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.