LOGAN RIELLY
Belonging in Aotearoa
Post-March 15, a collective of 800 New Zealanders drew together nationwide to strategise against hate. This is Christchurch teenager Logan Rielly’s story of how they are overcoming it.
Logan Rielly is strutting towards the photographer, serving up a look. ‘‘Be staunch,’’ a man yells, passing by. What? ‘‘Oh, honestly,’’ Logan says, flipping a dismissive hand. ‘‘I’m so used to that, it’s just nothing.’’
Earlier, they explained their philosophy. ‘‘Personally, I believe if you put something out in the universe, you’ll get it back.’’
Plus, they know they won’t be here forever. ‘‘I mean Christchurch is my home but,’’ Logan pauses, arching an eyebrow; ‘‘She’s boring.’’
Meet Logan Rielly. The 18-year-old is a Virgo, with their sun and moon in Virgo and rising in Capricorn, though prefaces this information with a disclaimer. ‘‘That means I’m supposed to be very put together, very prim and proper, and that’s just not me.’’
They read tarot cards – ‘‘They’re just a message from your higher self laying out what will happen’’ – idolise LGBTQIA+ icons Marsha P Johnson and Sylvia Rivera and love TV shows Special and Ru Paul’s Drag Race and the character of Moira from Schitt’s Creek.
A St Thomas of Canterbury College graduate, they are into painting, photography and hip-hop dancing with crew Polaroids, and have a bedroom wall peopled with 90s Hollywood A-listers Lindsay Lohan, Leonardo DiCaprio, Heath Ledger and Reece Witherspoon.
Eventually, they’ll be a performer of some kind. ‘‘I do know I have places to go, I’m meant to be someone. I’m gonna be big.’’
Leading the way
Logan is one of a new generation of New Zealanders helping to push the boundaries of how people view gender. In the past gender has been largely considered to be binary, with strict and oppositional categories of man or woman. It is now recognised that gender exists on a spectrum, and that the gender you identify as does not always match the sex recorded at birth.
‘‘My gender identification is non-binary, that’s how I feel personally. This is male, this is female, and I’m just in the middle. Sometimes I flow between it, but I do go with the pronouns they/them instead of he/her,’’ Logan says. ‘‘It’s the label that fits me best.’’
In a society where gender roles can still be rigid, and different ways of identifying and expressing gender poorly understood, existing outside the norm can be exhausting, lonely, frightening and even unsafe.
Transgender kids are around five times more likely to be bullied at school than cisgender children (those whose gender identity matches the sex recorded at birth). A Human Rights Commission report in June 2020 found people of diverse sexual orientation, gender identity and expression or sex characteristics continue to suffer discrimination in healthcare, education and work.
Discrimination on the basis of religion, gender, disability or sexual orientation is still not specifically protected against in the Human Rights Act. In December, the Government agreed this needs to be changed.
What is belonging?
The question of what it means to belong was brought into sharp relief in the aftermath of the March 15 terrorist attacks on Christchurch mosques in 2019.
Minority groups had been pushing the government to address issues such as rising Islamophobia for years. In the wake of the attacks, Islamic Women’s Council spokeswoman Anjum Rahman began the Inclusive Aotearoa Collective Ta¯ hono to advocate for inclusion and a more cohesive society.
Logan is one of more than 800 people they have consulted nationwide, in 46 towns and cities, about what it means to belong.
Logan doesn’t want to talk much about their primary school years. They were bullied and felt they had to hide their identity, a feeling that continued into high school. At the conservative boys’ school they attended, they didn’t see themselves reflected anywhere.
Then, one day in Year 11, Logan decided the time had come to change things. ‘‘The day I came out was athletics day, and I was like ‘I’m wearing a full face of makeup’, and one boy was like ‘Are you gay?’ and I was like ‘Yeah, what’s it to ya?’
‘‘I feel like it wasn’t until I stopped giving that energy of ‘I’m not this, I’m not that’, and started being unapologetic about who I am, was when I started to feel like I belonged. Before then I felt like I was holding my breath and I was suffocating.’’
By the time they were in their senior year, Logan was an inclusive community leader who came out as non-binary at the whole school assembly. ‘‘I made people question and helped them get the answers, things like helping them to say the correct language about people who are queer and addressing homophobia, which does exist in New Zealand.
‘‘My teachers were like, just you being on the stage and sitting there as one of the first openly queer people is monumental at an all-boys Catholic school.’’
They also intentionally wore makeup every day. Growing up with no LQBTQIA+ role models, Logan turned to popular media for their idols; particularly drag queens and trans women of colour. They wanted to try to provide that for younger kids at school.
‘‘Having that visual representation for somebody could save someone’s life.’’
Most of their friends were encouraging when they came out, but there are ongoing challenges. Logan is often mis-gendered, both accidentally and on purpose, and once got into a yelling match with a kindergarten friend who refused to accept them.
‘‘There are some people who are out and proud with their hatred of it. One lady was like, excuse me, ‘I don’t mean to assume your gender but are you a boy or a girl?’.
‘‘I was wearing this real cute pencil skirt, and I was just like ‘neither’ and she was like ‘ew’. As a queer person, dealing with those people can be hard because you don’t want to be rude but you do want to stand up for yourself.’’
Once, at work, they intervened in a conversation where a group of boys were throwing around the homophobic slur. ‘‘I had to be like, you have to stop, it’s not OK . . . . You should not be throwing words around that have deep and powerful meanings. I know it doesn’t affect you but it affects me, it affects others like me.’’
Straight people do not understand the harm it can cause, they say. ‘‘I’m traumatised by that word, it follows me everywhere and sneaks up on me when I least expect it. I hear it with strangers, I hear it with friends. It’s such a casual word in New Zealand, to the point where it’s very disgusting.’’
Bringing change
‘‘It wasn’t until I . . . started being unapologetic about who I am, was when I started to feel like I belonged.’’
There are times when Logan feels fully free. When they are dancing. When they’re putting together an outfit. And when people go out of their way to make them feel welcome, like after that school assembly.
‘‘The simple phrase of ‘I see you now,’ which I got from some of the boys really, really like moved me and made me want to go home and cry, like in a good way.
‘‘When people are forgotten, they feel lost and like they’re not fully there.’’
Presentation is utmost for Logan, who has always been a fashionista. ‘‘Fashion is . . . telling your story without saying anything. It’s very outspoken and very loud by being very quiet. I don’t want to look like I’ve got skinny Hallensteins jeans, and some like trainer and a top. That’s just not the fantasy,’’ Logan says. ‘‘I don’t want to be bland.’’
They also look through history for inspiration – the fact that in previous centuries men wore high heels, dresses and eyeliner shows how fluid gendered ideas are, they say. ‘‘Gender roles can very toxic for people like me. When I was young I felt like ‘I can’t be this, I have to present masculine, I have to play rugby.’ The matter of conforming to society’s roles for gender is very very preposterous and ludicrous.’’
But they are hopeful the country is changing. When they told New World they were non-binary at their induction, the bosses went out of their way to make them feel comfortable. Simple things like this, and people making an effort to use the correct pronouns, make them feel bright about the future.
‘‘It makes me feel like I’m here, and I’m seen, and I do belong here in Aotearoa, living and breathing.’’