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A review by endemictoearth
None of the Above: Reflections on Life Beyond the Binary by Travis Alabanza
challenging
emotional
hopeful
informative
reflective
sad
tense
5.0
I loved how this book took a few phrases and pulled them apart, the way someone does when they're obsessively dissecting an offhand comment that the person who said it forgot as soon as it left their mouth.
Some of the phrases are ones formed in decades, centuries, millenia of society spinning itself and calcifying into the handful of acceptable ways of being, the two genders, wilfully ignoring any part of the past that contradicts it. Phrases that are parroted from person to person and if you ever stopped them and asked, "what do you mean by that?" they wouldn't know what to say in response. And would be offended that you didn't assume their gender. Phrases that just <i>are</i> and if you dig even a little, the speaker who spoke them this time will raise their hackles and hiss incoherently.
Some of the phrases are well-meaning or supportive, and they might be what the person who spoke them meant to say, or at least, near enough. Sometimes they were said because the uncertainty of silence was too much to withstand and words had to fill it, even just a little bit. Sometimes the support was needed and useful and correct and the obsessive thought bloomed into more than worries and doubts, something closer to understanding.
At first, I didn't quite understand the repetition. Was it reinforcement? Was it the author unsure if the audience was listening? But, gradually, every time Alabanza returned to the phrase of the section, it was clear that it meant something incrementally different each time. The phrase was repeated to consider it, again and again, in the light of new thoughts and new circumstances, and more life lived since the last time it was thought or uttered.
At least, that's how it seemed to me, a she/they who feels a bit outside the gender machine, but is happy to see people battering expectations on the head, and loudly proclaiming that we do not have to subscribe to the narrow list of choices given us. That the box is imaginary and the possibilities actually are limitless.
Some of the phrases are ones formed in decades, centuries, millenia of society spinning itself and calcifying into the handful of acceptable ways of being, the two genders, wilfully ignoring any part of the past that contradicts it. Phrases that are parroted from person to person and if you ever stopped them and asked, "what do you mean by that?" they wouldn't know what to say in response. And would be offended that you didn't assume their gender. Phrases that just <i>are</i> and if you dig even a little, the speaker who spoke them this time will raise their hackles and hiss incoherently.
Some of the phrases are well-meaning or supportive, and they might be what the person who spoke them meant to say, or at least, near enough. Sometimes they were said because the uncertainty of silence was too much to withstand and words had to fill it, even just a little bit. Sometimes the support was needed and useful and correct and the obsessive thought bloomed into more than worries and doubts, something closer to understanding.
At first, I didn't quite understand the repetition. Was it reinforcement? Was it the author unsure if the audience was listening? But, gradually, every time Alabanza returned to the phrase of the section, it was clear that it meant something incrementally different each time. The phrase was repeated to consider it, again and again, in the light of new thoughts and new circumstances, and more life lived since the last time it was thought or uttered.
At least, that's how it seemed to me, a she/they who feels a bit outside the gender machine, but is happy to see people battering expectations on the head, and loudly proclaiming that we do not have to subscribe to the narrow list of choices given us. That the box is imaginary and the possibilities actually are limitless.