Neither Stone Nor Wing

In another world in another time, I would have grown up neither boy nor girl, but something entirely different. In English there are no words. All the language we have created-- transgender, transsexual, drag queen, drag king, stone butch, high femme, nellie, fairy, bulldyke, he-she, FTM, MTF-- places us in relationship to masculine or feminine, between the two, combining the two, moving from one to the other. I yearn for an image to describe my gendered self, not the shadow land of neither boy nor girl, a suspension bridge tethered between negatives. Rather I want a solid ground with bedrock of its own, wish for language to take me to a brand new place neither masculine nor feminine, day nor night, muscle nor bone, stone nor wing.

Eli Clare
'Neither Stone Nor Wing'

in From The Inside Out: Radical Gender Transformation, FTM and Beyond
edited by Morty Diamond