Rain Dove went undercover as a man while helping in NSW’s bushfire relief

Rain Dove, a gender-nonconforming model and activist, chose to present as a cisgendered man throughout the trip, so as to remain safe and provide help without causing any distraction.

In a video uploaded this week detailing the experience, Dove explained how they were initially hesitant to be themselves because of the firm traditional gender roles in rural NSW.

“They needed volunteers, but only in rural areas where they had ‘traditional values’ like women worked in the kitchen, and well men, were men,” Dove, who waited two years to share their story, said.

“The idea of someone like me who is gender queer was still new and oftentimes could feel like a threat to people.”

To prove they were hard working and genuinely dedicated to helping the cause, Dove said they barely spoke in the first few days, and just focused on what needed to be done.

“For the first day I didn’t really say anything except for my name, yes, no, and thank you,” they said in the video.

“I let my hard work be my identity and it seemed to work because they invited me out for a beer after.”

Dove explained how they planned to reveal their true gender identity at some point, but wanted to first build rapport with the men and allow them a chance to learn who they were.

They said they hoped to challenge the group’s perceptions of people who “identified like me”.

Their ploy proved successful when they finally decided it was time to share the truth about their gender identity with the men.

“I eventually told them in the middle of work and they asked a lot of questions and we worked through a lot of things together, but at the end they were comfortable enough to take a photograph with the pride flag,” they said.

For the remaining period of their stay, Dove said they were “just myself”.

That included partaking in a “topless working day”, with footage showing them in a car with at least two shirtless men.

“No one was hurt by these,” they joked, seemingly referencing their breasts.

Before setting off for the country to help, Dove spoke to locals and read local message boards, where they saw some unsavoury attitudes towards the LGBTQ+ community.

“The sentiment around LGBTQ (especially trans, non-binary and queer identifying people) was that they were a threat from city living culture causing a mental health crisis in young people,” they wrote.

“I knew if I just bulled my way in, identity first, I would immediately get stonewalled (pun intended). And being blocked out wouldn’t allow me to contribute to furthering the dialogue, nor would it make me safe – and to be fair it wouldn’t make them feel safe either.”

Dove said that while there were some AFAB (assigned female at birth) people doing manual labour, the majority were cisgendered men who preferred to work in private groups to “get more accomplished”.

They decided they would not only be safest to be in one of those “exclusive” groups, but it would give them an opportunity to “relate, and then shift stereotype/bias by simply being vs preaching”.

“My goal here was to have a positive experience and show that our community cares deeper than it’s given credit for,” Dove said.

They added they wanted to wait a respectable amount of time before sharing their story so they wouldn’t take away from the focus that “really needed to be on the communities that lost everything”.

Originally published as Gender-nonconforming model went ‘undercover’ as man to volunteer in NSW bushfire relief