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How to Be Between
How to Be Between is a memoir about female facial hair, polycystic ovarian syndrome, and negotiating identity for those visibly between gender binaries.
Young women’s bodies are relentlessly scrutinised and judged, so for most, the appearance of facial hair is a traumatic experience – unnatural, unfeminine, unwanted. But what happens when a female-assigned person decides to embrace their facial hair? In How to Be Between, Bastian Fox Phelan explores how something as seemingly trivial as facial hair can act as a catalyst for a never-ending series of questions about the self. What happens when we accept our bodies as they are? What freedoms are gained by deciding to pursue an authentic sense of self, and what are the costs? As Bastian navigates adolescence and young adulthood, they meet many people who ask, ‘Who, or what, are you?’
Written with a tender sense of compassion and openness to experience, Phelan’s memoir charts a young activist and writer’s life as they find their voice through political action, publishing zines and playing music. An exploration of youthful anxiety, medical discourse and shifting identities, Bastian Fox Phelan’s memoir shines a light on what it means to find joy, resilience and radical self-acceptance in a body that refuses to fit within gender binaries.
How to Be Between charts a coming-of-age that is also a coming into identity, and into a way of being that embraces liminality, ambiguity and unboundedness. Phelan captures the excruciating intensity and unfolding discoveries of adolescence and early adulthood with a candour and an openness to wonder that are a joy to read, and they offer fascinating accounts of contemporary queer activism, the consolations of solitude and of art, and the difficulties of maintaining a sense of the individual within any kind of collective or consensus.
—Fiona Wright
Why do zine makers transform, again and again, into our most moving writers of longform nonfiction? Bastian Fox Phelan’s memoiristic künstlerroman is, at its very core, an affecting romance: a catchy love song, dedicated to kinship, communities, shared cultural histories, and the people who clearly matter most in their life.
—Sam Twyford-Moore
Young women’s bodies are relentlessly scrutinised and judged, so for most, the appearance of facial hair is a traumatic experience – unnatural, unfeminine, unwanted. But what happens when a female-assigned person decides to embrace their facial hair? In How to Be Between, Bastian Fox Phelan explores how something as seemingly trivial as facial hair can act as a catalyst for a never-ending series of questions about the self. What happens when we accept our bodies as they are? What freedoms are gained by deciding to pursue an authentic sense of self, and what are the costs? As Bastian navigates adolescence and young adulthood, they meet many people who ask, ‘Who, or what, are you?’
Written with a tender sense of compassion and openness to experience, Phelan’s memoir charts a young activist and writer’s life as they find their voice through political action, publishing zines and playing music. An exploration of youthful anxiety, medical discourse and shifting identities, Bastian Fox Phelan’s memoir shines a light on what it means to find joy, resilience and radical self-acceptance in a body that refuses to fit within gender binaries.
How to Be Between charts a coming-of-age that is also a coming into identity, and into a way of being that embraces liminality, ambiguity and unboundedness. Phelan captures the excruciating intensity and unfolding discoveries of adolescence and early adulthood with a candour and an openness to wonder that are a joy to read, and they offer fascinating accounts of contemporary queer activism, the consolations of solitude and of art, and the difficulties of maintaining a sense of the individual within any kind of collective or consensus.
—Fiona Wright
Why do zine makers transform, again and again, into our most moving writers of longform nonfiction? Bastian Fox Phelan’s memoiristic künstlerroman is, at its very core, an affecting romance: a catchy love song, dedicated to kinship, communities, shared cultural histories, and the people who clearly matter most in their life.
—Sam Twyford-Moore
- GenresNonfiction
311 pages, Paperback
Published May 1, 2022
3 people are currently reading
164 people want to read
About the author
Bastian Fox Phelan
3 books3 followersBastian Fox Phelan is a writer, musician and zine maker living in Mulubinba Newcastle on Awabakal land. Bastian’s writing has been published in the Guardian, Sydney Review of Books, Meanjin, Archer and The Lifted Brow. Their zines are held in collections around the world, and they make music as part of dream-pop duo Moonsign. How to Be Between is their first book.
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Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews
May 13, 2022
This was such a beautiful memoir. Phelan gently probes questions of gender identity that arise through PCOS and the arrival of facial and body hair. The community they find through the trans and queer friends they make and the zine and music scenes they inhabit is so beautifully rendered. My heart burst open at the joy in these pages of gender expression and it broke at the many instances of bullying and harassment. The full complexity and sometimes changing nature of their gender identity is here. The small moments of community and kinship were deeply moving. Phelan is a beautiful understated writer who never overdoes it. The restraint in their style makes everything more beautiful. I can’t stop saying the word beautiful but everything in this book had beauty even the melancholia and disappointments.
June 29, 2022
Beautifully written coming of age story of a young Australian. Bastian’s story of finding themselves describes the common rights of passages for those growing up in regional cities, high school, university, traveling to America and Europe, moving to the capital city. This is framed against the questioning of self, gender and what happens when you don’t accept societies pressure to conform.
Bastian’s positivity, enthusiasm and love can’t help but colour the choices they make and this memoir is imbued with hopefulness even in its most challenging of circumstances.
Bastian’s positivity, enthusiasm and love can’t help but colour the choices they make and this memoir is imbued with hopefulness even in its most challenging of circumstances.
January 5, 2025
A great read to start the new year! Bastian’s continuous self-reflection and back and forth questioning of their gender identity was honest and emblematic of their eventual development of a liminal identity. Why is society so obsessed with body hair??? Urgh
On a more positive note, this memoir introduced me to the world of zines which I’m very intrigued by. There’s also a cool fact about frogs in this memoir :3
On a more positive note, this memoir introduced me to the world of zines which I’m very intrigued by. There’s also a cool fact about frogs in this memoir :3
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
August 14, 2025
It's always nice to see some of your own experiences reflected back to you, and that's exactly what this book was for me.
If you've ever wondered about gender identity, the DIY punk scene of the early 2000s, or life in Wollongong, Sydney, or Newcastle in those times, then I would highly recommend this book!
If you've ever wondered about gender identity, the DIY punk scene of the early 2000s, or life in Wollongong, Sydney, or Newcastle in those times, then I would highly recommend this book!
May 14, 2023
This book is outstanding. It is such deep personal dive into the life of a young trans person living in between the confines of being entirely female or entirely male throughout their life. This is such an inspiring story to embrace what makes you different and be authentically yourself. Phelan takes you on the journey of their own self discovery in such an intimate manner that has left me feeling so touched! I think this book highlights the intensity with which our lives are divided into this binary which is so engrained we often don’t even notice it. It is so interesting reading a story from someone so happy living fluidly in the liminal space between this binary that dictates most of our lives - truly living to the beat of their own drum. It also highlights many of the issues facing our trans, non-gender-conforming and intersex people today within Australia specifically but all over the world.
September 16, 2023
Memoir on gender, pcos, community, belonging and identity. A bit like looking into a mirror, or a big big hug. Amazing and well written.
August 21, 2025
A deep exploration of complex subjects such as family, gender, identity, and who it means to be You, set to a comforting backdrop of the DIY punk scene in early-2000s Sydney, Wollongong, and Newcastle.
Growing up in the not-so-punk scene of current Newcastle, I found this book equal parts comforting and confronting, and for a large majority I couldn’t decide between cackling along or bawling my eyes out while frantically highlighting like my life depended on it. I’m already excited to force all my friends to read it as well.
-Mars
Growing up in the not-so-punk scene of current Newcastle, I found this book equal parts comforting and confronting, and for a large majority I couldn’t decide between cackling along or bawling my eyes out while frantically highlighting like my life depended on it. I’m already excited to force all my friends to read it as well.
-Mars
July 3, 2022
a wonderful memoir. so good.
February 8, 2023
An incredible and moving memoir
May 13, 2023
In their debut memoir, Bastian Fox Phelan charts life growing up as a gender-diverse person with strength and compassion. Diagnosed with polycystic ovarian syndrome many years after some of the more obvious symptoms had made themselves known — primarily facial and body hair — Phelan’s story demonstrates the complex and changing nature of gender identity.
Writing for The Guardian, Phelan shares:
‘Female facial hair challenges ideas about bodies and their boundaries. It’s not just a cosmetic or medical issue — it is an issue of gender, because it pushes at gender binary norms.’
Phelan found themselves forced into the position of challenging those ideas from a young age — early high school, in fact — before they had the knowledge or vocabulary to determine their gender identity:
‘Then one day, a dark stranger came to town: my moustache…When the stranger appears, you can never rid yourself of their presence, even if you make them invisible. You’re the girl with a moustache, the girl whose body dared to do something different. Your girlness is permanently stained by this transgression — you’re guilty, and the hair above your lip is the spot that cannot be erased. You and the stranger, fates entwined.’
The presence of facial hair may be what instigated Phelan’s journey but it certainly didn’t lay down a clear-cut path. Immersing themselves in the counterculture zine, activist, and music scenes of the New South Wales coast, Phelan discovers rich (and sometimes dysfunctional) communities that demonstrate the diverse and non-linear nature of gender identification. They share their findings with self-awareness, curiosity, warmth, and acceptance in a beautifully understated manner.
In Phelan’s own words:
‘I hope that reading this book brings comfort and joy to others who may sometimes feel that the world is not big enough to contain all that they are. And I hope it helps people engage with questions around gender norms, self-worth, and self-expression — questions that need to be asked, but don’t always need to be answered.’
Writing for The Guardian, Phelan shares:
‘Female facial hair challenges ideas about bodies and their boundaries. It’s not just a cosmetic or medical issue — it is an issue of gender, because it pushes at gender binary norms.’
Phelan found themselves forced into the position of challenging those ideas from a young age — early high school, in fact — before they had the knowledge or vocabulary to determine their gender identity:
‘Then one day, a dark stranger came to town: my moustache…When the stranger appears, you can never rid yourself of their presence, even if you make them invisible. You’re the girl with a moustache, the girl whose body dared to do something different. Your girlness is permanently stained by this transgression — you’re guilty, and the hair above your lip is the spot that cannot be erased. You and the stranger, fates entwined.’
The presence of facial hair may be what instigated Phelan’s journey but it certainly didn’t lay down a clear-cut path. Immersing themselves in the counterculture zine, activist, and music scenes of the New South Wales coast, Phelan discovers rich (and sometimes dysfunctional) communities that demonstrate the diverse and non-linear nature of gender identification. They share their findings with self-awareness, curiosity, warmth, and acceptance in a beautifully understated manner.
In Phelan’s own words:
‘I hope that reading this book brings comfort and joy to others who may sometimes feel that the world is not big enough to contain all that they are. And I hope it helps people engage with questions around gender norms, self-worth, and self-expression — questions that need to be asked, but don’t always need to be answered.’
Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews