Nico Tortorella Is Changing The Dialogue Around Gender Identity

Nico Tortorella is so much more than an actor – they are an activist, a poet, and now, a published author. With the release of their memoir, Space Between, Tortorella offers a candid assessment of sexuality, connecting their own journey and acceptance as gender non-binary with a deeply personal account of love, addiction, and the responsibilities of celebrity. Reflecting on lived experiences, Tortorella wants us to know just how important it is to be ourselves. Read the interview, below.

What is the “space between” that you’re referencing in your memoir?

I think first and foremost, the “space between,” in regards to the book, is the space between the binaries. Male, female, conservative, liberal, gay, straight. These are the two ends of a spectrum of a socially constructed binary that we have established. The “space between” is the gray area that exists between those binaries.

Your memoir is subtitled "Explorations of Love, Sex, Fluidity." What do you mean by fluidity?

I think more than anything, fluidity is the ability to shapeshift, to not just be one thing for the rest of our lives, you know? To be able to bend and shift when necessary. We get so hung up on having to identify with one thing or another, and I think that the “fluidity” I reference in the title is the fluidity of love, the fluidity of sex.

Have you always been aware of your own gender fluidity? Do you feel like the seeds were there when you were younger? Were there experiences with individuals that kind of really helped shape your perception of how one can be as opposed to how they should be?

I think I always knew from a young age that I was open, that I was different than what was shown to me by my family and the media. But, it was only after meeting with many people, from all backgrounds—once I got out of my family’s house—that it all started to bend and shift in different ways. But it was 100% always there. But I was just taught, as so many of us are, to hate those parts of myself.

Given how visible your profile is in the public eye and the message you are sharing, do you feel that part of what you aim to do is—as with Space Between—give a jolt to the system, to open people’s eyes up?

Yes, one hundred percent. It’s art before it’s anything else. And art is supposed to evoke change and alter reality. And yes, this art is based in storytelling as a form of healing work. For me, the sexuality and gender conversation is really a metaphor for something so much bigger that’s going on in the world. And it’s a great leaping off point in 2019 on this planet because we are at still such amateur levels of understanding who we are. Even in the time I have written this book, I have changed so much. If we can begin to recognize the space between male and female—and its infinite possibilities really—then what happens to sexuality? It kind of loses its legs to stand on. It kind of becomes not real. And that’s this weird queer spiral that I’m in right now trying to figure out what that even means and how problematic of a thing that is to say in the world right now.

What is the biggest misconception that you’ve encountered about individuals that choose to identify as non-binary? And, if you have a message to those individuals, both who identify as such and those who have questions about it, what would that be?

Being non-binary is not about what we look like at all. At all, at all, at all. You do not have to look a certain way to be considered non-binary. And I thought that for a long time. But it has nothing to do with what I look like at all. That’s just one part of our gender expression. My gender is who I am on the inside, not at all what I look like or what I wear.

What do you hope readers are going to take away from the Space Between?

I hope people learn about who they are reading this book. I hope people start to change the way that they even think about sexuality and gender. I think that we really, as a community, need to start changing the language around sexuality and gender identity. And I think most importantly, most importantly, there’s a giant piece of the conversation that’s missing, and it’s spirituality. We are not rooted in any sort of spiritual connection with each other. And the ability to look in the mirror and question who you are and who you love or what you love is inherently spiritual, and we need to just start changing the language around this conversation, in a big way.

Space Between comes out today, via Penguin Random House.