I was talking to K today and mentioned my frustration with being outside all categories. In general, I’m fine with it. It is, as the kids say, what it is. But, once in a while, it just irritates me because I would like to feel included in the converastion. We talked about gender and what did it mean, actually? We both feel if we were twenty now instead of thirty years ago, we would have chosen some flavor of nonbinary/agender.
As it were, I personally just…eh. Don’t really care at this point. In my perfect world, I would be able to go without gender pronouns and it would not be a big deal. Everyone would just use my name, and that would be that. I realize, though, that would be impractical and unwieldy. “Minna wanted a sandwich for Minna’s dinner because Minna was hungry and needed something to sustain Minna” can be shortened to “Minna wanted a sandwich for dinner as sustenance”, but other sentences aren’t as easily changed. In addition, it’s much easier to do this in writing than in speaking.
I don’t mind she or they to describe me–just not he. Gender is interesting because for different people, it means such different things. That’s not interesting and unusual in and of itself, but it means it’s difficult to built a new norm. K was saying she would like a nuversal ‘they’ but felt it would be akin to ‘I don’t see color’.
I am a fan of calling people what they want, but we have heuristics for a reason. It’s a bit unwieldy to not have any shorthands. Granted, we have ‘he’ and ‘she’, which the vast majority identify as. I did a quick Google, and thereare an estimated 1.2 million of LGBTQ+ people identify as nonbinary. PEW Research Center says that 1.6% of aults are nonbinary/trans with it rising to 5.1% for adults under 30.
I will bet it’ll shake out around 10%. Like all other alternative identities. So, out of 336,000,000 people, that would be roughly 3.5 million people. I’m guessing that, again, 90% of that group will be trans/nonbinary. The remaining 10% will be the rest of us. That’s roughly 350,000 people. That’s not a ton, granted, but it’s plenty! That would include agender, genderqueer, and genderfluid. I will say that every time I bring it up in the Aask A Manager website, I always have a few people chiming in to agree with me.
It’s pertty cool, even though it still startles me every time. It’s nice to have a little community, though. It’s weird. I read as a woman because I have big tits, curvy hips, and hair down to mid-thighs. But, my energy is not feminine. At all. I have told this story countless times, but I have twice confused lesbians trying to put me on the butch/femme spectrum (it was a different time, nearly three decades ago, when that’s whan you did as a queer woman). The first said after several moments of silence that she couldn’t place me on the spectrum. The latter said in a tone of vexation that I confused her because I had long hair and curves, but I really dug sports. And I didn’t wear makeup.
I was talking with K about not being in any one category. She said it was pretty cool and that I could show others that they didn’t have to be confined, either. She said it more eloquently, but it hit me. I am so used to it being a negative thing, not fitting in a box/category, I mean. It certainly makes it much harder to exist in this rigid world. But, she’s right. It’s also freeing in a way to realize that I am not bound by the rules. I’m lucky that I don’t have to currently worry about money, so I can just be me.
I don’t know how well I would do in an office. So I should embrace the fact that I don’t have to be. I don’t have to mask (figuratively) to go into an office and still not quite fit. I’ve always been lost at sea as to what is ‘normal’ behavior. I remember when I was a child, I felt like an alien. I would go to school and wonder, “What the hell is happening here?” Not in those exact words because I didn’t swear at the time, but that was my constant mood. Well, that and being severely depressed. I was a second-generation Taiwanese American who had no clue about anything American. My parents came here for grad school in Nashville, met, married, and moved to MN so my father could get his PhD. I have no doubt that they planned to move back to Taiwan as soon as he got his PhD, but by that time, my brother and I were in school.
He never considered himself American, nor did my mother. They both becoame naturalized, but I think that was more for pragmatic reasons than because they actually wanted to be considered Americans. They only hung out with other Taiwanese people outside of work, and they spoke Taiwanese to each other at home. But they only spoke English to me and my brother because my brother had difficulty learning two languages.
My father went back to Taiwan as soon as I graduated from college. My mother had to stay to finish her PsyD (practical equivalent to a psychology PhD), but then she went back as soon as she got her degree.
Back to when I was a child. I honestly felt I was in an alien world because I did not know anything about American society, culture, or norms. i was fat, awkward, and lost in my own world. My favorite hobby was reading, which did not endear me to the other kids. We didn’t watch much TV, go to the movies, or listen to music. We ate Taiwanese food at home, mostly because it’s all my father wanted to eat, and when I brought Taiwanese food to school, the other kids made fun of me. This was decades before Asian food was in fashion, by the way.
I felt as if everyone else had gotten a manual for how to act, and I had been skipped over. I was out of my depth, and it just got worse. I wish someone had pulled me aside and given me the basics. It wasn’t until I was in my twenties that I felt anything other than bewilderment at being alive.
It wasn’t until I died twice in my fifties (on the same night) that I fully realized that life was a gift and I was grateful to be alive. More on that later. I’m done for now.