“I’d had a beat on the whole gender thing for a while and I was like, 'Something’s going on here. Don’t really know what.' But eventually being exposed to other people who felt similarly helped me get a better idea of what I am. At one point, I was particularly resonating with the agender identity. I was taking a creative writing class and I wrote a spoken word poem about it called ‘The Emperor Has No Clothes.’ I took the title from a fable about this foolish emperor who says he wants the best suit of clothes. His tailor goes, ‘I’ll make you a suit of clothes so elegant that only people with good taste can see them!’ And then it ends up with the emperor just being naked. And everybody goes, ‘Oh, I can see the clothes!’ That is the fable. And in my poem, I expanded on this idea and talked about how clothes are certain standards for genders. Then I also read that in front of the class. And that was my coming out moment.”
— Shivank Nayak (they/them), 22, non-binary, bisexual but anything goes.
