Is it fair to date non-binary trans femmes without knowing how I identify?

“I’m just going to go ahead and say, ‘Yes!’” Kai advises. “Go forth, with some caveats.”

“I don’t know if it’s always possible to be firm in our identities before we start dating other people,” Kai Cheng Thom says. “If we notice that our attractions and our gender identities are falling outside of the box of prescribed heteronormativity, then I think it’s pretty fair to call oneself queer, to experiment with that label and then also to discard it if it’s not feeling right later on.”

It’s our latest in the video series Ask Kai: Quickies, offering advice on sex, dating and relationships for those of you in a hurry.

Kai Cheng Thom is a writer, performer, and social worker who divides her heart between Montreal and Toronto, unceded Indigenous territories. She is the author of the Lambda Award-nominated novel Fierce Femmes and Notorious Liars: A Dangerous Trans Girl's Confabulous Memoir (Metonymy Press), as well as the poetry collection a place called No Homeland (Arsenal Pulp Press). Her latest book, Falling Back in Love with Being Human, a collection of letters and poetry, is out now from Penguin Random House Canada.

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