Jul. 13th, 2011

jetpack_monkey: (Cary Grant - Crazy Moment)
So I've been a terrible DW/LJ person lately. Sorry about that. I've tried to start a few entries, but they were quickly nixed because I either didn't have a lot to say or I was just whining about crap.

Today I kind of want to document my experiences with something that both affects me and has no bearing on reality (beyond what has always been true).

Recently, my spouse [personal profile] echan  came out as gender-neutral. I haven't talked about it a lot here because, A) I haven't been talking about anything and B) it's a complete non-issue and issue wrapped into a paradox ball.

It's mostly in the language, honestly. I don't have a wife, I have a spouse. It's "ze" not "she", "zir" not "her", etc. I'm better at rejiggering my nouns than my pronouns. Still, there are times when my sentences end rather lamely when I found that they were driving towards a gender-specific term like "girl" or "lady" (and the sentences really don't work with "person" instead -- this whole thing has been a grand lesson in how unconsciously I use language to sort out gender-specific sorts of phrasings). Also, lots of epic backtracking after letting slip the dogs of gender-specific speech.

I find that some part of me -- some very stupid part of me -- is a little put out by the fact that I'm not paired with a woman anymore. I think this is the part that's still damaged by all the gay-bashing I received in high school when I wasn't gay*. I am not proud of this part of my reaction. I simply note it because I'm trying to be honest about this experience.

I am, however, paired with an Echan and that's ultimately the most important thing to me. I'm actually a little surprised about how much zir coming out doesn't actually matter, except as far as I'm happy ze's found a way of self-identifying that ze is pleased with. Is ze the person I fell in love with? Yes. Has anything fundamentally changed about zir? No. Ze's exactly the same person I married, has all the qualities I fell in love with (and the ones that I find occasionally annoying).  I find zir just as attractive and ze still thinks I'm hot.

When Echan woke me up to come out to me, I poked my head up and said, roughly, "Not really surprised. Still my Echan." This is the truest part of the experience. Echan is as Echan always was. Ze's just putting a name to it now.

* After Echan came out, I did have a little internal discussion about my sexuality and found that I actually didn't give a fuck who I was attracted to (male, female, neither or both) beyond Echan. So that was interesting.

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