Mx.D.P

Coming Out: When Gender Finally Makes Sense

I’ve spent nearly six decades being called “she.” Six decades of checking the “F” box on forms. Six decades of being someone’s daughter, sister, wife, and mother. Six decades of thinking there was something wrong with those other feminine women. Me trying to perform feminity, but looking in the mirror and seeing a drag queen staring back at me. Then, running back to my world:

Being a 747 pilot

Running a smallholding

Becoming a tattoo artist

…all places where I can be me without needing to be ‘fem’

I went to university at 55 to do my Fine Art BA in Aberystwyth, COVID shut down my industry. My dying friend Helen said, ‘Don’t put off things until tomorrow; you might not have a tomorrow!’ So there I was, sat online or masked up in person with lots of young folks, younger than my kids. Their language was different, and they saw the world differently than ‘my generation’. It was a revelation; it was freedom.

Now, at 60, I’m sitting here writing this for you to say:

I am non-binary.

The funny thing about coming out later in life is that it now all makes sense…

Those years of my mum asking why aren’t you a proper woman?

My male pilot colleagues saying, ‘oh, you are more of a man than us.’

My son, when he was 5, asked me, ‘Were you a little boy when you were young?’

…we didn’t have the language back then… you can’t be a Tom Boy forever…

In the ’80s, I never quite fit into the ‘women’s movements’, though I couldn’t explain why.

My life canvas always seemed to exist between spaces…

There’s something both liberating and terrifying about coming out when you’re approaching 60. Liberating because I’ve lived long enough to stop caring what most people think.

Terrifying because I’ve also lived long enough to build a life, all under a gender identity that never quite fit, like a sweater that’s just a bit too tight at the shoulders.

My life has always pushed boundaries and explored the spaces between defined lines. Now I understand why. I’ve always been painting my truth, even when I didn’t have the words to speak it. These days, my life feels different. The colours seem brighter somehow, more honest. The Gender Traitor sculpture is part of that. Many trans folx take a pathway of changing their suitcase to quell gender dysphoria. I don’t feel that, but I understand now how I have tested and pushed this AFAB body to do things it was never designed to do: high-altitude mountaineering, paragliding, snowboarding, motorcycling… of course, AFABs do those things, but I always took it to the ‘extreme’.

I have pushed my body to and passed its breaking point, and you know it’s done all right! I can live in peace with it and maybe appreciate it for the first time.

I’ve always had these biggish boobs, but they have always annoyed me, I have very rarely worn a bra, but if I did, I got rid of it as soon as I could!

Once, I broke a new M&S bra during a windsheer go-around while landing a Boeing 767 at Heathrow. The lady at the M&S returns counter asked, ‘What did you do to break the shoulder strap on a bra?!!’

Some people ask why I bothered coming out ‘at my age.’ Authenticity doesn’t have an expiration date. We don’t reach a certain point in life where we should just settle for the labels we’ve been given.

That’s the thing about art, it dares to ask the questions that life sometimes avoids.

It’s never too late to add another colour to your palette, to use a new technique, to start fresh on a blank canvas.

My children, now adults, have been surprisingly understanding. The pronouns aren’t always correct, but they are, in the main, better than I manage with myself!

My art colleagues, my friends, and my village have been largely supportive, though some still struggle with the pronouns and the concept. This is how Gender Traitor came about. Some of the thoughts and questions I and my Non-binary friends have experienced are written on these plaster boobs, including the title… I was told ‘you are a gender traitor!’

I have learned to be patient, after all, I had almost 60 years to figure this out myself.

The first time I heard they/them used for me, I had a huge sense of gender euphoria. Hearing those words makes me feel seen in a way six decades of she/her never did.

The usual questions that many still ask:

‘But you have been married! To men! Three times! (Gender identity isn’t sexual orientation.)

‘You wore dresses!’ (Clothes don’t define gender.)

‘You gave birth! Twice! (Biology isn’t destiny.)

You breastfed for years! (It is called chestfeeding these days, and AMABs can chestfeed, too!)

‘You have long blond hair!’ (It is my gender disruptor… I also have an ‘art’ moustache)

I answer all the questions patiently…well, most days.

Art, has always been a space for transformation.

Gender Traitor is about hate, misunderstanding, about years of friendship, that apparently, could be reduced to an accusation of betrayal.

Eventually, coming out is understood as emergence, about becoming… finally understanding why you’ve always felt like a translation of yourself.

Some people spend their whole lives trying to fit into the boxes others have created for them. I always ripped those boxes to shreds… But here’s what I’ve learned: it’s never too late to step out of that box, pick up your paintbrush, and paint yourself as you truly are. You don’t need to shred the box; just leave it and say it’s not me.

The canvas is always ready for another layer of paint. And we are always ready for another layer of truth about ourselves, regardless of age.

When your Feminist friends look like enemies, you can navigate TERF Rejection… I am NOT a traitor to the cause.

The irony isn’t lost on me. By acknowledging my own truth, TERFs accuse me of ‘erasing women’. The same women who spoke about breaking free from patriarchal constraints now want to police my gender. The rigid authority that they have spent years fighting against they have become.

It’s a special kind of whiplash, watching radical feminists transform into gender essentialists. Suddenly, the same people who told me biology isn’t destiny are wielding chromosomes like weapons. The women who once criticised society’s obsessions now guard ‘real women’ with zealous certainty.

The accusations come in waves. Non-binary folx are ‘confused’ or ‘seeking attention’.

Non-binary folx ‘make a mockery of women’s struggles’

My decades of lived experience as a perceived woman suddenly count for nothing.

I want to remind TERFs that they once raged against anyone who tried to tell a woman how she should be, how she should act, and what she should wear. Now, they’ve become the very gatekeepers they previously despised.

The hardest part? Watching TERF’s use the language and tools of feminism, tools once wielded against genuine oppression, to now exclude and harm. Forgetting that feminism was supposed to be about liberation, not limitation.

But I’ve learned that their rejection says more about their fears than my truth. Their anger reveals their rigid attachment to a binary they once claimed to fight against. Their exclusion demonstrates how quickly liberators can become oppressors when their worldview is challenged.

I’m not the one who changed the core of who I am. I simply found the words to express it.

Am I still the same person? Yes and no. Every change brings growth…

My understanding of gender has expanded, not contracted. Isn’t that what growth is supposed to look like?

To those who’ve labelled me a traitor: your feminism was too small if it can’t hold space for my truth. Your sisterhood was too fragile if it shatters at the mere acknowledgement of gender’s complexity. Your friendship was too conditional if it depended on me maintaining your comfort with binary gender.

Of course, I wasn’t prepared for the silence, the change in how folks look at you, the invites you don’t get, the questioning, but in time, it does settle, and you find your advocates, your tribe…

I’ve found new communities now. These are spaces where feminism includes all gender expressions, the fight for equality doesn’t require rigid adherence to categories, and friendship isn’t conditional on conforming to someone else’s definition of gender.

I don’t miss the unspoken demands to be someone I’m not.

I don’t miss the collective denial of complexity or the fear that keeps people in a neat, labelled box.

To anyone facing similar rejection: you’re not a traitor for being honest about who you are. The real betrayal would be denying your truth to maintain someone else’s comfort. Your journey might cost you some relationships but will lead you to more authentic ones.

My long-term friends, however, just said… well that makes sense!

Mx D.P. Matthews is a XD Non-binary Trans Artist.

Their focus is Geo-political Climate Chaos and its intersection with Gender Identity, and Ableism.

Their mission is to explore new ways of developing The Network to weaponise art. 

To find futurity responses to geo-political crises of population displacement and resource scarcity. 

Challenging binary thinking and encouraging flexibility and adaptability in understanding and responding to humanity’s new reality

They are a MA Fine Art : Digital Student at Central St. Martins UAL.