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jetpack_monkeySo 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 spouseechan 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.
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
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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Date: 2011-07-14 06:27 am (UTC)I think gender-neutral pronouns are pretty fun, but that's mainly because I like words. It seems like "they" gets used more and more often as a third person singular pronoun (now Google's doing it (http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/faster-forward/post/google-plus-makes-gender-a-private-matter/2011/07/13/gIQAv4PPCI_blog.html)) and I wouldn't be surprised if it became officially correct at some point. (I find "it" to be very depersonalizing and humiliating, probably because it was intentionally used by other kids to depersonalize and humiliate me as a child. It wasn't even a gender identification insult (I was kind of a girly-girl), just something they settled on as sufficiently insulting.)