The full message from Frances Quinlan can be read below.
I’ve come to understand (better) why I felt so compelled to start going by my middle name when I turned 18 and went away to college. I needed distance from a role that I have never understood or felt agency within. Sixteen years later, it still confounds me.
I know this, because for so long I thought I had to be desired to gain true worth as a person. Perhaps a lot of us have felt this way.
For so long I thought I had to be a “correct” version of a woman. This is a falsehood I no longer buy.
Honestly, I STILL don’t know what being a woman is. No one has been able to tell me.
I am privileged and grateful to have had the time, space, and generous insight offered by both advocates and friends, as I’ve learned about the expansive identity that is being nonbinary. I feel more at home with myself in a way I did not realized was possible.
I am embarrassed to say I did not realize how much space there has always been. It’s humans who have created these roles and strange rules. I am inspired and humbled witnessing so many who’ve taken great risk to be their true selves outside of these uneasy, fearful constructs.
I probably should have typed this up in a word doc. F*ck it.
Identifying as nonbinary has helped me to finally be at home in this body. The pronouns they/them feel most right to me.
Thank you for reading. I hope you are finding the space for yourself, too.