Ren’s Story

Gender: agender/gender nonconforming/genderqueer

Sexuality: aromatic asexual

Pronouns: they/them/ze/zem/zir

Current home: Hampton Roads, Virginia

From: Grew up in the suburbs of Chicago, then lived in Britain for 8 years before moving back to the USA and ending up here in Hampton Roads.

Interests: reading, writing, animals, disability justice, mutual aid, growing community, linguistics, gardening and nature

Growing up, I never felt like I fit in with either boys or girls and I didn’t know anyone outside the gender binary. I am AFAB and a lot of the scoldings I got were for not acting lady-like. “Don’t sit like that, that’s not how ladies sit” and “don’t burp, ladies don’t burp” and so on. My brothers could sit how they wanted. It was my first taste of rules being different for different people.

I didn’t fit in with most girls, but boys hated me. So I never got the label tomboy, though my behavior fit. I loved catching toads in the forest preserve and literally every insect ever. I once used my butterfly net to catch a bunch of yellow jackets. Eventually I made friends with other oddballs like me. Now I know that we were all just neurodivergent.

There are all these social rules you have to follow, especially as a child. And these rules are different for everyone and change constantly. The popular boy at camp could blatantly cheat at the card game and it was funny, but if I objected or tried to cheat as well, then I was “ruining the fun”.  So I stopped trying to figure out the why of the rules and just tried to follow them as best as I could. One of the rules was that I was a girl.

I developed a lot of mental health problems and negative coping mechanisms. I experienced several traumas and developed PTSD. I eventually discovered I was autistic at 28, but just tried to keep going like a neurotypical and between all the trauma and dissociation, I ended up with a severe chronic pain disease. I still have it. 

It’s two such small words – chronic pain. But they encapsulate so much more. A chronic pain disease comes with brain fog, migraines, severe fatigue, and continuous pain. And you never heal.  You can learn to manage chronic pain, but there aren’t any known ways to cure it. It completely changed my life. I couldn’t function at all like I used to. I couldn’t do the job I was doing. I couldn’t socialize the way I used to. I’ve even had to change how I cook and do chores.

I coped the best way I knew how: through books and community. I read about autism and PTSD and cPTSD and disability justice and queer studies. And I learned so much about myself. I finally had all these answers for why the world didn’t make sense. And I found other neurodivergent and gender nonconforming people and community, mostly through Eleanor’s Bookstore and Bottleshop which is why I wanted to take my photos here. 

It was reading about autism that made me realize that all of these rules that I had been conditioned into following without question as a child – I don’t have to follow them. There are so many more ways of being than cisheternormative and I am allowed to be queer. It’s honestly been a roller coaster. In the last two years, my physical capabilities completely changed and I learned that I am autistic, agender, asexual, and aromantic. 

Without these labels, I never would have found the courage to be who I am, to claim this way of living. But I also know just how much labels can exclude people. Especially within the medical model of disability where an “expert” gets to decide if you get support or not. So I am also trying to release my hold on labels. To use them as a communication device, but to keep them fluid and to keep learning about what they mean to me and to others.

I would like to finish on my special interest – books. I love reading. I have read and tracked over 1,100 books on the StoryGraph. So my top 3 all time recommendations* are:

The Murderbot Diaries by Martha Wells (because series only count as 1 book)

Unmasking Autism by Devon Price

Mad World: The Politics of Mental Health by Micha Frazer-Carroll

*Subject to change if I read something even better in the future!

PHOTOGRAPHER’S NOTE:   When I ran into Ren last week at a local music/comedy night, I told them I was finally working on their photos this week and apologized for the six months it has taken me.  They said “oh that’s okay!  It’s the neurodiversity!”    I nodded, but it did take me a moment to embrace that conclusion.

Over time—both on the road and back at my home base—conversations with people like Ren have helped me begin to accept my own neurodiversity and invisible disabilities, which I had long tried to ignore to my own detriment. I still catch myself doing that sometimes, pushing those parts aside, until gentle reminders like this that it’s okay to acknowledge, grapple with, and even celebrate all the parts of ourselves that shape how we move through the world. Gender, too, feels inseparable from these intersecting pieces of identity.

So thank you to people like Ren who are willing to verbalize the things that are supposed to stay invisible – gender, neurodiversity, disability.   Oh, and this photo set has a few extras – I can’t help it when there’s furry friends and human friends joining in on photo sessions!

Photos taken November 2024