Author’s Note: This was written prior to coming into a greater realization about how I feel about gender. I am nonbinary, and I use they/them pronouns. Despite the evolution of my understanding of my own gender, I have decided to preserve the original piece of writing.
I am a cisgender white man who grew up in middle class America with two parents who are still together. We always had food on the table. I had years of private music lessons, I went to a high school that was focused on the arts, and I rarely needed to have a job while I was attending school. My parents were active in my local community and we were regulars at church. All things considered, the resources and community I was brought up in would indicate that I was privileged.
For years, I wondered why people hated me. I wondered why teachers had no patience for me, why other students pointed at me and whispered malevolent things, why church leaders gave me dark looks and nothing but criticism, and why almost every single authority figure in my life growing up specifically targeted me for extra punishment and made exceptions in the rules for everyone but me. I wondered why I had it so much harder from my parents that either of my siblings, why we had to have arguments every night. I wondered what I had done, and desperately wished it wouldn’t happen to me.
Despite all my visible privilege and all the resources I allegedly had to work with, remembering my childhood and adolescence is tough, because most of it was traumatic. At the time that the things happened to me, I might not have known why I got berated openly by a teacher for drawing Jimmy Neutron when prompted to draw something that made us happy, why a church leader belittled and humiliated me for being “ different,” or why the principal and vice principal of my high school made it their mission to enable my peers to treat me as a social pariah, and these are just a few of the experiences that had a profound and formative effect on me during some of the most formative times of my life.
I came out as gay when I was 15, though people had been explaining to me that I was attracted to men for almost a decade up to that point. It wasn’t until I was 19 and most of the damage had been done that I was evaluated by a psychologist and received diagnoses of ADHD and Autism Spectrum Disorder, among others. I finally had an explanation for why people were cruel to me and why the marginalized me: because that’s what neurotypical people always do to people with mental disorders if they can get away with it.
Over the past few years, I’ve gotten really, really good about deflecting people trying out microaggressions (or straight-up aggressions) on me, usually regarding their fears or preconceived notions about neurodiversity or homosexuality. I’ve become an educator in breaking down stereotypes and reclaiming my own humanity. I’ve become really good at creating my own opportunities, and using a DIY mentality to claim some kind of success for myself, knowing that institutions don’t normally support people like me.
I’ve also come to fear institutions with every fiber of my soul. People who have authority over me terrify me, and I feel like I have to prepare myself to experience trauma when I’m around them, because life has conditioned me to know humiliation and retribution for little mistakes, and immediate dismissal or ostracization should I fail in any capacity.
In last few years, we have all experienced a shift in the mainstream acceptance of social justice issues, especially in race and gender. Many of us, including myself, have pivoted to an anti-racist and feminist social practice, which is good work that needs to be done (and that needs to continue). One of the fallacies of this work is that we have put a lot of emphasis on visible identities, and we have often ignored identities that are invisible, such as sexuality (virtually anything that’s not homosexuality gets constantly erased) and neurodiversity (which is almost laughably misunderstood, undervalued, and underrepresented).
In my undergrad, I was involved in student government when an organization comprised of students of marginalized communities brought forward a list of demands that would improve their quality of life at the university. When I came forward and tried to help uplift that organization, I was told they didn’t need my help. Essentially, it was the first time I was told that I wasn’t marginalized enough for marginalized communities, and that has been something that has haunted me for years.
Time and time again, I’ve been placed in this terrible no man’s land between between the white straight cisgender patriarchy and communities or institutions with diversity at their core, marginalized from both for not being enough of either. Visibly, I’m privileged, and that’s all that matters to a lot of people. If it’s hard to identify with a communities that tell you that you don’t fit in here, what you do if all of them say it?
Something that’s really good in new music right now is the overwhelming amount of opportunities designed to uplift and encourage composers and music makers of marginalized communities. Composers and music makers of color, women and nonbinary composers and music makers, and transgender composers and music makers deserve recognition for their work. It’s been too long that cisgender white men have controlled classical and new music and it’s good that institutions and ensembles are working to change that.
But sometimes being marginalized isn’t about being white or cisgender or a man. Sometimes it’s about having experienced (or having to continue to experience) the exhausting trauma of having to constantly out yourself as queer or neurodivergent. And what I haven’t experienced is people having the conversation about the fact that that’s a thing. What is real is the fear that comes with feeling like your work is going to be disregarded because you appear to be privileged on the outside, should you dare apply for an opportunity designed for people of marginalized communities, which have never welcomed you, regardless of the fact that you have experienced marginalization constantly, even relentlessly.
Every time I see an opportunity for an emerging marginalized composer or music maker, I usually close the window and sometimes forward it on to a friend or two. I have never applied to one of these opportunities despite being a marginalized person. I have always made room for someone else, because I have been made to feel powerless in my marginalized identities. I constantly convince myself that the spaces people are creating for marginalized composers and music makers are not (and never will be) for me.
I am a cisgender white man. I am also a neurodivergent queer person. I experience or relive trauma every day. I learn something new about how I navigate the world every few weeks. I try to love myself, but it doesn’t always work. I want to feel wanted, but I don’t know how to make that happen, because I’ve so rarely felt wanted before. I hope that someday I find my people, and that I don’t have to constantly prove myself to them like I have for everyone else in my life.
And I hope someday someone says, “Hey, Kincaid. Looks like you have been marginalized. I want you to know that it’s okay, and you are wanted here. The parts of you that you have been marginalized for are valid and important, and it’s okay for you to take up some of this space.”