Coming Out… Again?

I remember when I first came out to my mother, when I thought I was a lesbian. That night is still engrained in my mind, how she simply asked me if I liked girls or not, and for me to get her another glass of wine. Simple. Yes, today we will be talking about sexuality/gender.

I guess what I really want to get from this post is something I never actually came out and said, or even explored, until I got to college. At NCF, we are a very open, loving, accepting, liberal community. That being said, to respect everyone from the get go, we ask each other pronouns as a follow up question to “what’s your preferred name?” Once I got here I was able to express my preferred pronouns openly and wow did it feel so good.

Yes, instead of the ‘She/Her’ pronouns that I was blessed with at birth along with my genitalia, I ACTUALLY use ‘They/Them’ pronouns.

For those of you who don’t completely follow I will explain everything. Instead of saying, “She went to the store,” you would say, “They went to the store.” Simple. I remember when I told my grandmother this when she came to my dorm room one day, she said, “Thats weird.” And please, by all means, think it’s weird. Think it’s odd. But it really isn’t.

As a gender-fluid person, I feel like I embody traits and qualities that stereotypical males and females possess. There is, somehow, this idea that males are better at somethings than girls, or girls are stronger than males in this or that field. If by being better at something that typically is dominated by males makes me masculine, fine. If by dressing a certain way makes me more masculine/feminine, cool. If painting my nails makes me feminine, then awesome. I’ll paint the heck out of my nails (I am terrible at painting nails). I feel like using ‘They/Them’ gives me the opprotunity to embody my more masculine side when I feel such, my feminine side when I feel that way, and not feel uncomfortable by someone using different pronouns. Trust me, there are times that even I slip up and say girl/she/her, instead of person/they/them. It is a learning experience for me too, that even I am not quite used to yet.

I am sure a lot of people already know, but I wanted to clarify because this has been a wonderful feeling for me in the past month, being able to use different pronouns and be comfortable, and I wanted to share that. My gender has always been an uphill battle for me, and taking the steps I need to take to make myself happy is always a shining light.

What pronouns do you use?