In late May, chef Silver Cousler flew to Miami from Asheville, North Carolina, to have a “last hurrah” party before getting married and a new restaurant opening. While booking the flight, Cousler, who identifies as nonbinary and uses the pronoun “they,” felt like they had “a split-personality disorder” when the Delta Air Lines website required them to choose either “male” or “female.”
Cousler is used to filling out forms using their legal name and gender, which they no longer associate with. Sometimes it can cause problems: Once, at airport security, they realised they had not booked with their legal name and had to head back to the check-in desk to verify their identity. But providing gender in order to purchase a ticket can feel like an odd and sometimes invasive step. “I think a gender identifier is really strange to me at this point,” Cousler said.
