i’ve been thinking a lot lately about how i relate to gender. i think generally, i don’t really relate to gender – for a long time this has been the reasoning behind using exclusively they/them pronouns. when i started using they/them pronouns a decade ago, i saw it as an ‘opting out’. a statement that i did not want to be contained within that paradigm, that i saw gender as an oppressive construct which was coercively applied to me with expectations i could never fulfil.
in recent years, since whenever it was that mainstream chains started doing ‘for them’ gift suggestions at christmas and ’enby’ became a non-controversial term of choice for anyone outside the binary, i’ve been feeling more and more alienated from my position as ‘a they/them’. it’s felt more and more like it reflects something that i don’t believe in, that it doesn’t fulfil its role as a notice of rejection any more. the construct of being non-binary (a term which i stopped using to describe myself (unless forced) many years ago, for these same reasons) has become something co-opted by the coercive machinations of gender under capitalism, and my they/them pronouns aren’t really… doing much of anything.
as i come to understand more about how my brain works (hi, i’m autistic, i’ve been autistic this whole time i just didn’t really accept it til about six months ago) and my sexuality (hi, i’m a lesbian, i’ve been a lesbian this whole time i just didn’t really accept it until etc. etc. etc.) my grasp on my pronouns has become… kind of slippy. i was SO SURE that they/them was just right for me! what if i was wrong! what does it mean if i was wrong?
understanding lesbianism, especially fat-trans-butch-dyke lesbianism, has given me a model for womanhood which includes people who look like me. i fell away from understanding myself as a woman because i was fat and gay and knew that i would never be able to achieve the kind of womanhood that capitalism wanted me to achieve. i knew it wasn’t for me and i knew i had to walk away from it – but i didn’t have anything to walk towards. so i chose a way of being which marked me as ‘away’ from thin-cis-hetero-femme womanhood and called it a day.
i read stone butch blues a couple of years ago and found myself yearning for a community which was so accepting that someone could be a lesbian and be a butch and use he/him pronouns and get their tits chopped off and that that was all within the spectrum of lesbianism. that the lines between cis and trans weren’t so clearly delineated as they seem to be now. that finding community didn’t hinge on finding an identity label everyone was perfectly happy to sit behind, but more based on who is around and who has your back. i think it changed the way i seek community – i largely reject identity-based community spaces now, or at the very least engage critically and look for where the actual boundaries are, rather than the stated ones.
i’ve long felt like my body was just not built for womanhood, as i understood it. i have a lifelong ‘hormone imbalance’, my body looks more like michelangelo’s women with broad shoulders and little malformed oranges slapped on as breasts than what women are supposed to look like. my body has long made me feel like an outsider, though some argue that PCOS could be considered an intersex condition, which has always felt right to me. choosing to use they/them pronouns was a way of articulating that outsider-ness to others, of noting that while i love my body, there’s no model for how i’m supposed to fit in.
finding community with fat trans dykes has shown me a model for womanhood which includes bodies that look like mine. women with broad shoulders and small breasts that don’t meet in the middle. women who will never fit in a size 10 even if they shrink themselves down to bone. women who are confident and flirty and forward and absolutely fucking hilarious and alienated and ‘outside’ and loved and loving and scared. women who are not trying to be the image of thin-cis-hetero-femme but something else entirely.
finding community with fat trans dykes has had me re-evaluating my relationship with womanhood. it’s returned me to a point i let sit to gather dust a long time ago: am i better served accepting myself as a woman and expanding my understanding of womanhood, or rejecting it entirely? the womanhood i reject is not the only womanhood i understand, now. so, ok. maybe i return to she/her pronouns. but contemplating that almost feels like a loss – how will the complexities of my experience, of my understanding of gender and self and outside-ness be conveyed through how i present to others?
as someone moving through the world using they/them pronouns, i was often considered in the same breath with trans people, despite never claiming that label for myself. i have never identified my experience as a trans experience. the broader understanding of non-binary-ness (used here only for the lack of a better term) and gender nonconformity (seemingly out of fashion??) is increasingly taken as being an inherently trans experience. there is little acknowledgement of any experience which falls outside the cis-trans binary – where it exists it’s usually framed as a different way of being trans rather than something distinct. i’ve never really had the words to articulate this properly. one side-effect of always being considered ‘under the trans umbrella’ is that my communities, and the spaces i have always felt most at home within, are largely full of trans people. i’m kind of nervous to re-evaluate my understanding of my own gender if it will push me firmly on the ‘cis’ side of this line. i’m scared of what i might lose!
i think this fear of loss is something that stopped me understanding myself as a lesbian for a long time, too. i would puzzle over how someone who isn’t a woman could identify as a lesbian, even if some people said it was ok (and even then, it was hotly debated). i would see lesbianism modelled by thin-cis-femmes and think, well i’m not into that, so i guess i can’t be a lesbian after all. it took being embraced by fat-trans-dykes (well, one in particular) to realise, ‘oh, it was this’. i’m by far from the first person to suggest that lesbianism, specifically butch dyke lesbianism, can be a gender identity of its own. maybe that can be an outward signifier of rejection in the same way my they/them pronouns tried to be, for such a long time.
i’m not totally settled on how i’m going to describe myself, but i figure that is probably a process that never really ends anyway. for now, i’m just adding she/her pronouns back into the mix and seeing how it sits. so hi, i’m honor. i’m a lesbian. it’s complicated, but it also makes so much sense.
if you’ve read this far thank you very much i just have one small ask which is that i have started a fundraiser for urgent medical care which i can’t access on the NHS due to astronomical wait times and would very much appreciate any cash you can send my way. if you can share this fundraiser with any rich friends you might have that would also be fantastic! i have managed to raise enough for a consultation with my preferred local provider which will be at the end of may, which will give me more info on anticipated costs overall and if they’re willing to operate on someone so young, fat and childless (fingers well and truly crossed).