Member-only story
I was with my girlfriends at A Club Called Rhonda in Los Angeles, and by “girlfriends” I mean friends who are girls. I am male, but do not identify either as a man or with masculinity; I instead identify with femininity, but not as a woman. I thus feel in alignment with the colloquial term “girlfriend” to refer to close female friends, and think it is interesting that close male friends do not call each other “boyfriends.” I grew up at Rhonda; it was there that I began experimenting with makeup, exploring my queerness, and realizing my non-binariness. I used to smear my lipstick across my face, and for a time was referred to as the “guy with the smeared lipstick.” I rarely wear avant-garde makeup at Rhonda anymore because I am too exhausted to endure the stress that accompanies queering gender norms, and as of the last presidential election I am also too scared to be made up strangely when traveling to and from the venue. I assimilate into a façade of normativity in order to protect myself from harassment, and note that white male privilege is what allows me to do this. If I am not wearing makeup, then I am read as a white man, and being read as a white man grants me privileges that bodies of color do not receive. While I may look like a white man, I am not; I am a non-binary feminist spy, and I am a critical observer of how whiteness is enacted in everyday situations.
Anyway, I was conversing with my girlfriends in the outdoor smoking area when suddenly a white man inserted himself into our conversation: “I never really thought I was…
