Credit: Publisher
3 min read
Writer and performer Travis Alabanza’s debut book None of the Above interrogates the lens through which we view gender today. Here, in an extract from the book, they reflect on the ways they’ve been forced to navigate societies’ expectations of them as a non-binary person.
I sit in the GP’s office.
He asks, ‘So, when did you know?’
I say, ‘Always,’ because I’ve heard simplicity gets results.
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It is one phrase that has spanned across my lifetime. No matter what setting, country, or occasion – it remains undefeatable. Like a cockroach that refuses to disappear, it doesn’t care which part of my life I am in, it will always emerge:
‘So, when did you know?’
People always ask me this, or if I am not around, they will be sure to ask my mother, or a friend, or even a teacher that I haven’t seen in years – ‘So, when did Travis … you know?’ The ‘you’ and ‘know’ will come with verbalised italics. If an emoji could appear out of thin air, it would be the eyes darting to the side of the room accompanied by a vague hand gesture, as if to say: so, when was it clear Travis would become a cross-dressing deviant who is straying from God’s path?
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