Being away from socialization has given me heightened sobriety, more time to honor my solitude, & space to explore my gender identity.
I don’t really know how to put language to the way I experience gender. I’ve long struggled to relate with the gender binary and interfaced with that struggle in myriad ways.
But I’ve found warmth in he, she, & they pronouns; whenever it feels like I’m being seen in sincerity. & I do think that I’ve decided not to wait until I’ve read enough about gender before I live into fullness.
I am using they/them pronouns now.
Over the summer & fall I wrote a collection of songs about my sexuality & how I never really “came out” as bi/Pansexual (for a mixture of both valid and self-defeating reasons).
I was also reading about gender theory & was able to draw a lot of similarities between the ways I wouldn’t allow myself to be Queer & the ways I was now not allowing myself to be gender fluid.
“It’s not my space to occupy.” “I don’t want to make people uncomfortable.” “It doesn’t even really matter.”
I still don’t want to occupy anyone’s space unfairly. I still don’t want to make people uncomfortable. I still feel like just being who you are and doing what you want to do shouldn’t need to be announced.
But, for the sake of curbing a predicted deluge of being asked why I am dressing in drag (not drag), that I would just say this succinctly: I am disavowing the gender binary. My pronouns are they/them.
If you fuck up pronouns, it’s OK. It’s a new thing. Change is hard. I get it. If you intentionally do it, then that is *not* cool but I am somewhat used to being disregarded (shout out to everyone who still calls me an old name!) and I will just know we are not friends and that is totally OK too.
I am an agile & evolving thing; elastic & fluid. I do not need to be well-defined to practice the things I find pleasing & I hope in the New Year that you’ll give yourself space to stretch out in all of your complexity and creativity. I’m cheering for you.