In each stall of the women’s restroom at my workplace there is a little metal trashcan meant for menstruation-related refuse. 51% or more of you will be familiar with such things. What makes this particular incarnation of the beast interesting is the symbol on it indicating its purpose. A white and black icon depicts a hand releasing a long, cylindrical object with a female symbol on it.

It literally appears as though someone is jettisoning her gender. It got me wondering what it would mean if I could dispose of my gender. How would it work? What would it look like? It wouldn’t look like being male because that would just be substituting one gender for another. It wouldn’t even look like a somewhat-neutered Barbie or Ken doll, because they still retain many gendered traits.

Biologically, it would probably just look like me as a child or me as a geriatric, yes? So really gender is a phase, a space we all move through culturally from birth, but biologically only from roughly age fifteen to age fifty-five.