Mx Justin Vivian Bond interviewed on BBC Radio 4's Midweek »

Nonbinary visibility on UK radio and in US and UK print media. Particularly notable for discussion of the ‘Mx’ honorific title and a third gender pronoun:

practicalandrogyny:

This morning’s BBC Radio 4 Midweek programme interviewed gender binary rejecting transgender cabaret performer Mx Justin Vivian Bond who uses the third gender pronoun v.

The interview covers Mx Bond’s cabaret, third gender identity and childhood, starting 4 minutes 35 seconds into the episode.

Transcript follows:

Libby Purves (interviewer): Over from the US cabaret scene to enhance the Soho theatre, here is Justin Vivian Bond. If you’re a cabaret follower you may know him[sic] as Kiki DuRane of the duo Kiki and Herb. Played the Carnegie Hall and Broadband and nominated for a Tony. But the Kiki DuRane character, the bitter has been old show girl. Is she gone forever now?

Justin V Bond: Uh, I think so, hopefully. I’ve been in a much better mood since she went into retirement. [Panel members laugh] So I think she’ll stay in her nursing home in New Jersey where she is mentally in —I guess the word is intoned. 

LP: [Laughs] Your uh, [laughs] Your new show is just you, is called Dendrophile. Just explain Dendrophile, someone who is fond of trees?

JVB: It would be someone who gets an erotic charge out of nature. Uh, literally a tree hugger. [Laughs from interviewer] But uh I like the word because I think it can incorporate any kind of exploration of nature or, uh, even human nature. Which I get a big thrill out of, especially people who dig deeply into their own nature to be genuine and authentic. Which I think is something that — because we are bombarded with images from the media of what we should think we should be like. It’s nice to—

LP: Everything is digital.

JVB: Yeah. It’s good to just kind of sit with yourself every now and then and try and get real.

LP: There’s a lovely review of your singing actually as ‘a voice that conjured cracking bark, creeping tendrils and rising saps’. Someone thinks you’d sing as a tree, don’t they?

JVB: I think someone was writing me a love letter!

[Panel laughs]

LP: Why not? In the past you seem, having, meeting you this morning, a very cheerful character but you’ve got a lot of fun in the past out of a real cabaret sense of hopelessness, you you —that Noel Coward song, I Hate The Spring, ‘I love rabies, I hate babies’ and—

JVB: Well that much is true! But I think you can be cheerful and have that attitude.

LP: There’s a splendid one saying ‘It’s the new depression, so why am I filled will with glee, everyone’s coming down quickly, now they can all join me.’ You like the depressive vibe do you?

JVB: Well I don’t know if that’s depressive. I’m an optimist and I’m just sort of happy to see everyone in the same boat.

LP: I got a sort of echo of Quentin Crisp out of that, his great line, ‘don’t keep up with the Joneses, drag them down to your level instead!’

[Laughter]

JVB: That’s a great attitude!

LP: [Laughing] That’s your motto!

JVB: I mean, the only person that would upset is the Joneses really.

LP: Yeah well, drag them down to your level. Um. One thing you’ve done now is to declare yourself formally to be neither male nor female, and we have a new prefix, you’re not Mr, you’re not Ms, you’re M X.

JVB: “Mix”

LP: Mx. That’s clever.

JVP: Well, thank you.

LP: And you don’t like he or she, it’s got to be v?

JVP: V, yes.

LP: Which is for the Vivian?

JVP: Right —Well no, v is just a pronoun —Vivian’s, it’s sort of coincidental that Vivian starts with a v. But I wanted v as a pronoun because I thought it sort of again, it’s two sides that meet in the middle. And so visually, as a sort of symbol, I think v is a good idea for a third gender.

LP: Why do you want to be a third gender?

JVB: I don’t want to, I kind of feel that I am.

LP: You feel like you always were, but you don’t wish to change gender? You don’t want gender reassignment?

JVB: No because if I was to ‘change gender’ it would imply that I’m something that I’m not already. Um, to change my physical body uh — which I am doing a bit with oestrogen, but because that’s sort of an aesthetic choice — but um, I don’t feel like I’m uh a woman trapped in a man’s body, I feel like I am transgendered person trapped in a man’s body. So um, I don’t feel like — I feel like if I say I’m a man, it’s a lie. And I feel if I say I’m a woman it’s a lie, so I’m just trying to find a space in between where I can live comfortably. And honestly.

LP: Is it a happy thing? Is it something that’s become a happy thing? Deciding this?

JVB: [Speaks over]Well it’s always been a happy thing.

LP: [Spoken over]Because it’s difficult to be—

JVB: —it’s difficult to be but it’s always been a happy thing. Because I’ve always enjoyed being who I am, I’ve always enjoyed my life. The only difficulty comes in coming against people’s ideas of what I should be and feeling that I’m disappointing them. Or feeling that they, for some reason, are presumptuous enough to feel that they can impose their ideas on me. Then I become frustrated. But uh I would say as far as my own outlook, it’s always been relatively positive, and the more uh, I become able to articulate it, the more relaxing and enjoyable my life is.

LP: How was it when you were growing up? Because you, you’re a church going family I think? You’re a sort of Maryland, serious church going family. Was, was that difficult? What did your parents feel about your [laughs] refusal to join either gender? [Laughs]

JVB: Well it’s ironic because um although I was raised in a very religious atmosphere and a very conservative atmosphere, and one that wasn’t particularly, uh —I wasn’t surrounded by people who were well educated. Um, because they knew me, especially the girls that were my age, they just sort of accepted me for who I was, and never questioned, and always just sort of knew. And so I felt a tremendous amount of comfort and very little conflict with them. I feel that my, my mother specifically felt it was her responsibility to kind of guide me, or even force me, into a role that she and her friends and her community felt more comfortable with. So that was a struggle, between us. But I think because there were people all along who kind of got it and understood me and allowed me to be [stumbles] myself. My father’s step father, my grandfather, um, he was always completely accepting, and encouraging and loving. So I had this sense of self worth because there were people who loved me, and seemed to get it from the very beginning. And so I just felt like the other people, including my mother at times, were just troublesome and didn’t get it, and I kind of worked around them as much as I could.

[Programme moves on to the next guest]

Listen to the full radio programme at BBC iPlayer

Recent longer interview at NYMag.com

Interview with Mx Bond from yesterday’s UK Guardian