Enby in the Time of COVID-19: An Autoethnographic Reflection on Performing Non-Binary Identity During Lockdown

Abstract

This article explores the author's discovery and performance of their non-binary identity during the COVID-19 pandemic, a time when, somewhat paradoxically, the various national lockdowns allowed individuals the necessary introspection to confront important parts of themselves, such as their gender identity. Taking an autoethnographic approach, the essay investigates how the author's gender-fluid identity was performed and affirmed at a time of social isolation. The essay begins by exploring the creation and sharing of a gender-non-conforming identity via the deployment of clothes, makeup, and perfume in private and then in the porous private/public realm of digital videoconferencing. It goes on to examine how the creation of queer communities in a queer and trans online conference blurring the boundaries between private and public spaces helped them reconsider their gender identity. The article finally investigates the ability of the countryside to enable moments of private epiphany that can be publicly shared through social media. The essay ultimately illustrates how these three biopsychosocial apparatuses enabled the author to formulate and share who they were during an unprecedented period of social isolation, intimating that there is hope in the use of personal introspection and digital communication to incept queer resistance to cisheteronormative ideologies.