Changing My Pronouns to They/Them
What I wish I’d known before I did…
“Are you a man or a woman?” asked some random bloke at the bar I was working at. I suppose your standard cis-gender could give a well-directed and curt response and get on with their lives, maybe precede onto some civilised conversation. Instead, I’m standing there in a bit of a panic as I look at my body for a while. It’s clearly what most people call female — tits, hips, monthly pangs and years of generic sexism scorched in its brain. Then, I look at the way my body moves. Its almost always hunched, my legs are always wide open and taking up space, I have a low, swarthy voice and short hair, I like women (a lot) and no matter how I’ve presented my mates have always called me ‘the Dude’. Oh, and I dress up as a man in gay clubs to pay my rent.
“Are you a man or a woman, is it that hard to answer?” Well… yes. Am I happy being born a woman? Not fully, not graciously, not with the strength I see cis and trans women have as they hold their head up high. Would I want to be a man? Kind of, but not completely, I don’t fit in with their rhetoric and gaining butt acne and bum-fluff-like mismatched stubble isn’t on my radar of desire. Call me selfish, but I love having a vagina, even if it’s just for the multiple orgasms, but having tits is like wearing a rucksack on my front that I can’t take off.
“Was that rude to ask? I just want to know.” I do believe you do, mister, but I also believe, from your shitty trainers, cheap bomber jacket and Primark shirt, that you’re very much a straight man looking for a lay and if I reveal my lack of a Y in my chromosomes I’m at risk of becoming ‘tranny chased’ or ‘lesbian hunted’, depending on your opinions of what I am. Chasing is where (mostly men) chase down transgender people to try to change them or just fetishise them through the power of their miracle penis. Lesbian hunting is likewise: “You like girls? I’ll get us another one, love!”; “It’s just cause you’ve not found the right man yet, babe”; “Come on, try my dick and I bet I can convince you otherwise”. Gross.
“Ugh, mate, honestly I wasn’t trying to offend, all this PC shit is driving me crazy.” My other option is to say I am a man. This has been a more scary answer for me in the past, because homophobes and men full of toxicity then believe I’m wearing fake boobs to tempt them falsely, that with any makeup, jewellery or even the colour pink, I’m then a gay man and instead of sexual assault coming up in my night, I’m more likely to get punched in the face or called a faggot.
“Like, you don’t look like one or the other, babe… mate…” I decided before this encounter that I would go on as non-binary, change my name and my pronouns to they/them but there’s a lot of stuff to expect when this happens. People don’t believe you, people don’t believe that the concept even exists. You’ll hear “but that’s not even grammatically correct”; “but you were such a pretty girl”; “but ‘they’ is so hard to remember, it confuses me!’
“It confuses me.” The thing is, I had to do it for myself, never fitting in with woman and man and despite the transphobia there is such beauty in this pronoun. When someone first called me Lor and referred to me as ‘they’, I felt so liberated. Finally, someone was looking at me as a person, as a human, instead of continuously identifying my genitalia to the world in reference to my actions. I was both and neither and my relationships and love with people were (mostly) strengthened as people got to know my human essence instead of my very much un-chosen mortal shell.
Well, in the end I replied to this bloke.
“Neither. Both. And I’m very sure about not being sure.”
Then I went for a shot at the bar.
