00:00I'm not lesbian enough.
00:01I'm not butch or femme enough.
00:03I'm not masculine enough.
00:04I'm not trans enough.
00:06I'm not gay enough.
00:07I'm not muscular enough.
00:08I'm not tall enough.
00:09I'm not skinny enough.
00:10I don't know enough about gay history.
00:13I don't know drag queens enough.
00:16I'm not LGBTQ enough.
00:21Hey, my name is Jamie.
00:22Hey guys, my name is Erin.
00:23Hi, my name's Bit.
00:24Hey y'all, I'm Eddie Jarrell Jones with an X on the N.
00:27Hi, my name is Bronson.
00:28And as a non-binary trans person.
00:30A lesbian.
00:30Lesbian.
00:31Gay.
00:32A gay, black, non-binary man who lives his life unapologetically,
00:36sometimes I still feel like I don't fit in.
00:38Within the gay community, not everyone has the same icons.
00:42Not everyone knows how to decorate, or is fashionable,
00:46or cares about the circuit party, or Fire Island.
00:50You know, like I've never done a lot of those things.
00:52I got called a bad gay person and a bad person of color
00:56because I attended Coachella.
00:58And I feel like there has been an increasing number of protests
01:04and demonstrations over the course of the year, right?
01:08And that has bled into an expectation that if you are part
01:11of this community, that every action you do is a protest.
01:14Every action that you do is meant to stand for something.
01:17I don't necessarily care about being an activist for gay causes.
01:22That's great, but I'm not living my life as a gay person.
01:25I'm Bronson first.
01:27So I identify as a black, non-binary, meaning I really don't care about gender
01:34and what that means to society.
01:36I kind of see myself as a being and I express myself through femininity
01:40and masculinity when I see fit.
01:42And outside of that, in the gay community, it's very hard to be a femme male
01:49because everybody's like, I want to be with a guy that looks like a guy.
01:51I'm just as much of a man as you are.
01:53At times, I feel like I'm not masculine enough and it hurts,
01:57but it's kind of coming from my own community.
01:59A lot of gay men feel like if you're not a big muscle guy or don't go to the gym
02:04or don't watch sports, that you're just this girly girl.
02:07And they don't want to have anything to do with you
02:09because they want to be with a masculine guy.
02:11I'll take the trash out.
02:12I'll pump the gas.
02:13I like to play basketball.
02:15Like, I ran track.
02:15I'm an athlete.
02:16Like, there's a lot that makes me masculine for who I am.
02:21I am identifying as a queer kid.
02:24Like, I'm just a bunch of the colors in the rainbow all mashed together.
02:29And that's what makes me, like, extra and Eddie.
02:32I would say, in general, the stereotype of a lesbian is that you're, like, super masculine
02:36and that lesbians are either butch or femme, meaning, you know,
02:39either you're very masculine or very feminine and that you have to date your opposite.
02:43When I first came out, I'd be like, I'm gay.
02:45And people started, like, hmm, well, okay, the shirt is butch, but the pants are very femme.
02:50And then I had to be, like, so one way that they tell you to decide whether
02:54or not you're butch or femme is to look at your childhood.
02:57Like, what sorts of toys did you play with?
02:59What kind of playmates did you have?
03:00And that was, like, not helpful for me because I was interested in everything.
03:04I played with everybody.
03:05I had Barbies.
03:07I had GI Joes.
03:08I climbed trees.
03:09I went through a princess phase.
03:10So, like, that was a dead end for me.
03:11Speaking more for me as a lesbian femme, some of the stereotypes are that it's a phase
03:19or you haven't met the right guy yet or you're in between.
03:23Even in my own LGBT community, I've had girls who I've dated didn't even think that I was steady
03:30in the movement of being a lesbian.
03:33So, I think those are the stereotypes that I have to fight every day, being a lipstick lesbian.
03:38So, a lipstick lesbian is pretty much a girly girl who's a lesbian.
03:42Just the heterosexual normative of being a cis female or wearing the lipstick, makeup, hair done,
03:48all of that type of stuff, but still being a lesbian.
03:50Even when people look at me, they all automatically assume that I'm straight.
03:55It's like I literally have to come out every single day.
03:59I've had people come up to me after I've said that I'm a lesbian say,
04:03okay, then prove it.
04:04Kiss her.
04:05What?
04:06Under the trans umbrella, there are a plethora of people and identities.
04:09Trans women, trans men, trans masculine people, trans feminine folks, non-binary folks,
04:15genderqueer, agender, etc.
04:16So, when people think trans and they think Caitlyn Jenner, Janet Mock, Laverne Cox,
04:22they see a very specific representation of a whole trans spectrum.
04:26I feel like there's been a growing culture of normativity of what it means to be trans
04:31in a very binary way.
04:33A big stereotype attached to trans people is that all of us want to medically and legally transition.
04:39For the majority of the trans people represented in the media, their destination is from point
04:45A to point B, but for gender non-conforming people like me, it's more like point Z, point zero,
04:52kind of going here, going there.
04:54I don't feel like I have a specific destination.
04:56That doesn't mean that I feel like I need to alter my body in order to express my transness.
05:01I've always felt stuck in between cis and trans.
05:04The world very much read me as a man, as masculine, and I was constantly misgendered
05:09and invalidated because of that.
05:11I have felt isolated by more binary trans people who feel like because I don't look like them
05:16or express like them that they invalidate my trans experiences on the inside.
05:22I don't think there's an actual way to be LGBTQ plus enough.
05:28I feel like that's a mindset that we all get into once we come out and we want to
05:34make our outward appearance and life experience match how we feel inside.
05:39I feel, you know, honestly really lucky to combat those negative feelings with my tribe.
05:47The first gay people that you meet are not necessarily all gay people.
05:50There's a lot of us. We're all very different from each other.
05:53And yeah, the people who get you are out there.
05:55I think everybody has moments where they felt like an outsider.
05:59And once you know and you're truly happy with yourself,
06:01you can give less than a damn what anybody else thinks.
06:04You do not have to ascribe to the norms set by other people.
06:07I think what a lot of us get caught up on is trying to insert ourselves into this
06:14round hole when we're a square.
06:18It's life to be experienced and you can't live in a box.
