as small as a world and as large as alone, I'm sorry, I hope I don't sound like an idiot, but...

8:41am June 8, 2014

Anonymous asked: I'm sorry, I hope I don't sound like an idiot, but I'm kind of nervous. The more I think about it, the less I think I entirely female. I don't think I'm male either, maybe somewhere inbetween. Is hir the right pronoun for me? I feel really confused.

If you’re just starting to think about pronouns, you could do worse than read a non-binary person’s guide to invented pronouns that has a lot of gender-neutral pronouns.

You also might want to look further into the many variations of gender that are out there – the more people you talk to, the more you might find that there’s a specific gender that fits you, whether there’s a name for it or not. Or you might find that, like me, you seem to simply not have a gender. There are entire communities out there, that I’ve never been much part of but I know they exist, that are for nonbinary, genderqueer, and other people outside the standard realm of male and female. I wouldn’t even begin to know where to look these days. But try to find someplace that welcomes exploration of who you are – stay away from places where people are obsessed with policing the boundaries of “who counts as trans” and “who doesn’t” and “who’s just looking for attention” and things like that – you want a supportive environment to figure yourself out in, not a place where you’re going to feel scrutinized or feel like you have to label yourself prematurely in order to be legitimate. And you don’t have to participate if you don’t want, you can just read stuff by other people if that makes you more comfortable than participating. Just be careful… there’s a lot of places, including large parts of tumblr, that seem to have turned into battle zones over nonstandard genders, and I wouldn’t want to see someone swept up in that when they’re just trying to figure out who they are and where they fit.

There are a lot of gender-neutral pronouns out there though, and different ones may feel like they have different connotations to you. So one might feel right, and one might feel totally wrong. Many of them have been around far longer than people imagine. Sometimes you’ll figure out which pronouns feel right before you have your identity figured out, and other times it goes the other way around, so don’t feel like you have to rush it.

When I was younger, all I was really exposed to was the binary trans community, so you were either “MTF” or “FTM” (those aren’t the terms people use these days, because most people these days feel like it makes it sound as if their birth sex was actually ever their gender, but that’s what we called it back then), so I assumed since I wasn’t cis then I must be FTM. And then eventually that felt wrong and I was very confused for awhile until I stumbled upon the idea of being genderless (without having heard of it from anyone else), which fit me really well. It may be that you start out seeing identities that sort-of fit but don’t quite, and then later come across something that makes a lot more sense. Or you might figure things out really quickly.

Also don’t be afraid if things change. People don’t talk about it a lot, but there are people (I know several) whose gender identity changes over time. Either slowly and only once, or frequently and in many directions. So even if something seems absolutely accurate now, it may not be accurate ten years from now, and that’s okay too. As long as you know who you are, that’s the thing that matters the most. Even if there’s no word for it, even if nobody’s ever heard of it, as long as you know.

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