✨ in my bro-naissance✨

In 2016, I posted a paragraph to Facebook about how I’d just seen a movie that made me cry. I waxed poetic about how I’d never truly identified with a female character before in movies1. But this film broke the dam. Hilariously, this movie was Ghostbusters. What’s hilarious about that is that the four female characters are dressed in enormous, genderless, beige boiler-suits for the majority of the two hours2.

I then became a mouthpiece for the cause of women’s representation in film. As I finished my minor in Film & Media Studies, I tweeted my feminist screams. I saw gritty, bitchy Jyn Erso in Rogue One: A Star Wars Story as a win for feminism and decried the dearth of female soldiers in the final battle.3 In 2017, I eagerly welcomed the arrival of Wonder Woman to the movie theater I worked at. I wore the costume dress under my graduation gown before the movie even came out, betting that I’d love it. And for a while, I did. I wept at what I saw as the pinnacle of female representation onscreen and timed my theater checks and breaks so I could rewatch my favorite parts. I saw it 9 times in theaters, taking groups of everyone I could get to agree to come with me.

To the outside observer, I was a fierce (white) feminist. I had everyone fooled except my childhood self, who I stuffed deep down within me. Because the truth was, I’d never felt like a woman.

As a kid, I was more awkward, skinny, goofball than any particular gender. A child of the ‘90s, I ran free and wild. My body bent in ways it wasn’t supposed to (thanks, Ehlers Danlos). My clothes were hand-me-downs. I fit in with the boys more easily than I did with the girls, though I had plenty of girl friends too. Those friendships were increasingly fraught as we neared puberty and my brain failed to download the software that made me want to try makeup and tight clothing. I resented them for changing. I felt betrayed.4

When my parents announced we were moving to Missouri when I was 13, I was suddenly struck with the fear that I wouldn’t make new friends if I didn’t conform to my budding womanhood. So the body hair came off, the bra went on, and the literal boys clothes were left in Pennsylvania.

Instead of settling in, I continued to feel like the skin I showed the world wasn’t fitting right. I felt like an imposter every time I tried a new makeup style or wore a dress. Until the day, 12 years later,5 when I realized I didn’t have to stuff myself into this box of Woman if I didn’t want to.

It was on one of my pandemic mental health walks, after the world stopped perceiving me, stopped forcibly gendering me at every turn. I’d never thought before that I actually didn’t have to be what I was told I was.6 I was gobsmacked.

Agender7 is the label I settled on, after weeks of clandestine google searches. But free is how I felt. And while coming out to my partner is the scariest thing I’ve probably ever done (I Saw the TV Glow got this metaphor right imo8), no longer feeling like I need to overcompensate by performing femininity is sick as hell. That’s where my bro-naissance started.

I chatted with someone once who asked me about what movies I watch. I listed a handful of favorite franchises, commenting that my partner and I see most of the big action-y blockbusters that come out. “You’re such a bro,” they said, and not in a complimentary way. I was so mad! How dare they! A few months and some self-reflection later, I was bro-ing it up. Because here’s the truth: I love action movies! I love professional wrestling!9 I love sports! I love a big t-shirt over some 2022 Target pride collection funky cotton biker shorts!10

I was actually into sports as a preteen. Football and hockey, to be exact. I had my teams, I watched games, I bonded with my family over it. But over time, my fidelity waned. Well, it’s back, baby!!!!

My partner J is extremely into sports, but just his teams. Now that I’m back on the sportsball train, we have a game of some sort on nearly half the days of the week. I’m not super loyal to any particular teams, I just love a good game. We got NFL Sunday Ticket (student discount, yeehaw) this year so I can watch ANY GAME I WANT. On Sunday mornings I have the TV to myself and I gleefully flip between games, looking for the one with the closest score that I can get emotionally invested in. I tell my partner 3-5 times a week, “I’m a HUGE [insert random underdog team I’ve never cared about before in my life] fan, don’t you know?”11

I also got into pro basketball last season, after I got used to the ambient squeaky-shoe noise12. I got into baseball this year because J’s team was in the World Series and hey, turns out that sport is cool too. But I’m so up pro football’s ass that I really found myself thinking “man, I wish football was on every night” like the middle aged lazy-boy recliner husband that I am. So I’ve decided to get back into hockey because for a few months, it WILL be every night!

I knew I was at peak bro this past weekend when I became GIDDY to find a RERUN of Thursday night’s football game that I hadn’t finished and forgotten to look up the final score of on TV at nearly the EXACT timestamp that I left off! I watched it intently, emotionally, loudly. Then the following day I brought my tablet into the bathroom with me so I could listen to Sunday’s gamecast while I showered. We are LIVING out here!!

I was assigned female in 1994. I came out as agender in 2020. And in the year of our lord 2024, I christen myself BRO.

1

The first clue.

2

The second clue.

3

They used a battalion of actual British veterans for that part so that’s why there aren’t many women. But also, yikes, Kat.

4

The other first clues.

5

There’s more to be said about gender, body image, and eating disorders, but I skipped the Dark Years for this essay.

6

Given that I avoided all things trans for some strong yet-unamed reason (lol), it’s no surprise.

7

Not identifying with any gender; a lack of gender.

8

In the movie you have to bury yourself alive in order to become your authentic self.

9

That one is thanks to my partner, J.

10

This, paired with a bucket hat, is my agender version of the Adam Sandler Fit.

11

He gives me the most unimpressed look every time.

12

I’m weirdly invested in Jokic and his horses.