Welcome to pride month! Everything is rainbows! It rules!

Where I’m At

So, pride month. There’s a thing I’ve been meaning to write for a few years now, but talking about identity always feels fraught, so here goes.

I’m nonbinary. This is probably not a shock to anyone reading this, at this point, but hey, just to catch you up. It was a thing I started kinda-sorta-wondering about in the mid 2010s, and was pretty sure of but not at all sure what to do about it within a few years. Then the pandemic happened, I had to stare at my own face on Zoom for like six hours a day, and as my hair grew out because the salons were shut, it felt more and more wrong.

The good news: dysphoria confirmed that whatever was in my head was… I mean, still in my head, but also real, and there were words for it! Great! The bad news: dysphoria sucks! I felt pretty bad, actually! Let’s fast forward.

At that point, most of my friends knew, I was hesitantly playing around with pronouns, and still really not quite sure what I wanted to do. Eventually I came out to my manager at work, but I didn’t know what I wanted to do about being out at work, either.

Being nonbinary is weird because it’s not one specific thing, there’s no one specific target you’re trying to hit, no clear signal you can send out. Some nonbinary folks want various hormones or surgeries but some don’t; there are a lot of assumptions about what androgyny looks like both for body types and styling and most of that is such a narrow window it’s nowhere near representative. (Not to mention, androgyny is not of interest to all nonbinary people, either.) There’s nothing that makes people look at you and understand you’re nonbinary at a glance.

For me, I leaned into bright colors and patterns, and a sharp undercut, and idk-barely-masc-of-center styling which does not look particularly masc on my actual body. But because there’s no roadmap here, most people don’t think to read me as nonbinary rather than a queer woman. Which is where pronouns come in.

(If you are reading this, you are doubtlessly a cool and savvy person who is already aware but it never hurts to state, my experiences are only mine. Other people will feel very differently about their pronouns, their genders, and their lives. Okay, that said…)

These days, I introduce myself with they/them pronouns, when I remember to. I have them in my bio on my various social network profiles and my signature at work. Actually, with my new job, I had a lot better of an idea of what I wanted from work — which is to have those pronouns included when I’m introduced to new teammates and clients, and folks who’ll help correct the team when they forget. (So far this has gone very well.) So given all that, it sounds like pronouns are a pretty big deal, but for me they’re not, in and of themselves. They’re a signpost of identity, but are not actually the identity.

My basic feeling is this: when you meet someone for the first time and get that very first impression, you put them in a box to help yourself understand them. Big boxes at first, when you know almost nothing about them, but then smaller and smaller as you get to know them as an individual, until there’s no box at all and you’re relating to a specific person you actually know. Unfortunately, gender is one of those very first, very big boxes: you see someone and subconsciously drop them into a man or woman box; you probably also do the same with race, and age, and maybe also things like hair color and overall style. Then as you know them you add boxes like whether or not they’re a parent, or have a partner, or their hobbies. Then they’re just a person you know.

But when you’re me, and you really don’t fit into either of those first big boxes, it sucks to get put in one anyway. Sometimes it’s just a little sting; sometimes it’s like nails scraping a chalkboard until they bleed. So I introduce myself with pronouns because it’s one of the only ways we have to signal “Hey, don’t put me in the Woman Box, please!!” and it matters to me that people make an effort to use those pronouns because it signals that they see and respect me and have not placed me in that otherwise groovy box where I don’t belong.

In other words: introducing myself with they/them pronouns is a tool to help people understand me. Other people using they/them pronouns for me is a signal that they understand and respect me.

Here’s a fun complicating factor, though: with close friends and family? I basically don’t care. When you know me well, I know you see me as I am and have not put me in the wrong box; I don’t need a signal. I guess ultimately I’d say my pronouns are they/she… but I also know from experience that if I say that to people who are not already close to me, they’ll never use “they” because “she” is what comes to mind more easily, and then I’ll once again feel like I have to claw my way out of that box. So I’m they/them professionally and publicly and they/she to friends and family. Nuance!

(Bonus nuance: I also have friends who feel the exact opposite from all of this. They don’t care how strangers or acquaintances perceive them or refer to them, because why would those people’s opinions matter at all? For them, it’s much more important that the people they’re close to use their pronouns.)

It’s taken me a long time to figure all of this out and how to put it into words. It’s one of those things that feels touchy and vulnerable — am I describing my experience well enough for people to understand? Will people take this as permission to she/her me? Am I somehow undermining an entire community by saying that pronouns are not actually the biggest deal to me, personally???

I mean, no, probably not. I’m one person, and my experiences are unique and fully my own and… wait, hang on, after all of these words, “unique and fully my own” is really my whole gender experience in a nutshell, too.

Some Things I Made

For this months: two gifts I finished and was able to give to people last month! It’s coincidence they have the same colors, I swear.

The first was for my friend M, who loves Enormous Mugs. This was another of my very first pieces made on the standing wheel, and to be honest making anything enormous on the wheel is hard, but I’m so happy with how it turned out! Every mug I’ve attempted in the past has been either 1) heavy enough to murder someone with, 2) tiny, or 3) leaky. I think this might be the first one that’s actually usable.

The second piece was a yarn bowl for my sister, the knitter — the cutout in the side lets her run yarn through to hold the ball in place while she works. The challenge on this one was making the cut out without breaking the whole thing off or cracking it down the side — there were a few failed attempts before I pulled it off. (Luckily, the clay from failed attempts can be reclaimed and reused! That’s one of the things I really like about pottery.)

Something I’m Enjoying

I feel like, back in 2020, everyone had their thing that got them through the pandemic. Not just sourdough, but some media to obsess over. For me, it was the Ace Attorney games, all of which I played (some of them a few times) during those early months. They are fun and silly and if all you know about them is that a spikey-haired guy yells “OBJECTION!” a lot then, a) yes, but also b) you will not believe the amount of character work and deep lore in these games.

I realized a few weeks ago, I’m at a point where I remember the general gist of the games and whodunit on each of the individual cases, but I don’t remember anyone’s motives, or how any of the murders happened, so on a whim I picked one of the games up to play again.

I am pleased to report: these games still rule! I’ve been playing my way through Apollo Justice, which was a big series shakeup, and it’s super fun. I remember just enough to catch foreshadowing I didn’t the first time through, but still have a great time with the mysteries.