Photo: Jeff Neumann/SHOWTIME
“I came into clarity around my gender identity after coming into contact with the character I play on@sho_billions, Taylor Mason, via the character breakdown which said, ‘female, non-binary’. Up until that time I had only seen ‘non-binary’ described as ‘neither male nor female,'” wrote Dillon, 33. “I was socialized to understand that ‘male’ and ‘female’ were to be used synonymously with ‘man’ and ‘woman’ and so, I didn’t know how I could not be a woman without changing my body. I didn’t know I could be trans and not change my body.”
“Reading the character breakdown for Taylor, it was certainly not the first time I seen the word ‘female’ and it wasn’t the first time I had seen the word ‘non-binary’. However, it was the first time I had seen the two words next to each other in a way where it supposed that the words related to two different things; where it supposed that ‘non-binary’ wasn’t referring to assigned sex,” they added. “Upon looking both words up I had an aha moment where for the first time it all came together in my mind: I was assigned sex: ‘female’ at birth; I have visible, ‘typically female’ biological sex characteristics. But, my gender identity is non-binary; neither man nor woman.”
Dillon also discussed their experience in a separate post Tuesday.
“Prior to Taylor on@sho_billionsthe only trans people I knew, even those who identified as non-binary, had either taken some medical step to physically transition their sex characteristics or changed their gender expression to fit within the expected gender expression of the sex opposite the one they were assigned at birth,” they explained. “I thought that was part of what you had to do in order to claim a non-binary identity, a trans identity, and I didn’t understand how I fit.”
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Dillon wrote that realizing they could “still be non-binary” without medically transitioning was “ultimate freedom.”
Clearly, Dillon’s performance has resonated with viewers: They earnedCritic’s Choice nominationforBillions.
This July,Khloé Kardashianpraised Dillon’s work onBillions, unintentionally using the wrong prefix for theOrange is the New Blackactor. Dillon used the opportunity to educate, explaining that they use “Mx.” (pronounced Mix) instead of Ms. or Mr.
Season 4 of Showtime’sBillionsis set to be released in 2019.
Next year, Dillon will also appear inJohn Wick: Chapter 3, playing “The Adjudicator.”
source: people.com
