Olivia Wood is a non-binary college student who falls “somewhere on the queer spectrum.” They spoke about growing up in a rural area, and how going away to college has helped them grow and better understand their gender beyond the binary.
Alphabet Soup shares LGBTQ+ Missourians’ stories through portraiture and personal narratives.
Oliva Wood: I grew up in a very rural part of Missouri, so a lot of my journey is just kind of like repression, I think.
I came out in seventh grade because I switched schools, and I started going here in Columbia, and that's when I kind of learned that there were things other than just “straight.”
I was at the fair one time, and I was showing my baby goat, and one of the girls that I had considered a friend was showing one of her cattle, and she came up to me and she was like, “You will never believe what I just heard,” and she was like, “So and so” – who's a girl – “was kissing another girl.”
And I was like, “Oh,” I didn't realize that it was wrong.
But she goes, “I just can't accept that” and she just stomped away.
That hurt me in ways that I didn't know it would hurt because I was young.
I met a non-binary person, and it was kind of like – when I came out for the first time – it was kind of like, you can do this? This isn't just like a thing that I see on the internet and the comment section is hateful and terrible.
But I met someone, and they were just so normal and like, respected within their community. I was like, this is a thing that people can do? And it's okay to do it?
And after that, I just kind of started thinking I was like, I mean, “it would make sense.”
And my partner and I had a conversation was like, “If it would make you more comfortable than why not.”
He's like, “If you feel like you're living, like, in spite of femininity, then why be feminine at all?”
I was like, “But I don't want to abandon it,” and he was like, “Then don't,” and I think that's kind of where my fluidity comes from.
It was like, I don't have to pick anything, and I can just kind of do it all – and it's fine.
"When it's convenient, I am a girl, and when I don't have to worry about it, when it's safe – then I am me."Olivia Wood
He's one of the first people that kind of recognized when I started to question my gender, and he is the first person to start to use more neutral language for me before I even asked him to.
He just made that switch, and it didn't, like it didn't click with me for like, a few weeks. I was like, “Why are you doing this?” And he's like, “Because it seems to make you happier.”
Today, I feel like a little girl. Yesterday, I didn't. Gender confuses me. It's always confused me.
For a while, I always thought that I was a tomboy, and I feel like that's how most of society would probably see me now – is just kind of like a slightly masculine woman.
And to a degree, I'm okay with that – like, although I kind of exist, somewhere in the subtext – until the world becomes less binary, I try and stick in it because there are just times when it's convenient.
And I feel like as much as that sucks, it is the truth. When it's convenient, I am a girl, and when I don't have to worry about it, when it's safe – then I am me.
