LifezVictory

I really like how a lot of apps are adding pronoun fields now. Apple added one in their contacts app in IOS 17, and I noticed Discord has one too, although I don’t know how long ago that was and I’m too lazy to look it up. I think this is a step in the right direction, and hopefully this’ll help to normalize asking about pronouns and the gender spectrum as a whole.

Hey. So like, it’s been a while since I’ve been on this sight, and the first thing i did when I came back is changed some things on my profile, and now I’m going to explain the reason for said changes because I feel like I need to get them off my chest.

The first time I ever questioned my gender was when I was an innocent four-year-old. It was just a little passing thought: would I want to be a boy instead of a girl if I could? The thought made me uncomfortable even though I enjoyed doing things that boys liked to do, such as getting dirty and playing with cars, more than things that were traditionally girly. Pink was never my favorite, and Barbie bored me. But I still liked being a girl.

It wouldn’t be until a few years later when I had access to the internet that I learned what transgender meant. And even though I’d been raised in a mostly conservative Christian invironment, my only thought was: eh, that makes sense. I mean I’ll admit, I found it a little weird at first, not identifying with the gender you were born as, but it made sense to me. Because why wouldn’t that be a thing? After all I did have that thought when I was four but decided I liked being a girl, so why wouldn’t some people have reacted differently? People are different, after all.

Then later, I learned that there were other gender identities other than male or female, and again, it just made sense. I did wonder what that ‘other’ option was for on some forms I’d encountered that asked about someone’s gender, and now when i encounter forms with only male or female as an option, it feels constricting.

Now with my discovery of gender out of the way, we get to my current situation. See, I’d always been happy being a girl, albeit not the most feminine of girls. A tomboy. But one night a year or so ago when I was trying to go to sleep, I thought about what it would feel like if someone referred to me with pronouns other than she/her. Would it make me mad? Would it disgust me? So I tried doing it to myself. First I tried he/him: his name is Zoe. That didn’t make me feel disgusted per se, but it weirded me out and I decided fairly quickly I’d rather not have someone call me that. Then I tried they/them: their name is Zoe. And when I did that, a strange feeling went over me.

It was like riding The Great Tree Swing at Dollywood, one of my favorite rides there. It felt thrilling. But that also came with emotions that I’d rather not unpack given that it was the middle of the night.

I didn’t think about it again until today, when I came across the Pronoun Dressing Room, and for craps and giggles, i decided to try to refer to myself as they/them since I’d only done it in my head before this point, and it felt the same, if not better than when I had. But I still felt like a girl, and still liked she/her pronouns too. So I felt and still sort of feel like I shouldn’t use they/them because I’m not non-binary, at least, not mostly.

So I asked my real non-binary friend about it. They used to go by she/they themself, but now only use they/them. They told me that i was probably on the non-binary spectrum, and at the moment, I’m thinking that i might be a Demigirl. But for now, I’m just going to try using she/they online and see how it goes.