It was in high school, at about 18 years old, that I started questioning my gender identity, probably after seeing nonbinary and gender-nonconforming characters in shows and reading articles about people who existed outside traditional categories of men and women. I had always felt uncomfortable with binary norms, long before I had language for that discomfort.
After years of learning and unlearning, I began identifying as nonbinary around 2022. Yet until recently, I still questioned my queerness. I wasn’t cis or heterosexual, but society perceived me that way, and I went along with that perception because it felt easier and safer. I couldn’t tell most people I was nonbinary because I didn’t know how it would be received; whether I’d be dismissed, misunderstood, or forced into long explanations I didn’t feel ready for. From the outside, I only ever appeared to be in “straight” relationships, and without many queer connections, my identity wavered. I often felt I wasn’t “queer enough” to claim the words that felt true to me.
Since October this year, I’ve been involved in organizing the Kansai Queer Film Festival, and the experience has genuinely shifted something in me. Watching films where people lived their identities – flawed, joyful, contradictory – loosened something in my chest, a quiet permission to imagine a life beyond binaries. I became more aware of cis-hetero expectations, both within myself and throughout society, and sensed that my way of living and connecting with others could move toward something freer.
That shift deepened when I met queer people in person whose genders and relationships weren’t restricted by binary norms. Sharing conversations that didn’t require translation or justification grounded all those loosened feelings into something real. For a long time, I thought I needed to “prove” I was queer, that my identity required some dramatic narrative before it could be valid. But queerness isn’t earned through suffering or spectacle. It’s lived.
A final push came when Cocona, a member of the pop group XG, whom I had followed simply because I liked their music and style, came out as a nonbinary person last week. Seeing someone I already admired step into their truth so openly felt unexpectedly empowering, like a reminder that identity doesn’t need permission. My own remains fluid, still being written, and I’m finally learning to embrace that.
Yuki Nakamura, third year bachelor student Arts and Culture