Dare to Win by Jeff Chegwin

Author:Jeff Chegwin
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: ebook
Publisher: Hardie Grant
Published: 2016-11-23T05:00:00+00:00

27 DON’T LET OTHERS DEFINE YOU

‘I want to be treated as a person, not as a woman or a man.’

JACK MONROE

Breaking the rules and daring to be different always attracts censure from one quarter or another. Historically, this criticism would have been conveyed in print, in a newspaper or magazine. Or indeed, via a TV programme, happy to whip up the crowd and stoke indignation. Of course, other outlets are now open to our would-be critics. We have social media through which to express outrage or disgust, with Twitter to deliver immediate, pithy, though not always eloquent, sentiments.

Jack Monroe is known as a food blogger, a cookbook author specialising in budget recipes, a mother. Jack has lived on the breadline. Jack has defied conventions and attracted a heap of nastiness via various platforms, some of it aimed specifically at the very essence of what defines a person – their gender identity. Jack’s own definition, of being a non-binary transgender individual, rattled many people’s cages and destabilised Jack’s most intimate relationships.

‘I’m a little bit female and a little bit male. Finally, I fit in my skin.’

Jack is now cautiously optimistic, especially when it comes to expressing gender identity; and in 2015, on receiving the Women of the Future Award in the media category, quipped, ‘I’m not sure I’ll even be a woman in the future!’

Sometimes when we’re trying to define ourselves it can look from the outside as just wilfully defying convention. But don’t allow lazy labels like ‘rebel’, or even ‘freak’, to distract you from your intention to be an individual, to be your individual.

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