None of the Above: Reflections on Life Beyond the Binary

Product Information

Perhaps the kindest thing that can be said about None of the Above is that, despite attaining neither argumentative rigour nor enjoyably arty meandering, it occasionally hits on something that rings true. “I am trans because of you,” Alabanza declares, “not because of me.” That is, outliers such as Alabanza and Horn have been shoved to the margins by social categories that refuse to make room for them.

Modern political thought has disappeared down the postmodernism rabbit hole but has forgotten that postmodern white rabbit, does not believe in identity itself.

Ask a question

Judge Maisie Chan, who won in the children’s and young adult category last year, said Jawando’s book “is one that speaks to many young people today that have been vilified or who go unheard”. I think of some of the people I have met who say 'My pronouns are she/they,' and when you ask which they prefer, they say, 'Always they, I actually only want they, I just want to be less difficult.'" Alternately wry, witty and wounded . . . Alabanza has a crisp, contemporary writing style . . . Alabanza lifts the lid on our potential for empathy, alliance and complicity * * Irish Times * *

Truth is that rather than identify as she/her, he/she or they/them, most trans people identify as nothing but me/I. Our German lodger, Hangwolf, primarily there to pay our food bills, developed into a brief but important and loving figure in the house: a tall, statuesque man who fitted into the structure of our unit, almost as if there was a gap left by a father, still warm for Hangwolf to walk into. Despite how many times I have had to withstand questioning about when exactly I knew, I still wish I could pinpoint an answer that felt honest, even if just for the rare time it is asked from a place of safety and comfort; even if it is just so I know myself. Sometimes I wish for the more out and out, retro bigotry – at least then I know where I standSometimes when identities are under heavy scrutiny, we build special rules around them to protect ourselves. But I just don’t want to be working from a place of protection anymore. I don’t want to make transness this special identity that you can’t critique. We’ve seen with identity politics, that just leads to bullshit, you know? It leads to a dialogue that isn’t healthy, and a situation where we are unable to make a class-based analysis of anything. That’s just what happens when an identity becomes this circle that you can’t touch – I guess I just wanted to burst that a bit. I opened my mouth, aged three, and said: ‘Doctor, I am actually a cross-dressing, gender-nonconforming deviant.’ And that is how we all knew something was different about me.”