Emma Rohan is 23-year-old gender non-conforming lesbian. They spoke about affirming their queer identity – and rejecting the gender binary – through fashion.
Alphabet Soup shares LGBTQ+ Missourians’ stories through portraiture and personal narratives.
Emma Rohan: This expectation of nonbinary people, gender non-conforming people, anybody like existing outside of the gender binary – the expectation for them to be androgynous and that’s the only way you can be nonbinary is like, if people walk up to you, and they’re like, “Are you a boy or a girl?”
I struggle with that, because I don’t want people to come up to me and say, “Are you a boy or a girl?” Because that’s not what I’m looking for. I don’t want to look like a boy or a girl. I don’t feel the need to look like I’m somewhere in between because that’s not how I feel. I feel like, like a secret third thing, like, I’m just, I’m unrelated.
But I love feminine clothing, and I love masculine clothing, and I love exploring fashion. To me fashion doesn’t equal gender even though I know that that’s how we display it like in larger society.
So, I have to find a lot of ways to affirm my own gender because I do present very feminine – like very feminine. I love little skirts. I love little tops. Like I just I feel like a Barbie. It’s cute. And I’m obsessed.
Wearing a binder really, really, really affirms my gender. I will literally rock a flat chest look in like an itty bitty top and a miniskirt, and just suddenly I’m like, “Yep, this is the pinnacle of no gender,” and I just, I love it.
And I do find that a lot of my gender affirming comes from my clothes and just wearing like the wackiest most fun things, like if I look at it, and I’d say, “This brings me joy,” then I’m gonna put it on.
I don’t I don’t care what it looks like. I don’t care if it’s flattering. It’s just it’s not something that I think about anymore, and that’s affirming.
And something that – oh my gosh, I was wearing the teeniest tiniest little, like, brown, blue and pink dress with some like little boots on campus with like pink barrettes in my hair.
And I was walking to class and one of those like surveyors, you know, who’d been out on campus came up to me and goes, “Hey, Sir’am…”
I was like, “What?”
And they’re like, “Oh, my, I’m so sorry. I was like, I was saying ‘Sir,’ and then I said, ‘Ma’am,’ and then I said ‘Sir’am’ and I’m not really sure, I don’t, you’re so androgynous, like, I don’t know what to say.”
I was like, “Me? Androgynous? Like in this skirt and barrettes, like, thank you.”
It was just, it was the biggest compliment, it was the most affirming thing.
And I have not shut up about that moment for months, like I walked into my class, and I was like, “Guys, I just got Sir’am-ed.” New prefix dropped. Like suddenly I’m Sir’am Emma. Only refer to me as such.
