Here’s the thing about writing a novel (at least for me). When I get an idea in my head that won’t leave, I know I need to write about it. Before my medical crisis, this was not an issue because what got stuck in my head was what I wanted to write about, anyway. Now, however, I’m not sure I want to write about what I’m obsessing over–even though it will be the background for what I do want to write.
Oh, here’s yesterday’s post. I went off the rails for quite a long time, but that’s part of my writing style. It’s not going to change, and let’s face it, I don’t want to change it. I ilke it. I think it gives my writing character. I already know that I am not for everyyone if not most people, and I am fine with that, too. In fact, there are people I hope I’m not for, and I want to antagonize the shit out of them.
To put it plainly, I write about several topics that fit into the term DEI. Which, as we know, is a dirty word with the current administration and his acolytes. I talk about race, gender, sexual identity, religion (a lack there of), and other things considered problematic by this administration. I’m not married, and I don’t have kids; I have no desire to marry, and I never wanted children. I had cats, which I much prefer to human babies (for me).
I don’t believe in rigid gender norms/roles–indeed, I don’t see any reason for them. One of the reasons I have an easy time with pronouns is because, well, there are several reasons for that. The reason related to this is that since I don’t see why we have rigid gender roles, it’s easy for me to accept people as their stated gender.
I don’t know if I’m explaining this well, so I’ll try again.
I’m a weirdo. I have always been a weirdo. I have always had to mask and calibrate myself to not freak out the normies too much. I didn’t even realize I had to do this until I was in my twenties (which made my childhood and teens very difficult). Once I realized how much of a weirdo I was, I studied normies so I could try to see what made them tick. Plus, the whole emotional support person thing I’ve talked about countless times before (my mother forced me to be that for her). I put my high EQ to work, and I came up with an acceptable way to be around normies–for the most part.
There is very little that I find shocking as a result. I mean, there are things that bother me, disturb me, and disgust me, but shock me? Very rare. That’s not a flex or a humblebrag, by the way. It is just the way I am.
This is my long-ass way of saying that thirty years ago, when I first became aware that transgender was a thing, I was puzzled by it. I did not get it, and I pondered it for a while. Then, it slowly became better known in society (vastly simplified), and I realized, hey, yeah. Ok. It’s just a person being true to themselves. And I will always celebrate that–always.
Well, let me be clear. I will celebrate it as long as someone being who they are is not harmful to someone else. So, no, I will not celebrate racists being themselves out loud, for example. They can keep that shit to themselves.
But people who discover their true selves? Yes, I will celebrate that. Every time. Even if I don’t get it myself. I did a lot of soul searching about gender because I have never felt like a woman, but I realized eventually that I didn’t know what that meant. Since I don’t believe in gender roles, I don’t think I’m limited to anything just because I’m AFAB. There are very few things I cannot do because I do not have typically-male endowments.
On the other hand, I like my body just as it is. I do not have body dysphoria, and I like my bits. I address all this in my writings, both fiction and non. In my perfect world, gender would just not matter. People could be the gender they are without any pushback. There would be no ‘women are this’ and ‘men are that’ (yes, most people still live in the binary), and we’d just be chill with people being who they are.
We are not living that timeline, and I don’t know if we will in my lifetime. In fact, we’re going backwards with this administration, and it’s breaking my heart. And making me resentful at the same time. In my perfect life, I would not think about gender all that much. It’s not important to me, but now I feel I have to be careful about it.
The last time I went to get my dirver license’s renewed, I was surprised and delighted to see that they had nonbinary as a choice for gender. And yet. This was in April of 2024, and I was seeing how the winds were shifting politically. I hated to think about it, but I knew that if the administration changed hands, minorities would be in a world of hurt.
If I were thirty years younger, I probably would have chosen nonbinary as my gender. Me today, though, it just does not fit for me. It’s probably the closest–you know what? No. Genderqueer is the closest, but it’s already being equated with nonbinary. It’s the same as queer meaning gay. People really do not do well with the very out there choices, and they want to bring everything back to the norm. Or drag everything to the binary with allowing a very reluctant exception for nonbinary.
After my medical crisis, I spent several months thinking about my gender. I was actually thinking about it before, but as you might guess, I put it on the backburner for a few months as I recovered from my medical crisis. When I got back to it, I dug deep down and found I felt nothing. Sorry. That’s a line from a song in A Chorus Line, and it fits here.
What I finally realized is that I think of my gender much like I think of my religion–I don’t. I went for several years calling myself agnostic, but that did not quite fit*. After lots of thinking, I realized that I did not care if a god existed or not because it did not affect my daily life in any way. My medical crisis reinforced that belief, by the way.
When I read about the term ‘agender’, something clicked inside me. I really don’t care if there is a god or not because as I said, any god that does exist doesn’t really matter to me personally. I could not square any version of god with all the shittiness in the world, and I decided that I did not want to keep trying.
It’s the same with gender. In an ideal world where gender was just people were who people were, I would be fine with the label woman. Because it would not constrict me in any way, nore would it define me. We do not live in that world, so I would prefer not to use the label. I understand that it will not change how people view me, but I choose agender, anyway.
*I discard my Christian years because that was something that shoved onto me by my parents.