Lorde released the song “Liability” during my final weeks as a boy. Before its album Melodrama had even come out, I wrote a work of autofiction where I woke up as a girl and sang this song at karaoke in my new body. A version of me singing to a version of my girlfriend at the time, the lyrics capturing all my confusion around the new identity I feared might describe me.
Two days after writing this bit of fantasy, I began the process of coming out in the real world. But unlike the transformation in this short story, transition doesn’t happen over night. That’s true in terms of medical transition, and it’s true when simply working out the new feelings that arise.
In a recent profile in Rolling Stone, Lorde shared that Chappell Roan asked if she was nonbinary now. Her response: I was like, ‘I’m a woman except for the days when I’m a man.’ I know that’s not a very satisfying answer, but there’s a part of me that is really resistant to boxing it up.
This resulted in a wave of responses with some people excited about Lorde’s exploration while others questioned how someone with such a large platform could describe a trans experience without owning the label. Personally, I just saw every trans and genderqueer person I’ve known who has come out after me.
In Portrait of a Lady on Fire, the titular lady embraces another woman and whispers, “Do all lovers feel they’re inventing something?” Well, all trans people feel they’re inventing something too. I’ve had so many friends and lovers say something similar to what Lorde is saying now. Some of those people have since changed their name, changed their pronouns, and medically transitioned. Others have settled within a more fluid genderqueerness or a solid butchness.
When I came out, I thought I could only identify as nonbinary, because trans women knew they were trans since birth. Once I learned this wasn’t the case, I thought being a trans woman who dated other women made me very unique. (I know, I know.) The only information I had was what I saw in a very straight, very cis mainstream. Just because Lorde is famous doesn’t mean she has to figure out her identity or realized the ubiquitousness of her experiences any quicker than anyone else.
Last night, she released a second single from her new album. The cover art for “Man of the Year” is an image of her torso with duct tape on her breasts, an image first teased at the Met Gala and made more explicit in the song’s music video. (Insert comment about proper binding.) What begins as a melancholy ballad like “Liability” or “Stoned at the Nail Salon” evolves into a harsher, more desperate sound by the song’s end. The first single from this album, “What Was That”, was an ear worm that I’ve listened to again and again, but this feels like a more ambitious sound for Lorde’s new chapter. Its lyrics also include a very early trans fear: “Who’s gon’ love me like this?”
Sometimes I mourn a world where transness is still seen as a liability, where it’s understandable people avoid the label as long as possible. Or even that there are still so many misconceptions around transness that someone might think their confused gender feelings are a totally separate thing from these labels. But maybe it’s less about how our society views transness and more about the beautiful enormity of transness itself. Maybe any major transformation, any new declaration of self, is so overwhelming that it will always exist in this space where it feels like you’re the first person to ever experience it.
I want celebrities to share this moment with the rest of the world. I want artists to explore this moment in their art. The world prioritizes transition stories anyway, so we might as well get raw work made while the feelings are still being processed. You shouldn’t have to have all the answers to be honest about where you’re at right now.
It’s been more than eight years since I imagined a world where I could sing “Liability” instead of getting a new label. In that time, I’ve learned that just about every experience I’ve had of gender — including my love of that song — is very common. I’ve also learned that being trans might have made me a little much for some people, but it did not make me a little much for e-a-na-na-na-everyone.
So to Lorde or to anyone newly trans or newly not-quite-trans, the answer to who’s gon’ love you like this is a lot of people. Let’s hear it for the men/whatever-gender-feels-right-to-you-right-now of the year.
I love this! Lorde’s comments really resonated with where I’m at also in gender exploration. it’s more of a fluid feeling than any solid identity I can label easily, and it’s new to me. It feels validating to read this and know that other people have felt the same way!