me in these words to understand an othered experience (Shotter, 2009). So many conversations are happening about gender diverse people without us, for to converse with me, I’m asking you to look beyond the binary. In this way, I’m seeking to engage you in “being” with me on the path to ”becoming", or growing together mutually, as I ask you to engage with our collective humanity. I hope by unusually asking you to move from the witnessing position in reading my words, to the active position of contending with different forms of questioning, that you might sense that mutual growing together and coming into action (Andersen, 2012). These questions invite you to take multiple perspectives, and I’m interested in what happens within you as this sharing happens to us both. What new ways of thinking, values, endings, or beginnings enter your mind if any? In my experience working with allies, our best work is done in equal parts, while I am and I exist, and I’m sharing this with you, I ask that you actively engage with me too.