Anima Animus - Caz

Caz's statement [to see a general statement about this project, please check the other photos from this series]

My name is Caz, I live in London and I grew up in south-west Wales, in a small rural community - not a very desirable place for anyone who grows up feeling different from the norm. I spent my teenage years dreaming of moving away to live in a city, which I did when I was 18 and went to university in Nottingham. Currently I am spending as much time as I can travelling. I haven't found an occupation I want to get tied to, but I would like to be a writer, and I also volunteer for the Samaritans in my spare time.
I don’t really mind what pronouns people use for me, most people use “she”, which I don't mind, though would be happier with gender-neutral pronouns such as "they". I also don't object to "he"! I’d say genderqueer is the most accurate word to describe my gender identity, it’d definitely the closest to what I feel. I don’t fall neatly into either category of female or male, I’m biologically female, but I feel that sometimes I’m both female and male or neither and it changes from time to time. I reject the whole gender binary.
When I was very young, I was very tomboyish and I definitely felt like I was a boy or I wanted to be boy. I grew out of it to some extent, mainly because I was made to feel quite ashamed for being like that. Nobody really told me that I was wrong, but I did feel more and more embarrassed about being boyish as I grew older and I did make an effort to be as girly as I could, which was never very successful.
It’s only been in the past year that I’ve realised more about my gender identity and changed my look entirely. A year ago I had long hair, I wore women’s clothes and I felt like I was female, but never really happy with what I looked like or what I felt like.
I felt like I was failing at being a girl, because I was doing it wrong in some way.
I finally discovered a love of wearing men’s clothes, of having a short boyish haircut and just look more masculine in general and the whole thing felt so much more natural and liberating. For the first time in my life I love what I look like.
I really like it when I get called "sir" in a shop, or other times when people assume that I’m male.
There was a time when I tried to be more female, but it never felt really comfortable.
I don’t need to pass as a man 100% of the time, I’m quite content being androgynous, but it’s a nice sensation when it happens.
At the moment most people are quite ignorant regarding gender, but London is very good because you can be anything you want here and it’s easy to meet other people who are the same. If I was living anywhere else in the UK, I don’t think I’d be very happy with being open about who I am.
Unfortunately the UK media tends to show genderqueer and trans people as some sort of freaks and people are just obsessed with the physical side of it.
I don’t think people in the general public are really sympathetic at the moment because most cisgender people don’t actually know any trans person in their daily life, so all they see it’s this kind of extreme examples in the media. I think that they would probably be more open minded if they had more chances to be in contact with trans people.
I believe it’s the kind of thing that society becomes gradually more used to, the same way as most gay people are now accepted by most parts of society in this country, while 20, 30 years ago it was a completely different story. Hopefully in 20 years time, trans and gender non conforming people will have the same kind of recognition and acceptance that gay people are experiencing now.
At the moment I think that even people in mainstream gay scene aren’t particularly open minded about trans people, things are called LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender), but usually the T gets completely forgotten about.
The queer community is a much more inclusive one because it includes all sort of different gender identities, while the mainstream gay scene seems to be way less accepting of gender differences.
To me, identifying as queer means that you don’t have to put yourself in a box as straight or gay or bi, it takes into account that your sexuality my develop and change over time and so could your gender identity. It also means being attracted to people who are outside of the gender binary. It acknowledges that things are more fluid than what is generally thought.
People who identify as queer just seem to be more accepting.