Like most trans* (the asterick indicates the entire transgender spectrum) people, questions are complicated for me. Questions like "Are you a boy or a girl?" (unfortunately, I haven't been able to make myself look that androgynous since I was about eleven, but I still have to deal with annoying cissexist forms with their stupid little gender boxes) and "What kind of clothing do you like?" are easy for most cis people, but when you're genderfluid, the answers to those questions aren't so clean-cut.
Another question with an answer that isn't so clean-cut is "What is your name?"
If it's a formal setting, like a college interview, I will say Elizabeth. The annoyingly feminine name I'd always hated, handed down from my great-grandmother, when I was little because I thought it sounded like a little old lady at a tea party. When I was eleven, I got my first period and started overeating because the changes were supposed to be happening to a girl and that's not who I was. And after that, as I grew bigger and bigger, hiding behind too-big shirts and hating my body, hating the fat that was simply part of the wholeness that was me. It was me, and it was part of my identity. It spoke of the emotional scars of body hate, of looking down at my chest and hating what I saw because I knew what other people saw. As if other people have any right to dictate who I am, to teach me to hate myself. In those years, I hated Elizabeth because it was feminine, It was lace and silk and femininity, and I was hoodies and jeans and cotton, looking again and again down at my chest and wishing desperately that I was flat before the word binder even entered my vocabulary. I looked down at my chest and hated what I saw.
I need to work on that. Because while I still want a binder, while I'm still learning to love my body with all its monthly bloody cramping glory and D-cup breasts, preparing me for a child that I will likely never give birth to, there are times when I look down at my body, with its softness and curves and fatness and hate it even though it is mine. I'm learning to get past that, but I need to work on loving my body. I probably always will. That's part of being transgender, but I still wouldn't trade any part of my queerness for anything because like my body, my queerness is a part of my identity that I hated and denied myself for so long. But like my body, I'm learning to love my queerness because it's part of me. And it is a part that I need to love, everyone else's opinion of it be damned.
I'm learning to love myself, and with that self-love I can look people in the eye and say with the boldness, the determination, the courage of someone who is loved and loving and has the braveness of love inside of them, "You do not need to be in my life." And if they can't respect me for who I am, they won't be in my life.
Body love rant aside, let's continue with the post.
When I was fourteen, I frantically started making people call me Bess. It was the most androgynous short form of Elizabeth that I could think of, though at the time this wasn't a conscious factor in the decision-making process. At the time, I hadn't discovered words like genderqueer and genderfluid. It wouldn't be until I was sixteen that I discovered the words that described my life story. It wouldn't be until I was seventeen - last month - that I wrote a paper on nonbinary issues and basically came out to the teacher by mentioning my own experiences as a genderqueer person.
And it was also only a few months ago that I realized that the androgynous name I'd loved so much was actually pretty feminine...even if the femininity was only a social construct. So much about gender roles, especially in America, with its queerphobia and its white-normative, western-normative social conventions (I once read a book set in Indonesia where the men wore clothes that most Americans would call 'dresses' and had flowers in their hair. It was awesome.), is a social construct.
I told myself this and it was true, but that didn't change the fact that I still didn't feel completely comfortable in my own skin and my name was partly why. Experimenting with androgynous names, I finally found one that fit: Ari.
That doesn't mean I'm going to straight-up stop going by Bess, but it would be really great if people could call me Ari sometimes. Just to acknowledge that they respect my transgender identity and acknowledge that having breasts and bleeding from my crotch once a month and being able to give birth - pretty much the only good things, to me, about being afab (assigned female at birth) are that a) masculinity is more socially acceptable in afabs than femininity is in amabs because fuck logic and fuck this misogynistic culture we live in and b) the knowledge that my body is totally badass - don't necessarily make me female. Not only female, anyway.
I've started using the name Ari on various social networking sites. Not Facebook (yet, at least) because too many people would be confused. But my profile on NaNoWriMo says 'My name is Ari and I'm okay with female, male, or neutral pronouns' and my profile on Trevorspace lists my name as 'Bess or Ari.' And my fanfiction.net account says 'Ari' under the name section.
I have a friend who is also genderqueer - she doesn't really like labels, but she prefers 'masculine' or androgynous presentation pretty consistently, doesn't have any traditionally feminine interests, and got really upset when telling me her mom was talking about making her shop only in the section marketed to women - and people call her by masculine names (they alternate between masculine names and her birth name) because of this. So I'm hoping it works.
Another question with an answer that isn't so clean-cut is "What is your name?"
If it's a formal setting, like a college interview, I will say Elizabeth. The annoyingly feminine name I'd always hated, handed down from my great-grandmother, when I was little because I thought it sounded like a little old lady at a tea party. When I was eleven, I got my first period and started overeating because the changes were supposed to be happening to a girl and that's not who I was. And after that, as I grew bigger and bigger, hiding behind too-big shirts and hating my body, hating the fat that was simply part of the wholeness that was me. It was me, and it was part of my identity. It spoke of the emotional scars of body hate, of looking down at my chest and hating what I saw because I knew what other people saw. As if other people have any right to dictate who I am, to teach me to hate myself. In those years, I hated Elizabeth because it was feminine, It was lace and silk and femininity, and I was hoodies and jeans and cotton, looking again and again down at my chest and wishing desperately that I was flat before the word binder even entered my vocabulary. I looked down at my chest and hated what I saw.
I need to work on that. Because while I still want a binder, while I'm still learning to love my body with all its monthly bloody cramping glory and D-cup breasts, preparing me for a child that I will likely never give birth to, there are times when I look down at my body, with its softness and curves and fatness and hate it even though it is mine. I'm learning to get past that, but I need to work on loving my body. I probably always will. That's part of being transgender, but I still wouldn't trade any part of my queerness for anything because like my body, my queerness is a part of my identity that I hated and denied myself for so long. But like my body, I'm learning to love my queerness because it's part of me. And it is a part that I need to love, everyone else's opinion of it be damned.
I'm learning to love myself, and with that self-love I can look people in the eye and say with the boldness, the determination, the courage of someone who is loved and loving and has the braveness of love inside of them, "You do not need to be in my life." And if they can't respect me for who I am, they won't be in my life.
Body love rant aside, let's continue with the post.
When I was fourteen, I frantically started making people call me Bess. It was the most androgynous short form of Elizabeth that I could think of, though at the time this wasn't a conscious factor in the decision-making process. At the time, I hadn't discovered words like genderqueer and genderfluid. It wouldn't be until I was sixteen that I discovered the words that described my life story. It wouldn't be until I was seventeen - last month - that I wrote a paper on nonbinary issues and basically came out to the teacher by mentioning my own experiences as a genderqueer person.
And it was also only a few months ago that I realized that the androgynous name I'd loved so much was actually pretty feminine...even if the femininity was only a social construct. So much about gender roles, especially in America, with its queerphobia and its white-normative, western-normative social conventions (I once read a book set in Indonesia where the men wore clothes that most Americans would call 'dresses' and had flowers in their hair. It was awesome.), is a social construct.
I told myself this and it was true, but that didn't change the fact that I still didn't feel completely comfortable in my own skin and my name was partly why. Experimenting with androgynous names, I finally found one that fit: Ari.
That doesn't mean I'm going to straight-up stop going by Bess, but it would be really great if people could call me Ari sometimes. Just to acknowledge that they respect my transgender identity and acknowledge that having breasts and bleeding from my crotch once a month and being able to give birth - pretty much the only good things, to me, about being afab (assigned female at birth) are that a) masculinity is more socially acceptable in afabs than femininity is in amabs because fuck logic and fuck this misogynistic culture we live in and b) the knowledge that my body is totally badass - don't necessarily make me female. Not only female, anyway.
I've started using the name Ari on various social networking sites. Not Facebook (yet, at least) because too many people would be confused. But my profile on NaNoWriMo says 'My name is Ari and I'm okay with female, male, or neutral pronouns' and my profile on Trevorspace lists my name as 'Bess or Ari.' And my fanfiction.net account says 'Ari' under the name section.
I have a friend who is also genderqueer - she doesn't really like labels, but she prefers 'masculine' or androgynous presentation pretty consistently, doesn't have any traditionally feminine interests, and got really upset when telling me her mom was talking about making her shop only in the section marketed to women - and people call her by masculine names (they alternate between masculine names and her birth name) because of this. So I'm hoping it works.
1 comment:
I'd also be okay with going by my last name, Paden. And yes, I totally got the last name idea from Carmilla's fabulous genderqueer character LaFontaine.
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