On names and identity.

I've been thinking a lot about names lately.

Mostly, I feel like if I could just do without a name or pronouns, I would. I am starting to think that my favourite pronoun is "that one", as it's perfectly gender neutral without being a word people are unfamiliar with. (I still like zi and zir. But no one's heard of GNPs.) I don't like "it", and I don't like the singular "they", though that last one might be more appropriate than I had previously thought.

I'm not a multiple. I have characters in my head, to be sure, but they're not alters. They're not really other personalities, though there are times when they come damn close. It's hard to explain. What I am is gender-plural, I think. I've noticed lately that I respond differently to different names depending on the mood I'm in or what gender I feel really fits me from day to day.

This is mostly a product of the fact that my gender is fluid and I've been shifting away from identifying with the name Connor lately, even though it was perfect for a while. I'm not feeling as overtly masculine as I was when I took it on. I'm shifting back towards feeling like a Sarah, though that's still not quite me. I respond to Taylor's name always, even when it's not directed at me. And right now, that's the one that seems to be fitting on and off.

My Bunnie suggested that I just go by Anshin, since it's been my online handle since forever and a half. (Ten years now. Damn.) It still feels too feminine to me, but it is still more me than Saturday, or any of the other names that have come and gone as online handles.

The other day, I was feeling more like an Anthony than a Connor (my full male name is Anthony Connor Evans). It's a different attitude, but still a decidedly masculine one.

My ability to identify with certain names shifts because each name is a different identity to me. Even if it's nothing I can explain, it works. I understand that labels aren't important, so long as you know what you feel inside. But the labels are how you convey that to everyone else. Language can be such a barrier. Labels have meaning that can be explained and traded. And even though names are a sort of label, I kind of feel they're a more personal label, because their individual meaning only makes sense to the person responding to the name. So I feel like my shifts in gender tend to suit names better than labels.

Mind, I still feel more masculine than feminine. My personal fluid chart runs from neutral/androgyne to about 80%masculine. I'm never 100% male inside, and I rarely shift past about 10% feminine. So most of the identities or names I've picked up correlate. I still respond to Sarah because I've had that name for nearly 23 years, so I'm a little attached to it. I respond to Taylor, and Connor, and all manner of other names that belong to me and my characters and whoever else.

I feel like I should start wearing around "Hi, my name is" badges all the time.

Or at least starting conversations with my friends with the phrase "I'm ___ today".

Really, I'm beginning to understand that I'm a very complicated person, and nothing is as easy as putting a label on myself and expecting it to stick. I've always been so fluid in everything. There's no reason this should be any different.

On semi-fresh starts.

Not quite a clean slate, but I'll take what I can get.

I've emailed all of my professors officially coming out as trans so that they'll get my name and pronouns right. Of the five I've emailed, I've heard back from three, and they are all totally cool with this and seem nothing but helpful.  Problems may arise if I find I'm in class with lots of people I know, which given I'm a senior and am pretty much locked into my major/minor field classes, I probably will be.

My Bunnie was here for two weeks and headed back to N.C. about a week ago; she was supposed to only stay ten days, but ended up having to reschedule her flight because of a snafu with her boarding pass.  I wasn't complaining.  Neither was she.  We spent our surprise time after the airport trip fell through sharing lunch at Red Lobster and going to Barnes and Noble.  It was excellent.  As much as I love the idea of her being my girlfriend, I like her being my girlfriend in real life even more--I love the fact that we can hold hands, that we can kiss, that I can have her in my arms and everything feels so right with the world.  I've wanted this for way too long.  Of course I'm taking advantage of it.  I miss her, but I'm okay with her being gone this time, because she has her cell phone, which means I can call her without it being long-distance, we can text each other, and she has internet access, so it's like she's not really that far away.  Besides.  I'll see her again in a month when the Vampire group goes to New Orleans.

Speaking of vampires, I'm getting my fangs.  The binder is working out excellently, and now another piece of my identity should be falling into place soon.  I love the fact that my mom understands roleplay and what it means to me; she actually told me tonight that she doesn't get moms who don't get roleplay and that it's harmless and fun and we're just enjoying ourselves.  I love my mother.

Classes start tomorrow, and I'm all kinds of nervous about it.  This is the first time I'll have gone out in public actually presenting male with people knowing I'm presenting and people who know to call me Connor, and who know that I'm a guy, more or less.  I'm terrified.  It's kind of been triggering my dysphoria tonight, because I'm in a panic about looking perfect tomorrow, even though looking the part is only half the battle.  I did cut my hair again, though.  Hopefully it'll dry straight and fall right tomorrow and I'll just get lucky.  I've been PMSing for nearly a week now, so you just watch me hit my Lunar Cycle tomorrow and fuck everything up.  It'll be great.  And typical.

And on the subject of people calling me Connor.  I love my friends.  The girl's learning to call me Connor, my best friend Pookie was the first to make the switch and has been doing so consistently. (She also, after a fact, came up with the term 'chickadude'.  This is the same person who says that since I'm still fairly genderqueer, I'm a Transformer, as in the robots, and that if I'm dressed like a girl, I'm a drag racer instead of a queen.  She is the best at ridiculous gender-neutral terms.)  And my Foxy Lady has also been pretty consistent and awesome.  My Lil Sis has started calling me her Big Bro.  And I'll get my Badger to play along eventually.  No worries.  All in all?  Pretty damn good bunch of people, these guys are.

It's two in the morning and I am really damn sleep deprived.  I think I'm going to attempt to write for a bit and probably end up crashing the hell out.  Here's to tomorrow morning.

You Are Here

1. I started a Facebook page under a new name.  A male name.  One that I think I might want to start going by. This lead to a Talk from a friend that kind of left me a little shaky.  She means well.  She always does.  But my experiences are my own, the rest be damned; I hate to be so black and white about it, but if people have a problem with me creating a damn Facebook page under a male name, I really don't need to be friends with them in the first place.  Advice seconded by another friend of mine.  Perhaps these aren't things I should talk about openly, but I'm tired of being afraid and unsure, and all I want is some fucking support, and it hurts when all I get in return is people doing what feels like trying to talk me out of doing all this exploring.

2. Really missing the girl right now.  She's sick in another state and homesick on top of that, and that's making me miss her all the more, because I'm tired of sleeping alone and I want to make her better.  I always want to make her better, though, so that's nothing new.  I just really want someone to cuddle and watch movies or Iron Chef America with right now.  Stupid things like that.

3. Ordered my first binder today.  We'll see how that goes when it comes in.  In addition, I bought a pair of swim trunks today (with Captain America on them, tyvm) and some shirts at Goodwill.  The boy-wardrobe is growing.

4. Had a, ah, lovely class this morning.  I'm taking health right now so I don't have to do it this fall on top of everything else, and it's just...it's one of those classes.  This morning's assignment was a worksheet on gender roles where we had to list ten male traits and ten female traits, and whether we have any of the traits we listed for the opposite sex.  I word it this way because the damn sheet was worded this way.  Sex does not equal gender, stereotypes are fucking stupid, and there's a lot of middle ground we're ignoring completely in regards to both sex and gender.  I know, like I should be pitching a fit over a stupid worksheet in a stupid gen ed, but it just triggered my dysphoria and made me all shaky and a little freaked out and I really fucking hate this class.  Even the textbook, in the tiny paragraph on transgenderism in the chapter on sexual orientation, uses the example of a transgirl while referring to said fictional transgirl with male pronouns.  This makes me angry.

5. Writing is just not happening lately.  Shittons of RP, but I'm not just...writing.  And that sucks.

6. Hopefully, barring any more postponing, there will be a shopping trip with my buddy very soon, and I'm planning on going boy for that trip.  We'll see how that goes too.

I think that's all the updates we need.  I feel like I should have something more substantial to talk about, but I really don't.

This is why writing workshops are entertaining.

I'm taking two different fiction courses this semester--a forms class, and a workshop class. The piece I submitted for the former earlier this week was a first-preson narrative in which the identity of the speaker was never clearly marked.  My intent in writing this was to obfuscate the gender of the speaker.  Call it an experiment.  The story was about my speaker's very sexually geared relationship with a young man named Dylan.  Part of my intent was to see whether the class interpreted the speaker as male or female.

Of course, it doesn't matter either way, because my speaker was Taylor, who is both intersexed and gender-neutral.

(That was fun to explain, because the guy sitting next to me was asking "yeah, but how often does that happen?  Like one in a billion?"  Not that I have much respect for this guy anyway.  I was happy to hear the girl on the other side of him comment that it happens "more often than you may think".)

Most of the class interpreted my speaker as female.  Now, part of this could be due to the writer=narrator fallacy, which in a class of this level, I'd expect.  But I tend to think it was more a matter of that interpretation being heteronormative.  Two people, the professor included, read my speaker as male, which is closer to reality, since Taylor mostly presents as male.  One read the character as male because of the Fight Club references to "I am Jack's..." which makes sense, since people do tend to refer to the Fight Club narrator as Jack because of these lines.  The professor read the character as male because he didn't think a girl would refer to what the two characters were doing as 'fucking'.  Which I tend to think of as more of a male phrasing, myself.  But it was interesting.

Now, I really can't say why they read it one way or the other, but I just thought it was interesting that they did.  And the questions I am left with are these: is it because the other character is male?  Is it because the narrator is a submissive?  Is it because they know the writer as a female?

Just some random thoughts.  Things I probably won't find out the answers to, and I'm probably reading too much into things.

I was just incredibly thrilled that the first thing in my workshop that happened was a rather lengthy argument over whether the narrator was male or female.  I'm enjoying breaking down the idea of the binary being so clean-cut and real.  I intend to keep playing genderfuckery out in my stories this semester, just for my own entertainment.

Comments on LJ

There was a post on this community I follow over at LJ that really struck something in me.  The original poster was speaking about how unhappy they were as a female--to the point of having suicidal thoughts--but couldn't reconcile the idea of being male, either.  They were hurt and confused as to what they were.

A comment from a sympathetic anonymous poster ended with this line:

"Sometimes, I kinda think... what if I was male. But no, it doesn't feel right, either. And why the fuck does this binary have to exists, who the fuck benefits from it?"

I'm not sure what I have to say about this, because the truth is that I don't know either.

But it has gotten me thinking about where I am.  Which...is a very strange point.  A few weeks ago, I was absolutely distraught over how long my hair was getting and with how girly it was making me look.  The funny thing is that it probably wouldn't have been such a big deal if it hadn't been right at Christmas time, and as such, both of my grandmothers, upon visiting them, commented on how happy they were that my hair was getting all long and pretty again.  My immediate response was to say that I hated it and needed to go in for a haircut.  The haircut didn't happen, but I finally decided I'd had enough one night and cut a couple of inches off of it in front of the mirror in the bathroom.  Mind you, it's not the first time I'd cut my own hair.  But this was different.  This wasn't, "my bangs are getting too long, I'd better trim this mess up", it was "I have to get rid of this marker of femininity right the fuck now".  (Of course, my hair is naturally curly, which sucks because the shorter it gets, the more it curls up.)  I ended up doing a pretty bad job on it, just because it was such an impassioned act.  But I felt so much better after the fact.

The strange thing is, I'm going through another feminine cycle right now, and I'm starting to wish my hair was long again--really long, like it was back freshman year, when it was still down to my waist and I'd wear it braided every day.  I am kind of starting to miss that. And I pretty much know that my hair is never going to get that long again, because I'll get angry at it again sometime in the next few months and cut it above my shoulders again.

Why is hair length such a marker of the male/female dichotomy?  It shouldn't be.  Plenty of girls have short hair, and plenty of guys have long hair.  Some of the most feminine girls I know have their hair cropped extremely short.  Of course, at that point, it becomes a rather coquettish thing--which kind of makes me uncomfortable too, the idea that a guy can grow his hair long and not be treated as if he's gay or girly, but a girl cuts her hair short, and depending on the style, she's either treated as being cute (in a childish way) or as being a lesbian.

The binary is mostly unbeneficial because it leads to such horrible double-standards, and even more because we can't just be people.  God forbid a guy should like to sew, or a girl should like football.  Even our hobbies are gendered!  What's wrong with this world that people can't just like what they like and do what they do and everyone else can get over it without passing judgement?

But the binary exists because society likes having neat little categories to put everyone in.  Society doesn't do well when presented with grey areas.

I think this is part of the reason I've become slightly obsessed with gender-neutral names.  I look like a girl, so if I chose to change my name, I could probably get away with taking a male name and be androgynous on that basis. It would actually probably do more to confuse people than taking a name that could commonly be used as a girl name.  My name...at one point in history, my name was a boy's name, but no one has used it that way for better than a hundred years.  If I were interested in transitioning, I'd probably keep my name for this very reason.  As it stands, I'm developing quite the interest in various gender-neutral names, and I'm thinking about taking one when I get to grad school.

This might be why I'm planning on leaving--and by 'leaving', I mean going to another state.  I'd love a chance to start over.  I wasn't comfortable enough in who I was when I was a freshman to change my identity back then, and now that I'm a senior, too many people and professors know me for me to easily go into a classroom at the beginning of a semester and ask to be called by a different name.

I feel like this is a new age for me, though.  Like I'm finally coming into my own.  I could have easily named this blog with the username I've been using since I was 13, since it's become something of an alter ego for me anyway, but I wanted something new.  So I chose Saturday.  There's more to it than that, but for now, that's the important part--I'm Saturday now, because Saturday can be someone new, someone who I've never been before, on the internet or in real life.  And Saturday doesn't have to conform to any expectations, because no one has any.  I may be required to acknowledge the binary, but I certainly don't have to belong to it.

Strange to be in between.

I had a moment of acute gender!fail this week.

I'm taking a fiction workshop night class this semester.  There are only seven people, myself included, in the class, with a male professor.  All of the other students are guys.  I absolutely did not realise that I was the only female body in the room until the professor commented on it.  I looked around, and I was honestly surprised to confirm this fact--not that everyone else was male, but that I had missed this fact because I no longer think of myself as female.

I occupy a female body.  I'm decently comfortable with that, most of the time, unless the Gender Demons strike and I really start hating the fact that I'm a 38-DD.  I found a vest I totally forgot I had about a week ago.  It's water resistant and fleece-lined, which makes it ideal for this weather, especially considering I usually have my hoodie sleeves shoved up around my forearms anyway.  More importantly, it's just barely too tight, and has a zip-front, which means it does a pretty good job of constricting my ample cleavage.

This vest is the best thing that's happened to me lately.

I'm actually at a very strange time in my life.  I've gone through phases with my identity, and I think I'm about to enter another.  When I was in high school, maybe 2004, I started to realise that I was attracted to women, and so began to label myself as bisexual.  Sometime during college, I began to realise that the bisexual label didn't suit me at all--it affirmed an idea I was beginning to reject, that being the concept of a gender binary.  I can't call myself bisexual and recognise that there are more than two sexes, more than two genders.

Shortly after that, probably circa 2007, I started to notice something strange.  I noticed that whatever magical 'femaleness' I was supposed to feel wasn't really there.  Maybe it wasn't there anymore, or maybe it had never been, I don't know.  I can't remember if I ever really felt like a girl.  I know when I was a kid, I was a tomboy.  I was the antithesis of all things feminine.  I hated dresses.  I loved playing outside.  I wanted to play football in middle school.  (I decided as I got older that dresses weren't so bad, but I'll still buck and snort if forced into a dress or a skirt.  I have to really be in the mood.)  I just did not get 'girly things'.  That said, I also loved playing dress-up with my dolls and my costume box, and I loved playing House and Tea Party.  I've always been a little bit genderqueer.  I liked my Barbies and Easy-Bake as much as I liked my Legos and Hot Wheels.

The truth is, though, that I'm not sure how much the 'genderqueer' label fits me anymore, but that's what I get for lurking over at the What Is Gender forums.  There's a lot more out there than I ever expected to find.

What I find fun about these phases I've gone through is that my writing is clearly affected by it, and my characters usually know before I do.  Dameon was bi before I ever started identifying that way.  Now I have Taylor, who is very strictly a Whatever, and I identify more with Tay than I ever have with any other character, even Dameon.  I wanted to be Dameon's best friend.  I just want to be Taylor.  Which I get the chance to do once a week, and that's enough for me.  It's one day out of the week where I'm not expected to present myself as a girl.  For now, it's all the escape from the Gender Demons I need.