My Pronouns are Fluid and My Identity is Solid
By: The Transgender Therapist
Tags: Expression, Identity, Friendship, Transgender, Creative Non Fiction

“This is actually the purpose of language — to give meaning to concepts as they evolve.” — Alok Vaid-Menon

For some people, using pronouns that are familiar to everyone they meet (he/him and she/her) feels best. Others use the third personal singular “they,” which still isn’t necessarily accepted by dominant society, but it is catching on as a gender neutral alternative. Neopronouns are the least understood and most opposed by others, including fellow queer and/or trans people, with options like ze/zir, ve/ver, xe/xyr, ey/eir and more.

For me, nothing feels quite right. Like many, my gender identity and expression are not captured accurately in grammatical ways. For that reason, my pronouns are quite fluid. Internally, I move between “he” and “they” from situation to situation, context to context. I don’t even try to use neopronouns because I could not stomach the intense opposition I would face just to use words that, for me, would not be much more “correct” than those that are generally accepted.

I am one of the most privileged people in the transgender pyramid. I am a white, nonbinary, transmasculine person, and I’ve had complicated feelings about my gender identity for years. I changed my name, began to socially transition, and started hormone replacement therapy (HRT) all in the summer of 2017. I then had to take a short break from HRT after I had my first psychiatric hospitalization.

I live in a pretty progressive city that is famously safe and supportive for trans people, compared to the rest of the country — if they are white, at least. We still have a lot of work to do to uplift and support our BIPOC trans and nonbinary siblings.

Despite the fact that I’ve been lucky enough to have multiple employers ask my pronouns, join a nonbinary support group where I made wonderful friends, and find gender neutral restrooms and changing rooms throughout my city, a lot of the time, I still want to hide.

Most are at a total loss about my gender when they meet me. If we were to use binary terms where 0% represents total masculinity, and 100% represents total femininity, I would hover damn near 50%. People often use “they/them” pronouns for me, less out of respect than out of confusion. One of my goals at the beginning of my journey with HRT was to make it as difficult to gender me as possible.

Now, I inwardly squirm when I go out in public. I love to be flamboyant and wear my leopard print jacket, and throw on some lipstick sometimes. But I’m not a very big person (5'6.5" and 140 pounds) and I worry about the violence enacted toward gay men that I’ve heard about all of my life.

I know so many nonbinary people in my city who are “out and proud” about their atypical pronouns, confidently correcting people when they get it wrong and seemingly never suppressing their need to be recognized and seen for whom they are. So what’s my deal?

Sometimes, I want to be called “he,” but I fear telling my friends — friends who have always supported me — to make this change. As for the people who do immediately use “he/him” pronouns for me? I never correct them, and I spend most of our interactions holding my breath. Because I haven’t had top surgery, I hope they won’t notice my chest. I don’t want to laugh, because it still sounds high pitched to me. And it’s difficult to comfort clients at my therapy agency job because I don’t want to raise the pitch of my voice too much and sound feminine.

If there’s one thing society has taught us not to appreciate, it’s fluidity. Bisexuality is hated. Biracial identities are stereotyped and invalidated. Nonbinary people are told we aren’t real. Religious converts are not seen as “real” Jewish people, Catholics, or Buddhists.

This intolerance has been so deeply embedded and instilled within me that I have a hard time stating how I feel about my gender to even my closest friends, many of whom are transgender themselves. It may not help that some of my friends pretty consistently direct the same microaggressions toward me.

Interestingly, it also bothers me sometimes when random people who have never asked for my pronouns calls me “they.”

“Are they clocking me?” I wonder. “Can they tell what sex I was assigned? Do I look like a total fool, trying to trick people into seeing me a certain way?” I continue. “Will I ever be seen as a man if I swing toward the binary end of identity on a more regular basis?”

I know some people will read this and think I hate women, or femininity. I don’t. In fact, I love presenting as feminine sometimes. What I do hate is that people automatically assume femininity means being a woman, and that men can’t be feminine. I don’t move towards masculinity to reject the construct of being “female” as much as I move away from it to establish that I am not what I was assigned.

Being called “she” makes my skin crawl because it invalidates all that I’ve done to be represent my gender identity outwardly. To represent something that cannot be stated, because it comes out so clumsy and stilted when expressed in words. I don’t speak my gender. I feel it.

When I’m around cisgender, heterosexual people, I usually want to be called “he.” I can’t imagine that they wouldn’t let “they/them” distract them from my humanity. And when I’m around queer people, I often long to be called “he.” In both contexts, I don’t want to be held to a static standard of trying to be a man, or trying to be a nonbinary person. I want my identity to go unchallenged and to not try to live up to a specific set of expectations. We’d like to think there are no stereotypes or gatekeeping with being nonbinary, but that’s just not true. And I don’t want any of it.

Just like my gender expression, my pronouns are fluid. I assess for comfort, safety, and space to explore. I don’t want to be under a microscope. Being trans is a process of constantly coming out. It’s not that I want to be in the closet — I just want to have the conversation on my own terms. Reclaim the inherent power in this interpersonal discourse.