A train ride in two directions
(fragment)
by Jannik

(…)
KAYA
That’s what I’m saying! I didn’t know any better. I was being put into this drawer because I was acting out my feminine side more than my masculine one. And I can’t say if based on that I orientated my sexual attraction in the end. So, I can only imagine what my life would look like if I would be growing up nowadays and having already a concept that helps me understand my gender identity and gives me a bigger angle to look at the topic than to make the mistake to confuse it with sexual orientation.

CHIAN
We should not focus on labeling ourselves at all.

KAYA
I am on the same page with you about that, but/

CHIAN
(interrupts)
It’s a tool of separation.

KAYA (continues)
/is the outer world?
It’s also the surrounding people who need the label. It is a mechanic of our brain to select and simplify the stimuli processed. And further we have to consider that all language and also pre-existing, established, labels are simply a poor approach to grasp something that is beyond our understanding. And to be fair, I must say, even though I don’t identify with the gay label so much anymore and I am uncertain how suiting it was to begin with: I needed it! It was the beginning of my journey and has brought me to where I’m standing today where I have surpassed labeling and come closer to who I am.
Imagine where people nowadays will head with the identifying gender definitions that there are when they grow up. They’re nothing ultimate but also just another beginning of a journey.

CHIAN (reading from his phone)
The actual definition of “binary” is:
“Relating to, composed of, or involving two things”.
I think this fits me perfectly. In that sense, yes, I am binary. Non-binary is denying the two.

KAYA
You know, I get that this whole non-binary wording can be confusing and that you dislike that it starts with a negation in the sense of how words shape our reality. That’s why I personally also prefer the term ‘genderfluid’. But I would think that especially you, who are so well- read in Philosophy and Mysticism, get the idea of a paradox. Which I think the term ‘non-binary’ is. Alchemical scriptures speak of one thing to be its opposite but at the same time to be the same thing. As above, so below.
I think it’s important to understand that “non-binary” does not mean denying that the two exist, but that it’s just not black and white.

(The train comes to a halt.)

KAYA
And the society we’re born into lets it seem that a person can only be one or the other.

CHIAN
But isn’t it, that if a person who decides to be something in between, they are the ones escaping from the whole gender debate?

(Kaya laughs)