What's in a pronoun?

[wilde_stallyn]

Hey folks. It's been a while since I've posted here. Somehow the longer I go without posting the harder it is to find something worth saying. I would like to promise that I'll post on a regular basis, but I've said that before and not been able to live up to it, so we'll see how it goes, yeah? I am always here though, even when I'm not posting, reading my flist obsessively like any good fandom sheep. Because you all are love.

I've been doing a lot of navelgazing/angsting the last while about my gender identity/presentation. I'm not sure if I've ever really talked about this here, so for those who don't know, I identify as genderqueer, in particular as both a man and a woman. Usually the male and female sides of myself are more or less balanced, but sometimes I go through periods where one is more in the forefront than the other. My gender issues are always in the back of my head, but when, like now, my male side is particularly strong, the gender dysphoria really kicks in and I start obsessing. I really want to talk through some of the stuff that's been going through my head, but it's going to be wibbly, and confused, and it's going to involve explicit discussion of my body and sexuality. I'm sure some of my flist is not interested in reading that, but I don't want to have to keep cutting things and warning for tmi, so I'm going to create a filter for my gender wibbling.

If you're down with the wibbling and the tmi, and you want to read about my gender issues, leave a comment and I'll add you to the filter.

One gender related thing I wanted to talk about outside the filter are my names. Both my real name and my screennames are very obviously marked female. In terms of my screennames I'm a little hesitant to give them up because I've had them for so long, but I really want an androgynous/non-gendered screenname. I haven't decided what I'm changing it to yet (I'm open to suggestions), but keep your eyes open for an upcomming name change. I'm not as uncomfortable with my real name, but I want an androgynous name I can go by when I'm trying to pass as a guy. I refer to the male side of my personality in my head as Damian, but I've recently come to realize that I will never be comfortable with others calling me Damian, because Damian started as a character from a web comic I had planned whose personality was sort of based off of my male half, and even as a guy I will never even remotely resemble my mental image of Damian. Also, I would rather have a name that was completely androgynous. I was thinking Shey or Kai. Do those read as specifically gendered to you guys?

Comments

[greek-amazon.livejournal.com]

Genderqueer posts are fine by meeeeeee~eeeeeeeeeee!
Also, "GenderQueer" would be a good name for a band.

As to the names, I associate the name Kai strongly with males. (I know of lots of male characters named Kai.) and even if I didn't know of these characters, it still seems male, I think probably because it's such a sharp name. (Soundwise.)
Shey on the otherhand strikes me as perfectly androgynous. :)

[wilde_stallyn.livejournal.com]

Unfortunately, if I ever start a band I intend to call it Fourteen Dead Goldfish.

Ok, but would it seem weird to you if you met a girl named Kai? Because there are certain names that while I do tend to associate them with one sex more than the other it's not weird when someone of the other sex has that name (eg. Blair is coded more female for me), in the way that it would seem weird to meet a girl named John. I would be ok with the first case but not the secound.

[greek-amazon.livejournal.com]

It wouldn't seem weird to me, but I'd still associate it with being male. It's just how I think of the name; I think of it as male. Like if it were a french noun, i would have 'le' before it, not 'la'.

I do the same thing with the name "Dana." Every Dana I've ever known, and I've known a few, has been female. Yet I still consider the name itself to be "a male name."

(I definately don't see "Shey" as 'she' with a 'y', though. Probably because I read it as I think it sounds: "Shaay")

[thegiantkiller.livejournal.com]

C'mon, Wayward Gene and the Natural Selection!