RHEAN IS BIGENDER. Like a lot of queer people, they spent many early years feeling confused, and not having any language to talk about it. And then all of a sudden, they found Twitter, and were like, “Oh. Look at these people. Just having these conversations. Well, this is great.” And then at least they have some language, such that when it comes up with their mother, they don’t have a screaming match where she’s like, “Do you just want to be a boy?” and rhean responds, “Ugh, God, why? Why?”
rhean is Two-Spirit, but that’s complicated. They were born in 1980, in Penticton, but they only met their birth mother five years ago. When rhean was born, their biological mother couldn’t take care of them, so she gave them up for adoption, to what her employers told her was a wealthy family. Initially, the family could have been described as wealthy, but then their alcoholism and personality issues drove them apart. rhean’s adoptive parents weren’t even together for a full year after they adopted rhean. And then the woman rhean called their mother—rhean no longer thinks of her as their mother—moved to Vancouver. Their childhood was split in two, between a cosmopolitan, coastal city, and Summerland, BC, where there were fifteen churches in a town of less than 30,000.
rhean has had people contact them on Twitter and be like, “What tribe are you from?” And they explain their history and how they were disconnected from their culture. rhean doesn’t want to be one of those horning-in, johnny-come-lately Native people. There’s a Seinfeld episode where a guy converts to Judaism so that he can tell Jewish jokes. rhean doesn’t want to be that person.
As a performance artist, rhean connects with the idea that gender can be performative. You can be very neutral, and just be yourself, come as you are, and then you can do all of the signifiers that make you more of what is acceptable, or you can play around with it and be something that nobody’s ever seen from a Joan D. Vinge sci-fi novel. rhean wants to get to that world, with the silver skin and the sail fins.
After rhean’s parents split up, their adoptive mother moved to a rural area of Metro Vancouver. rhean went to school there until they were fourteen. They spent so much time in the office at elementary school that the secretaries had them start answering the phone. Eventually, one of rhean’s teachers designated them a gifted learner, and they were sent to the Richmond district learning program. It was the first time in their life that they felt like they were in a room full of people who were just like them.
And then rhean’s adoptive mother died by suicide. rhean’s adoptive father brought them back to the Okanagan, but he was neglectful. He lived in a shack and wouldn’t give up his bedroom. Instead, he put a trailer on the side of the house. He kept his beer and smokes outside of the house in a beer fridge and a freezer. rhean would wait for the sun to go down, when the lights would be on and their adoptive father couldn’t see out, and rhean would take whatever they wanted. The teachers at rhean’s school were upset. “I can see your potential, and you’re just wasting yourself.” Finally, rhean was like, “Yeah, Summerland is not where I want to die, so I need to smarten up.”
rhean got in touch with a woman who used to take care of them when they were younger, and they emancipated themselves and became her foster kid. And then rhean was an honour student, and they graduated and got the hell out of there.
rhean calls the woman who took care of them before and after they were emancipated Mom. rhean and their mom are both very stubborn, so sometimes they’ll go for a few years without speaking to each other, because one or the other will have done something that in hindsight is actually really small and not anything to stop speaking to somebody over. rhean calls her Mom because she put in the most care as a mother. They had discussions about gender in high school. rhean’s mom wanted them to present ultra-feminine, like she did. To get up in the morning, put on makeup, put on a skirt. The first thing rhean did when they moved out was cut their hair, which was so long they could sit on it. They got an orange mohawk and decided to never wear makeup again, unless they were playing a woman part.
As long as rhean presents as a mostly heteronormative cis person, it keeps their mom happy. Drag is a persona that they can accept; rhean doesn’t live as a man, and they don’t have dysphoria with their body, and they don’t talk about being bigender with their mom.
rhean does, though, feel a bit jealous of young trans people. They feel like a fangirl. They’re like, “You guys are so brave. I’ll just be over here in the corner.” It’s hard, even, to have conversations about it. To have the vocabulary to talk about it. There’s a colour analogy. Blue didn’t exist until around 6,000 years ago. People just didn’t see blue. There are studies that show that certain people who don’t have enough vocabulary for green only see two or three shades of green. And then, if you give them the words for it, all of a sudden, they’re actually able to perceive more.
After rhean graduated from high school, they immediately moved to Calgary. They attended the Alberta College of Art + Design. It was a really broad program, and rhean wanted to work with their hands. rhean still lives in Calgary. If you want to paint horses and landscapes, maybe some flowers, you might be successful. If you paint horses, you can pay for your entire year of living just by doing the Western showcase at the Stampede. But then you’ll be pigeonholed into painting horses your entire life.
Calgary feels to rhean like the biggest small town in Canada, but it’s also okay. Prairie people mind their own business more. And maybe that becomes a problem, minding your own business, if someone’s being harassed.
rhean is now at a point in their life where they can have a couple drinks. For children of alcoholics, it’s complicated. In high school, when they decided they needed to get out of town, they quit drinking, period. They wouldn’t use mouthwash or eat desserts or anything cooked with alcohol. Then as they got older, they were like, “Well, this is just another form of extremism.” They allowed themselves to relax a bit. And then they got dumped in a letter. It was horrendous. They didn’t eat solid food for twenty-eight days, and they drank a lot of alcohol during that time. They worked on a ski hill and had fun drinking. They had a little window—it wasn’t like a big, bay window; it was just like a side window—into their adoptive parents’ life, where they were like, “When you have issues, there’s this warm fuzzy blanket called being drunk, and it feels fun.” But then you sober up, and the issues are still there, so then you get drunk again.
rhean’s adoptive dad used to tell funny stories about his father and the strap that used to hang by the back door, and rhean would be like, “That’s abuse.” Their father would be like, “That’s discipline.” rhean’s adoptive mother took antidepressants and drank alcohol heavily, and it destroyed her brain. She was highly intelligent as a child, but at the end she couldn’t do basic math anymore. rhean thinks that contributed to her suicide. rhean has complicated feelings about suicide. It’s someone’s life and they can do what they want with it. If you don’t want to be here, why are we telling you to stay? For rhean, they always wonder what’s around the next corner. Maybe there’s something around the next corner. What’s around that next corner?
rhean read something on Twitter about the Jewish approach to forgiveness. The person who needs to be forgiven has to do the work of making amends and come to the person they hurt and be like, “Will you forgive me?” If they ask three times and you turn them away, then it’s on your head, because they’ve done the work. But if there’s no work done, you don’t let it go like, “Oh, you know, that’s how people are.”
rhean’s problem is that the people they need to forgive are dead. rhean doesn’t feel like their adoption was a nefarious experiment. Their adoptive parents weren’t like, “We’re going to adopt this baby, and then we’re going to ruin its life.” After rhean’s adoptive dad died a slow death from alcoholism, rhean got some books from him, and there’s a book of poetry and some art prints. rhean’s dad never expressed any interest in art and made fun of rhean for being artistic. Never expressed any interest in poetry and made fun of them for being interested in it. rhean holds those things and wonders, What ruined you as a human being, and why did you listen to those other people?
rhean’s biological family likes to get together, so every two years they’re like, “No, you can’t get out of it, you have to come and spend ten days with us.” Last year it was snowboarding. They’re really chill. They’re like rhean, if rhean hadn’t been abused. And they appreciate rhean’s dark sense of humour. But rhean doesn’t have the warm fuzzies about it exactly. It’s really nice, but they’re a bunch of adults that rhean met as an adult. There is one adult from rhean’s childhood who stands out as having shown rhean an example of what they could be. Cheryl, who lived in the suite above rhean’s adoptive grandmother in Vancouver. It wasn’t until later that rhean realized Cheryl was a lesbian. Cheryl was rhean’s positive female role model. Cheryl was the one who first gave rhean a window into other ways of being. Living in a totally insular community without access, without positive representation in books and movies and conversations, you end up not being able to express yourself properly. Cheryl seemed so much happier, not pretending.