I belong nowhere in this world because of who I am, what I am, and what I identify as. I am ‘unremarkable’ and a ‘problem’ to society. I am not my sex and I am not my gender, I am I, without and with influence from the world. I have taken what was forced on me and I reject it. I make my own identity. It is not for anyone to decide if I am a Woman, a Female, or if I am feminine enough to qualify. I will not bend my head into submission and will not ‘sit down and be quiet’. I am not sorry. I will not ask for forgiveness for anything I have done or said because my actions are ‘unjust’. My actions are moral, my actions are right and fair because they do for me what no one else can which claims my identity as my own, as I define it.
It is with these actions of mine, my marked ‘defiance’ against everything forced on me, that I hope to make a small step towards the liberation of all that are constantly pressured to fit into a certain form and definition that includes duties and expected behaviors relating to sex and gender. And It will not stop at sex and gender, it will go beyond to Race, a predominate identifier that requires liberation from presuppositions within society that again try to define who or what a person is and more importantly their worth. We must start at the core of sex and gender which are interwoven with identity and race and redefine their meaning, their functions, and their ‘place’ within society in order to gain freedom.
I want to act and inspire others to act and gain their own deliverance in hopes that one day there will be no definitive function, structure, formula, or operation for what is a ‘Man’ or a ‘Woman’ or more simply who is a ‘Person’. I want freedom for all from the pressures of ‘masculinity’ and ‘feminity’, from ‘Man’ and ‘Woman’, from ‘Worth’ and ‘Race’. I want freedom for the self because every being should have the right to their own freedom and definition of worth within a society.
There are walls to be torn down, barriers to be broken, and voices to be heard. The generations after should be free and undefinable by anyone except themselves. To be treasured and valued by others for who you are as you know yourself to be, as a multifaceted being that cannot be easily simplified or categorized or identified within a society, is a dream worth acting on. Our dreams today will be realities for generations of the future.
So I will not ‘shut up’, I will not ‘sit down’. I will look you in the eye and tell you who I am because I am not afraid to be honest, or real, or true to myself and others like me. I will use these words as actions and I will not be ‘quiet’.
Sincerely and Justly,
Alina Happy Hansen