The 20-year-old me nods, consciously agreeing with what she is saying, yet a subconscious part of me knows that something does not feel right. The 26-year‑old me both cringes and thrills at the word “traditionally” appearing next to “trans”. As if anything feels traditional about a journey into gender deviance, unless of course my friend was referring to the longstanding examples of transness within previous historical periods – yet something tells me she was not.

The book is also very funny. There’s a humorous account of them winding up a wealthy donor at a charity function – who demanded ‘so, when did you first know?’ – by spinning an elaborate and at first plausible yarn, which ends with a three-year-old Alabanza visiting a doctor and saying their first words: “Doctor, I am actually a cross-dressing, gender non-conforming deviant.” Their interlocutor didn’t find this quite so amusing. Travis' book will challenge the reader to reflect on the ways we treat each other, pushing for a brighter future where gender structures aren't being weaponised in the ways they currently are’ Travis Alabanza is no longer interested in convincing anyone that being trans is valid. “I make art; it’s not my job to say the right thing all the time or to be a spokesperson,” they tell me in the smoking area of a queer bar in east London, one glaringly hot afternoon in July. Speaking to Alabanza, they are warm, erudite and razor-sharp – qualities which can be found in abundance in their debut book, None of the Above: My Life Beyond the Binary . verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ Requires excessive admiration, adulation, attention and affirmation – or, failing that,wishes to be feared and to be notorious (narcissistic supply)

with Travis Alabanza and Reni Eddo-Lodge

I think of some of the people I have met who say 'My pronouns are she/they,' and when you ask which they prefer, they say, 'Always they, I actually only want they, I just want to be less difficult.'" Brilliant . . . This is a book which everyone can learn from, whether you’re a cis person who hasn’t yet interrogated how your options are shut down or any flavour of trans person pushed towards trying to be less visible but maybe less of yourself for having the options stolen away’ I once replied to a casting director: “When I played a witch in a school play; I was 13.” He nodded, as if that was an answer that made sense to him, so he could move on. He looked at the figure in front of him, saw the shadow poking through my jaw, and could draw the lines of where a witch once was, or could be. None of the Above explores the nuance of self-understanding in an honest, hilarious, and heartfelt way. It is a stunning intersectional interrogation of gender that reads like a conversation with a friend." —Blair Imani, author of Read This to Get Smarter: About Race, Class, Gender, Disability & More Pursuing the endless goal of perfect equality, left wing liberalism has become its own carcinogen. By providing preferential treatment to those with recognised protected characteristics, it incentivises an endless multiplication of identities, each demanding the power of the state is used to rescue it from its oppression. If the political left has come to believe that future of the modern state is as a kind of identerian Leviathan, then non-binary identities actually threaten to become a kind of Russell’s Paradox at its heart, an identity, which is not an identity, and so collapses identities into a subjective, ungovernable morass, as hard categories are replaced with spectra of subjective feelings, which are impossible to ground political power in.

I needed to write this book because I want to tell my own narrative rather than let everyone fill in the blanks,” Alabanza said. “And I think when an award like this happens for trans people, it just continues to show that there are more people wanting to celebrate us than not.”

This event took place on 28 July 2022

Yes, and the relevance of which we have yet to come to grips with. I daresay this is a long-term trend. Victorian children were put to work in all sorts of iniquitous circumstances. My own mother started work in a cotton mill at the age of 14. Teenagers weren’t ‘invented’ till after WW2. Firmly convinced that he or she is unique and, being special, can only be understood by,should only be treated by, or associate with, other special or unique, or high-status people (or institutions) Both accounts also betray, albeit perhaps less intentionally, a father-shaped hole. Alabanza fondly recalls “Hangwolf”, a childhood-era German lodger who served as temporary father-figure, then later reflects on “the man who drove me to football because my own was too busy somewhere else”, and “how so many of us grow up with fathers playing hide and seek, so the wider community becomes our dads”. Being called “son”, for Alabanza, could thus feel “like both a punch and a hug”. When I was 16 and met the first person who said ‘I’m not male or female’, that was mind-blowing. It felt so punk” – Travis Alabanza

Travis Alabanza is one of the most talented storytellers of a generation. None of the Above is potent, engaging, hilarious, and beautiful, just like Travis.” —Jonathan Van Ness, Emmy-nominated host of Queer Eye and New York Times best-selling authorDespite how many times I have had to withstand questioning about when exactly I knew, I still wish I could pinpoint an answer that felt honest, even if just for the rare time it is asked from a place of safety and comfort; even if it is just so I know myself. Sometimes I wish for the more out and out, retro bigotry – at least then I know where I stand Travis Alabanza writes about gender and its possibilities with such generosity and ease even the most provocative suggestions start to seem obvious, despite their challenges to society at large. This anti-memoir, which is at times both profound and funny, will make anyone question the stories we tell about ourselves, how we tell them and even who the telling is for’ When someone refers to me as a “he” in passing I have to remind myself they could possibly be talking about me’ Travis Alabanza is an award-winning writer, performer and all-round LGBTQ+ icon. Their stage shows Burgerz and Overflow explored the joy and traumas of being a trans person in public spaces. Travis is now releasing their much anticipated memoir None of the Above. JG: In the book, you criticise the ‘born this way’ framing of transness as something innate. What is the problem with that framework?