Resist!

This is just a reminder that being you is enough, that you don’t necessarily need to prove yourself to anyone and that there is always some room to learn and to be empathetic with others. Talking with some of my closest friends and with my partner a couple of days ago about gender identity and sexuality because I had a little struggle trying to understand and decode how abstract the ’non binary’ concept could be in certain cases, I was interested in getting to know if it was valid that cis-passing folks in straight relationships could identify themselves as enbys without necessarily ‘defying‘ the heteronormativity and exerting resistance against the gender binary and societal/internalized gender roles as other folks from the LGBTQI+ community might do in a daily basis (bc hmm, queerbaiting is a thing, u know). In one of those conversations @sonialazo told me that for them, the resistance was always there, from the simple fact of embracing the term, of adopting it as a self statement and for just being true to themselves. Then this phrase came to my mind and everything just clicked: “To resist is to exist”. And yeah, it’s because we all, queer folks do that. Living in this world where there’s always some kind of pressure of justifying yourself and your identity, is something that many, many of us have to go through and the fact of just being alive and being honest with nobody but you is the biggest act of resistance you could do.

I still have questions though. But I’ve learnt that it isn’t my responsibility to question someone else’s self-identity. My responsibility instead is to offer a safe space to others navigating and exploring their identity and discovering themselves. ✨

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Doug Rodas
Creative Director & Illustrator

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