"Pronoun trouble." - Daffy Duck

[ceri]

This is a question for y'all with transition experience, particularly those of you are late boomers like me. At what point did you start feeling comfortable having others calling you with the name and pronouns you wanted to transition into?

It's one thing for me right now to use this name and female pronouns when I'm posting here.  But I've had several of the friends I've come out to recently ask me how I'd like to have them address me in personal exchanges, and to be honest, I just don't know. There's a void in my head right now when it comes to what I actually want and feel is appropriate, right now, as opposed to years down the road.

I'm not looking for anyone to tell me what to do, exactly. (I'll accept advice, of course.) But I'm really mostly interested in others' experiences.

Comments

[keeva]

For me, I usually tolerate either male or female pronouns online (unless it's deliberately done to attack me), and prefer female.

Offline, it's a different matter; for various reasons (nearly all of them relating to money), I don't have the ability to be obviously "presenting" as female.

I get "mistaken" for female surprisingly often, but since I haven't started any physical/medical transition (growing my hair out long doesn't count) and since I look like a long-haired dude in guys' clothes with a purse, it seems confusingly complex to insist on "she" among people who don't know much about my gender identity.

When friends who are trans-aware ask, I generally tell them that while I prefer female, I don't think it's likely to happen and I think it's likely to confuse other people.

I am not sure that I want to "come out" to other people by one of my well-meaning friends using a female pronoun in front of a third party, before I am ready to make that step myself.

[keeva]

And by the way, I feel pretty much like you do, sister, about the void of uncertainty. :)

How about they just roll some dice and consult a table?

[ceri]

I've now got an AD&D-formatted Random Queerness Table in mind and I blame you for it.

[dingsi]

Hmm. I mainly had trouble with
a) doubts and internalized transphobia -- for a long time I had the feeling that I didn't "deserve" the correct name/pronouns because "what if I only imagine it all" and "perhaps I'm not really trans because my life isn't exactly like the typical clichéd media narrative for trans folk" (the only template I had at the time, sadly) and "omg you're being such a hassle for people, you can't ask that of them"
b) fear of transphobic backlash IRL, so although I'd been out online for years I only outed myself IRL in slow and carefully measured doses.

Of course, that didn't change at all my *actual* feelings of being addressed properly, namely joy and a decrease of stress. But for a while they were overshadowed by the conflicting emotions/thoughts above.

[ceri]

Are you sure you're not in my head? :)

Re: "Pronoun trouble." - Daffy Duck

[piranha]

i am wondering about the "feel is appropriate" bit. for example it's totally no skin off my back to call a big, burly person with chest hair and a beard "doris" and she, if the person so desires. i absolutely see gender identity as a personal ... well, maybe not choice because it's clearly not a choice for everyone... orientation is probably a better word. anyway, i see it as personal, and it's not for me to judge it, but to respect it instead. i so very much wish we'd get away (as a society) from tying gender identity and gender expression and biological sex together. the only thing where that really matters is when having actual sex with a person, and then it's highly personal as well, and nobody else's business.

i know that lots of people have strong rules about gender, and which gender is allowed what and where, and i know some of the issues are complicated, and some people have fears and want to keep other-gendered people out of their club (michigan womyn's music festical, i am looking at you). but for me personally, it's incredibly simple -- you are what you want to be. and yes, you can change your mind. i can get used to new names and pronouns easily.

personally i started to feel comfortable about it right away online; i've always felt much more like myself online. offline, i continue to cope with the "wrong" pronoun because, well, i present as the "wrong" gender unless i go through lots of uncomfortable stuff, and i have more important things to worry about than other people's preconceptions these days. as long as partners and friends respect my wishes, that's good enough.

Re: "Pronoun trouble." - Daffy Duck

[ceri]

I'd certainly cop to a very heavily repressed psyche in a lot of ways, and that this is about reworking a long legacy of not-especially-helpful boundaries. I've always felt wistful about a lot of my hangups, but couldn't quite ever seem to unlock them at the foundations. In retrospect, they tie together under the heading of misplaced sex and gender. So it'll be interesting to see how and in what ways they let go.