#nodaysoff from respecting someone’s gender identity and name/pronouns. 💪💪💪

College Chronicles

College is like the Twilight Zone in the sense that I’m in a place where I can actually ask people to use my correct pronouns and gently correct them when they don’t use them. Today I was in a group of three doing interviews for a project and a dude referred to me as “she” so I just kind of paused and smiled like “uh, bruh, I’m not a girl” and he paused, nodded, then repeated his sentence with “he” instead of “she”, and the conversation continued. When my teacher slipped up my pronouns, I mentioned it in private, she apologized, and next time she called on me in class she made a point to use my correct pronouns so the whole class heard her use “he” and not “she”. 

Like… I can actually walk around and expect a good amount of people to treat me like a human being? Even if people don’t understand or find it weird, so far pretty much everyone has at least just tried to go with it and has been chill with me correcting them. 

One of the interview topics was gender and sexuality, and I ended up going on a rant to the group of three I was with. A girl was asking me and a stereotypical white cis dude ((he believed gender roles were good and anatomy determines gender yet he was quiet and respectful of what I had to say and did pipe down as I kind of spoke up)) about gender and sexuality, and she asked if our gender affected our ability to have certain opportunities. The guy was actually chill like “honestly no- as a guy I’ve never been held back because of it” which was cool that he recognized it. I ended up going on this contained ((I wasn’t angry I was just serious rambling)) rant about how I lacked the opportunity to be treated like a human much of the time- how being different seemed to make people think they had the right to treat me however they’d like. That simply because they don’t understand or approve, that they can purposefully misgender me, belittle me, and refer to me in ways that they would never treat a cisgender person.

College is very freeing.

Let’s make 2015 the year we stop equating nonbinary with androgynous, but also still give lots of love to the androgynous nonbinary folk since there’s no wrong way to be nonbinary.

Not-so-Fun-Fact: Trans men and afab nonbinary people can still be victims of misogyny.

Sometimes, for me, gender neutral is bright red lipstick and three coats of mascara.

Why does neutrosis have to look a certain way, anyway? 

Actually, I find that I present “feminine” when I’m neutral and “neutral” when I’m masculine.

W/E.

Funnest of Facts: A person can wear makeup, a skirt, have a vagina, and still not be a girl. Likewise, a person can have a beard, wear a tuxedo, have a penis, and still not be a boy.

Pro Tip: There’s nothing wrong with experimenting with gender. We live in a society that adamantly forces a binary on us, so we’re never allowed to explore or question our gender. 

Your gender can change.

Your age changes, your appearance changes, your personality changes… everything about you can change, including your gender.

When I first started my “gender journey” I exclusively identified as a man after being labeled as a girl for 16 years. Though now, almost two years later, I’ve done a lot of growing and experimenting and trying different things, and I’ve come to identify with a genderfluid sort of identity, in that I feel mostly masculine but still like wearing makeup and presenting feminine depending on the day. I feel so much happier with this knowledge and with this presentation of myself, but I never would have found this happiness in my gender unless I’d let myself experiment and learn, and change.

Your gender can change, because you can change.

And that’s not a bad thing, if you ask me.

HAHA NICE GENDER, NERD. DID YOUR MOM PICK IT OUT FOR YOU?!

Shout out to bigender people who are criticized and harassed by cis people who don’t understand that gender can be fluid and can switch around. Shout out to the bigender people who keep being told they’ll pick one and that they can’t be “a boy and a girl”. Especially shout out to the bigender peeps who are bigender between nonbinary genders. You guys are killing it and you rock. Just saying.

To be honest I really prefer ey/em/eir pronouns to he/him/his, but I’m too scared to ask anyone to use them because I feel like they’ll just get pissed at me or say “those aren’t real pronouns/it’s too much of a hassle to remember those”.

It’s kind of messed up that I’m afraid to ask for my identity to be respected.

f0rrestgrump:

I WILL PROTECT MY FRIENDS’ GENDER IDENTITY TO THE FUCKIN GRAVE

Always stand up for queer youth who feel like they aren’t allowed to know who they are just because they’re young.

Always stand up for queer youth who aren’t given the resources or support to explore their identity.

Always stand up for queer youth who are forced to live with a family that cuts down and belittles and despises their identity.

Always stand up for queer youth who don’t feel safe where they are because of their gender/sexuality.

Always stand up for queer youth.

Always.