"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

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.