One of the older campers happens to have the same name as me, and we develop a ritual. Every time I see him, I reach out to shake his hand, stifle a giggle and say, Hi Henry, said Henry, to Henry, from Henry!
The first time I brought my partner to my place, I asked them to wait outside my bedroom — I wanted to make sure that there was nothing inside that I didn’t want them to see.
“You do know that all female news readers are supposed to be slim, trendy and attention grabbers, right?”
New province, new school, new friends. This is all well and good but I’m still frustratingly the same.
The moment she woke up to loud gospel music blaring from the kitchen, she immediately groaned.
Deodorant is a cheap way to ensure you smell fresh so people are willing to sit next to you on the bus.
One morning when I was in Grade Five I woke up with a giant pimple on my left cheek.
Mystique and Villanelle each fight against a world that tries to limit their capabilities and desires. They inspired me to be brave by being myself.
I didn’t catcall women, brag about sexual conquests or demean people with names. So how could I be affected by toxic masculinity?
"I think mentorship means so much more between women when it’s covered with solidarity of knowing that it’s not just about those big issues that are often heavy and difficult, but it’s also about coming into these places with a sense of humour.”
University should be a safe space to experiment with expressing your identity through your look.
Mulan, who went to war in place of her father, was never a warrior by nature. She was just being punished by a sin that she had never committed.
This whole issue being on the topic of gender and performance made me curious about peoples’ writing. Do we ‘perform’ our genders every time we sit down at the keyboard? In other words, could there be any signs in a person’s writing of what gender they are?
Dysphoria with my body and how I was perceived had come to a head and simply put, pretending to be a woman was no longer a viable option.
We complement each other well. Both of us live without and between gender, weaving our identities like tangled embroidery thread in a colourful drawer.
Our first date was one of endurance. We walked for hours downtown and my shoulder grew tired from the regret of putting so much stuff in my bag in an earlier fit of nerves.
My brother was born in 1994. My dad decided to name him ‘智铭’ (Zhiming), meaning ‘knowledge engraved.’ Five years later they had me, their youngest daughter. They named me ‘智文’ (Zhiwen), meaning ‘knowledge in literature.’ My dad sometimes used to accidentally call me by my brother’s name. He also stumbled with English pronouns, mixing up the ‘he’s and ‘her’s.
