Gendervague
Some folks were surprised to see they / them pronouns on my about page.
What’s your pronoun?
has always been a difficult question to answer.
Do I have to have a pronoun?
refrains through my mind.
I’m never prepared.
(Long pause.) I'm she, they, he—you?
Usually it’s a jumble of pronouns. I deprioritize he. Collect and respect theirs. What I don’t say is that my experience of gender is compulsory.
It’s navigating the assumptions and expectations that gender projects onto all of us. While weighing a binary that’s arbitrary and for many a death sentence. Because it’s inexplicably woven through every fabric of our society.
Somehow I won a cosmological lottery to be trapped inside this body. I was assigned and socialized male so those pronouns followed me like a shadow. But I don’t identify with any of them intrinsically.
Gendervague is the simplest articulation of this experience. Non-binary pronouns are the best available option. Or whatever.