Ro shared their three identities with me as ‘Ro’, ‘Non-Binary’ and ‘Coach’. As with many of these narratives, their story is one of discovery and change, more recently including a journey to leave behind the identity of ‘woman’, into a ‘middle space’. They describe this as a process of realisation, socialisation and evolving social norms, and finally a brave leap.
Through our conversation, Ro spoke with a confidence that i think shines through, and i have tried to preserve that language.
NOTE these identity stories are all published under pseudonyms, which gave us a bit of a dilemma here, as Ro (not their real name) chose their real name as core to their identity. In the first part of this story, where they talk about their name, and the contraction from ‘Rowan’, the language may not flow as well as it did in their original telling, but i think the ideas come through just fine. We chose the pseudonym together.
Ro’s Identity Story
The three identities most central to who i am are ‘Ro’, ‘Non Binary’ and ‘Coach’.
My primary identity is my name: it stops people making assumptions.
My second identity is ‘non binary’, which is interesting, because different people have seen me in different ways over the years. Being non binary is very androgynous, so my primary identity lies in my name, ‘Ro’.
My third identity is as a Coach: i spend my life coaching people in one way or anther, whether officially or unofficially. Trying to help people to recognise themselves, to tease out what they are trying to say.
It’s ‘Ro’, not ‘Rowan’. People only called me Rowan when they were annoyed with me. From an early age i wanted people to call me Ro. Forget about the ending, just call me Ro!
When my mum passed away a few years ago, i said to her in the hospital, ‘why on earth did you call me Rowan?’. She said that they had been told they were having a boy, and had chosen [Ro’s real name]. When i was born, they did not have a girls name, so one of the nurses said to stick an ‘e’ on the end. [NOTE this story is about their real name - it makes more sense there, but i wanted to keep it in]
So not much thought went into that!
She had always felt she was having a boy, and for me, shortening my name at an early age let me understand where my brain was going. I was always convinced that i was half of a twin in any case.
My name informs my identity - more than anything - i have always tried to neutralise my gender and Ro could be anything.
Labels are for everyone else. I don’t see labels, i see people for who they are.
For me it’s all been about hanging who i am on my name, but my name is who i am.
The earliest thoughts i had about gender was when i was growing up. At that time we were still under section 28 [NOTE ‘Section 28’ was a series of UK laws, active between 1988-2000, which prohibited the ‘promotion of homosexuality’ by local authorities, and hence limited education around sexual preference and identity in schools], so there was no conversation about gender or identity.
However my mum was always very androgynous anyway, so i modelled myself on her. Don’t ever put me in skirt etc.
From about age ten or eleven you start to see other people in new ways: i would always want to play football, which is very gendered itself - i had more of an affinity to lots of male friends, i have very few girl friends.
I asked some friends recently about how they saw me at school, when growing up. They turned around and said ‘you were always on the peripherals of all the different groups - you could change who you were depending on which group you were acting with’.
One of my best friends now says it was only in the latter stages of school that we became good friends. She says ‘Ro, we never really got to know you at school’, and i say ‘nobody did’.
It was a form of protection really.
Aged seven or eight i got badly beaten up for hanging around with boys. The girls commented on it.
My mum said hit them back, and i did.
From that point onwards, hanging around on the edges, being what people wanted you to be at the time, made my life easier.
I had thoughts of who i was, but it was better to be who others wanted me to be in certain scenarios.
In past ten or fifteen years i leant that hiding yourself makes a rod for your own back.
If you are as open as i am, you can attract certain types of people within the community, but also you get to see the nasty side as well.
To me i do not care what people think about me.
Surprisingly it was probably about eighteen months ago that i first vocalised being non binary. I was unsure what people would think about it.
We were dong something at work as part of Pride week and i had bought in a speaker who is gender fluid. They described how they would wake up in the morning and ask ‘is it a frock or a trouser day?’. They turn up to work in both. I bought that person in to talk about their life, their realisation, the support that they had, and i realised that if they could live their life like that, in a rather conservative organisation, then what am i scared of?
I came home that day as normal, and sat with my partner watching tv, then i burst into tears. We had the whole conversation and she said ‘do you think that this changes how i feel about you?’
So i said right, that’s it: because i don’t really identify with either. My mum had always called me androgynous and it just feels that it fits quite nicely.
Picking up on an identity as non binary is useful - i am right down the middle!
I would say that i am quite different now than i was those eighteen months ago, both in how i look, and in my confidence.
I have always been confident, but at the same time this has changed me so that i can now openly support the community that i am part of.
In my identity as a Coach: a coach is someone who helps you to achieve something because they help you to find the answer inside yourself. A mentor shares their own experience. Coaching is the way i am always able to see something inside of somebody, and to help them to make the most of who they are. Sometimes i do this without even realising that i am!
I slip into coaching in my work and private life: i find that it fits nicely in this chameleonic form that i have, always sitting on the edge of things. The things that other people ride roughshod over, i would rather get to the centre of it. The coach identity gives you those skill sets that allow you to do that. People do ask me for input or guidance, but the coach self reflects it back to them.
In every role that i’ve ever had, coaching has been central to what i have achieved. Helping other people to be who they want to be.
Nobody knows all of my identities: even my partner says ‘you are like an onion!’ We keep on finding out something else about you. Not even i know everything about me!
I think identity is an eternal process of discovery.
I am always self questioning: i can be very hard on myself. If i don’t understand something i will dive into it and research it. I tend to go back into my history, to see what the trigger point was.
I have left behind an identity in the past, the identity of victim. But that’s not something i want to talk about now.
I don’t think that anyone would dare to challenge my identity. I mean, my opinions get challenged sometimes, and i am happy to change my opinions, but my identity has never been challenged.
At least, not by others: i challenge myself all the time. I get some people who question me about this, but i find i always have an answer.
I am able to speak with strength about this, because it’s a story from when i was eight or nine years old. Unless you can stand up for yourself, how can you stand up for others?
Advocacy is a skill that more people need.
Who owns my identity? Well i do. If people put an identity on me, then they are labelling me. And that is their issue.
In terms of whether my identity is linked to a specific group or community, well i am a community of one! When you are in the gay alphabet, sometimes you are part of a community with other people - like when you go on a PRIDE march, you are standing up on those rights. But i will always support other communities.
Does group identity limit my individual action? No, not for me. Maybe once upon a time, when i was younger, when i was naive or scared, but no, it should not stop you.
I guess, if i think about it, sometimes when we consider going on holiday you have to wrap yourself up, or watch what you say. You cannot challenge the social norms in other countries.
You have to understand the social norms and stay within them.
I have felt trapped within my identity before: my first two marriages were to men. The first was very much what i expected, but he was violent. The second was that i wanted a family, and at that time gay adoption was not a thing. It was that you had to stick in a family unit. But i could not have children, so i felt trapped. But i did get out and we are good friends still.
I think this was to do with the socio cultural roles we had to play.
Am i the same person that i used to be? God no! You change every year. I am a work in progress: i will always be changing. If you are stuck in your ways, as our parents were, then you will never change, you will never learn. You never grow.
Young people now, they will flip and flop and change and grow all the time.
I am continually evolving and changing. That is prevalent in my jobs. I have never sorted out a whole career and stayed there. I am restless.
Is there a core? I think in your core you are similar - but you are evolving. At all levels. Evolution is different from change which you can predict. It’s organic.
Is my identity linked to my gender? Well, the identity that i left behind was ‘woman’. It was a social acceptance thing. I remember a CLO saying ‘leadership is defined by being male or female’, but you need to start widening your research a bit!
When we stop talking about gender, and talk about the individual, that’s when you get your true understanding.
For such a long time you have a stereotypical language. What men and women do.
Now there is so much more to think about.
It’s not a war - it has to do with age as well - the people having issues are the forty plusses. They tend not to worry too much. The argument for biological definition will never change - what you are born or assigned, but it should be more what you feel like.
Then you have all the political shit - toilets. Athletics etc.
Especially from a trans perspective. They jump from one to the other.
Gender is going through it’s journey mapping - as long as people think of people as a persona it is alway the other persons problem.
My identity is not fragile.
But it is precious. Especially if people keep mis-gendering you. Then i get miffed.
People who meet me now, they see an outwardly different person. Just a different appearance. Anyone who is my friend, i know it does not bother them.
Being confident has made it easier. I do get rather blasé about it in certain environments.
I did not used to think that my identity was connected to the physical features of my body, so i would have said ‘no’, but i think the more i think about it now it is connected to my outward appearance. There is some link certainly.
But my identity is not defined by a specific physical feature of my body: my brain defines it.