Shay’s story

Gender: nonbinary

Sexuality:  queer

Pronouns: they/them

Current home:  Washington D.C.

From: Atlanta, Georgia

Cultural Background/Identity: Black American

Interests: Learning, cooking, taking walks, reading, public speaking, content creation, writing, photography

One of my earliest memories is rejecting a pair of pink polka-dotted leggings my mother laid out for me. I didn’t have the language then, but I knew those clothes didn’t feel like mine.  From a young age, fashion and presentation became my first form of resistance. I preferred my brother’s hand-me-downs and never understood why gender was assigned so rigidly, especially for those of us assigned female at birth.

By age four, I knew I was only attracted to women. My first question wasn’t about love; it was about gender. Did liking girls make me a boy? I had no answers, only questions I wasn’t allowed to ask. Raised in a Southern, Black, Christian household, queerness was taboo, something to be silenced or punished. By age five, both my mother and observant, learning siblings were asking invasive questions. Was I gay? Did I want to be a boy? Their suspicions only deepened my sense that I was unsafe to be myself in the one place I most wanted to be loved.

Throughout childhood and adolescence, I was placed in white, Christian schools where my gender nonconformity made me even more isolated. During puberty, as my body changed in ways I couldn’t accept, I leaned into masculine expression: loose clothes, dark colors, nothing revealing. I faked crushes on boys and mimicked the performance of girlhood, but the truth always lingered just beneath the surface.

Middle school brought a more profound loss of agency. I was forced back into Christian schooling with strict gendered dress codes. Being required to wear a skirt every day was especially uncomfortable as it was a direct erasure of the self I was trying to protect. My adolescence was lonely. I had no one to confide in, no peers who reflected me, and no space where I felt seen.

Still, this solitude gave me something few people get so young: an unshakable knowledge of myself. In high school, I embraced androgyny. I dated quietly, found pockets of safety among friends, and began to discover myself more deeply. In college, I started using they/them pronouns and explored gender as something I could redefine for myself, not as a script I was obligated to perform.

Today, I reject the Western colonial institution of gender as it’s commonly enforced. I see how deeply it has been used to control, dehumanize, and limit those assigned female at birth. While I was born a Black woman and carry great pride in that lineage, I also know our liberation depends on imagining something freer.  I want better for us, not because we need to change who we are, but because we deserve to live outside of roles that diminish us.  I share my story to be remembered if ever I am erased for daring to exist this way. I hope my words reach another Black kid carrying the weight of their queerness in silence. You are not broken. You are not alone. You are worthy of love and safety while being your true self.