‘Just please don’t be a cross-dresser.”

These were the first words I heard from my grandmother as I came out to her for the first time. She had no idea that I dress in women’s clothes to perform in drag. Her remark was crystal clear: Being gay was OK; being something else was not. I didn’t understand how something that felt right could be perceived as something so wrong. I didn’t understand why something so harmless should be attacked and taken away from me.

N.C. legislators are starting to sound a lot like my grandmother with the passage of HB2 – or the “bathroom bill.” But I wish lawmakers – and my grandmother – knew what it is like not simply being a “man” or a “woman.”

I didn’t let my grandmother’s words stop me. Though hurt, I still perform at local clubs and events. As I walk into an LGBT club, decked out in makeup and heels, I feel truly free to express myself in the collective body that I am. I am not always a “man” and not always a “woman.” I am collectively myself – a fluid expression of gender and identity, something unique, something me.

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I can’t tell you whether I have ever witnessed a state legislator sitting in an LGBT bar talking to the individuals being affected by this bill. Or at the makeup counter. Or at the local universities. Or even in their workplaces. The truth is, there are individuals operating on a non-binary spectrum all around us on a daily basis. Some of us may be caked down in eye shadow and lipstick – and others may be authentically themselves, content with how they look and how they feel.