Imagine a world where gender is fluid, where a person can cross the boundaries of male and female, gay and straight, and freely roam the in-betweens. Imagine that world at Yale.
Loren Krywanczyk wants to change the way you think about gender.
Call him Loren, or call him Lauren.
Call him he, or call him she.
He won't correct you. Correcting implies there's a right answer.
There isn't one.
Loren identifies as "genderqueer." He also considers himself a "boi," a "trannie boy," or just plain "trans," as in transgender. Pinning him down is no easy thing. He's in a non-monogamous, committed relationship with another bio-girl. A biological female, that is. But he doesn't identify as lesbian. He was born with a female body, but wants to live in the world as a man, at least for now.
He's not on "T," or testosterone. He has no plans for surgery. He feels no need to carve up his body to live the way he wants.
The way he wants to live is outside the "gender binary," in a world without boxes, M or F.
As a man with a vagina, he wants to show us how tricky the borders around man and woman can be. How all gender, at its core, is drag - something on the outside, a performance. If his body no longer means what society says it must mean, he can be anyone he wants. He can marry anyone he desires. His genitals are as incidental to the person inside as his blue eyes or brown hair.
"I have no problem with the body I have and accepting that body," Loren says. "For me, it's about making the point: the body I have defines nothing about my personality or capability. My body determines nothing about my identity."
He spends most of his time in coffee shops on the fringe of Yale University in New Haven, where he just finished his junior year. Maybe you've seen him, parked in the fishbowl window at Koffee Too? bent over his cell phone, inking the back of his hand, a backpack slumped in the next chair. His legs swing open and shut. The book of essays, "Inside/Out," is split open on the table.
The personal is political. One look tells you that. The Carhartt dungarees, the battered shoes and the untucked T-shirt that reads: "Just Another Soldier In the War on Heteronormativity."
Soldier? A damn war hero, is what one friend calls him. More of The New Radical @ Hartford Courant
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