Hi, I'm an Yshkovwschkvitk! My pronouns are dvv, dvvke, dvvxze'oe in the nominative, dvvesh, dvvkei'sh, dvvze'oesh in the dative. Possessives take the 'mmsh at the end.
No I don't expect you to memorize that and use it. Meanwhile, sincere apologies to everyone who does specify a set of pronouns: I respect you and I promise I'm not mocking you. I will use yours as per your preference as soon as I'm made aware of your terminologies. This isn't about mocking you. It's about me not fitting in. I always feel like a Martian. My identity never seems to mesh with anything already established, so that I could say "I'm one of THOSE folks", however marginalized and minority-ized they may be. I wish it wasn't so. I have always yearned for a recognizable label, a part of town, a stereotype, an Us-hood I could be a part of, a commonality of experience.
I've confronted the possibility of being a regular cis het boy, of being a gay fellow, of being a transgender male-to-female person, of being bisexual, of being genderfluid, of being agender, and always I keep coming back to the same mantra: "No, that's not it. No, that's STILL not it. It's something else".
I do identify as genderqueer. My identity doesn't seem so outlandishly strange to ME, really: My body is male, who I have always been is one of the girls or women, and I'm attracted to the female folks 'cuz I like their body configurations. I'm a sissy, a femme, a male who is attracted to female folk, a femme who likes both butches and femme female people, a male who is attracted to female folk, a sex role nonconformist who likes feminist theory, a dyke tyke, a neohippie embracing nonmasculine nonaggressive modes of how to be a male person, etc etc. All seems unremarkably commonplace to me except that somehow I ended up alone in this endeavor. The hippie malefolk weren't as centered on abandoning masculinity and were often into male confrontational macho aggressive shit, the sissy femme folk were most often lusting for male sexual attention and weren't good conversational political company for a femme guy into girlish bodied folks instead, the feminist activists weren't very interested in males trying to participate for their own non-chivalrous reasons, and the dykes weren't into folks in male bodies.
Do I need an aggregate identity? Can I just be my own weird self and enjoy that? Well, I don't need a vote of approval, that's for certain. Don't need your endorsement in order to feel legitimate in my identity, you know? But I'm lonely, politically speaking. I say politically speaking 'cuz I've had the good fortune to establish personal solutions, yummy loving people with yummy skins who like who I am and like the body I'm equipped with and have the body I like to touch and be next to and all that. Which is, incidentally, relevant: yeah, lots of gender-variant peoples' coming-out is a mating call, which doesn't make it NOT political because as feminists taught us the personal IS political, and damn right it's political to make an issue about the social difficulty of establishing a personal solution. But even after the personal sitch is appropriately handled the political doesn't go away, OK?
I never thought about pronouns. It wasn't a thing in 1980, nor was the possibility of identifying as genderqueer. People see me, they say "he" and "him". People hear me on the phone they say "she" and "ma'am" and "miss". None of it is right. I like the lack of consistency but I don't have preferred pronouns really.
I'm not joining up. I mean yeah, I join the Facebook groups for transgender and genderqueer and nonbinary folk and gender nonconformist and so on, and participate, but I'm not window-shopping for some other folks' sense of self that I can embrace. Or... OK yes I am, I just haven't found it yet dammit. Yes I am. I want that sense of belonging, who am I kidding?? But I'm willing to continue to be a misfit among misfits up until I really find people whose tales and self-forged identities resonate with me. So far, that hasn't happened. I think there's an "us" but we aren't collected under a label yet.
OK, or alternatively maybe I just dislike the social politics of aggregate identity. We've decided who We are. We've chosen the following terms, and picked the following existing descriptions to find offensive, in order to raise social consciousness about us and realize what we go through. Yeah, that stuff. Don't get me wrong, I don't think it's illegitimate or anything, I just don't want to join into an aggregate voice unless I feel like it is saying exactly what I'd say on my own, or else where I feel listened to and included and somewhat understood in the groups.
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