Recently, I found myself living across the street from Maude Moore, a high school friend of mine who I hadn’t spoken to in ages. We’ve become close friends, but they’ve changed a bit since I met them in 2014. Maude is non-binary, which means that they were raised a boy, but they don’t feel like that identity fits them.
I’m interested in how we learn about ourselves through our relationship with gender, so I met with Maude on the front porch of their new house in South Park and asked them when they decided to explore their identity as a non-binary, trans person.
Maude described spending two months on Vancouver Island, where they worked at a wildlife hospital right after COVID struck. They had just graduated from Stivers School for the Arts, the high school where we first met in 2014.
“I was kind of in a limbo for a while,” they told me. “I had gone to Wright State for a year, dropped out.”
They said the experience — alone on an island — finally gave them space to think about questions relating to their gender, which they hadn’t been able to process growing up.
“I was able to just exist on my own up there,” Maude recalled. “And I existed as a man, but it kind of sparked a lot of the questions I wanted to ask myself.”
Those questions led to a real revelation about their gender identity. On a bike ride alone through the woods, wearing their favorite outfit, Maude said they “just got this really strong feeling of like: ‘Wow, I feel like a girl right now. There’s no consequence to me feeling this way, there’s no pushback at all.’”
Shortly after this realization, they decided to change their first name to one they felt more comfortable with. But I was curious — why “Maude”? They told me the name came from the song “Maud Gone” by Car Seat Headrest.
“I remember grabbing ahold of that name even though I still identified as a man and thinking: ‘Wow, there’s nothing else there at all, and I just enjoy that name!’ Once I began to question my gender a bit more, the question arose of changing my name. It popped back up, and I was like: ‘That’s exactly what I need. I like that.’”
We talked about their time living across the street from me on Greenwood Avenue. It was the first place they lived after moving out from their family home, in a duplex they shared with two men. It was where they started going by Maude instead of their birth name, and where they started using gender neutral pronouns (“they/them” instead of “he/him”).
“It was a beautiful house, a community space…It felt freeing, the epitome of what Dayton can be for me.”
I knew the house as a social space. They hosted parties and concerts in the basement for local underground bands. But before long, Maude said the time had come for another transition — the house wasn’t right for them anymore.
“[The house was like] you’re growing a plant…and it becomes root-bound, and the roots kind of grow over themselves, tangle within themselves, and they can’t find anywhere else to go because they’re just kind of crossing over themselves over and over again and then suffocating. I think that moving out has helped me find more soil to kind of spread out in.”
Now that they’ve found space for those roots to grow, Maude has also been working to renew an old passion for gardening. They told me the practice has helped them cultivate their sense of self and connect with others.
“Whether it’s relationships with plants or relationships with people, where I could almost give something that I needed when I was younger to these plants that are all beautiful and, like, weird in their own way.”
I think regardless of your gender, there’s real value in pushing yourself to go beyond whatever role society has decided you should have.
In addition to working with plants, Maude described how playing in a band has made them feel more recognized for who they are.
“Performing in whatever I want to wear and however I want to present is kind of beautiful. It just feels like a statement of who I am.”
Maude has played bass with Bomb Bunny, a local Dayton shoegaze trio, for over two years. You may have heard them live from WYSO’s studio on Kaleidoscope last July.
Finally, Maude says their partner Mary, who is also non-binary, has been an enormous support.
“They are someone who’s always accepted me. They are someone who has been surrounded by queer people throughout most of their adult life. They are very experienced with having these conversations and allowing these questions to bear fruit. Labels can be really confusing. “Girlfriend” is one of those gendered terms that have really helped me grow into who I want to be.”
It was great to catch up with Maude and to better understand the changes they’ve been making.
I think regardless of your gender, there’s real value in pushing yourself to go beyond whatever role society has decided you should have—for Maude, it’s paying off.
This story was produced at the Eichelberger Center for Community Voices.
