We have developed, in part through social media, this idea that misgendering is so common we just ask people, when corrected, to apologize, self-correct and move on. This is how we learn, this is how we make room, this is how we make things okay.

I AM SO OVER IT!

I had a colleague stay at my house last fall and after 3 days of me correcting her every time she misgendered me or anyone else in conversation, which was a lot, and for which she was entirely grateful, she got better.

Let me tell you how I felt after those 3 days: exhausted. Disheartened. Furious. A little despairing. Hurt. A tired lonely 3000 year old hurt, which is how old I feel way too much of the time.

This is someone I REALLY like. But I felt the way I feel when I’m doing someone’s job for them. Also, being misgendered is painful. Do people really not know that it hurts? That it’s an expression of transphobia and a statement of seeing only the binary and not the person in front of you? That every misgender is an othering?

The minister at my church picked up very quickly that though I use fae and they as pronouns, fae is the one I really like. She uses only fae to refer to me. When we’re in groups and someone misgenders me, she corrects them so I don’t have to. Can we clone her, please? She is cis/het/white and I still want her cloned.

Here is the absolute truth: people need to do their own work. We gender non-conforming people can’t lift you all up…you have to climb up. You have to write using non-binary pronouns, read books with non-binary pronouns, practice, practice, practice. If you want to be allies. If you want to be supporters. If you want to show that you love us.

Because as it is now, too many of us are enablers, and too many cis het peeps are addicts to the binary. And if I lean into the addiction model, which as a member of a highly alcoholic Irish Catholic family I am certainly educated enough to do, I will say that addiction kills love. Slowly or quickly. The whole detach with love thing? I think it’s more like detach with pity and understanding and then go find someone who can actually see you.

Just saying.

Much metta for us all. But especially for my non-binary and trans and gender non-conforming sibs everywhere. May we be free from suffering. May we find peace.

BTW, Happy Friggin Pride! I love being a non-binary pansexual gender fluid fae tomboy and there is no such thing as too different for me! I love you all SO SO SOSOSOSOSOSOSOSO MUCH!