My peers don't know what to call me and I don't know what to tell them

Hiya, my name is Lexi (right now) and I'm genderfluid and live in the San Francisco Bay Area. My pronouns are... the reason I need some help.

I'm AMAB but have been out to everyone who knows me (family, friends, work, everyone) since Christmas. I've been working on this for awhile and spent a lot of time thinking about my pronouns. At first I wanted people to use pronouns based on how I was presenting at the time - 'he' when I'm masculine, 'she' when I'm feminine, and I suppose 'they' when I'm androgenous/in the middle. I tested this out with people like my roommate first and the immediate feedback was this was too much to expect from them. Even if I passed perfectly in each of the three categories (how does one pass as androgenous?) I can't expect people to remember to change pronouns every day/in the middle of the day. What would they do when they're talking about me and I'm not around? I might interact with over a hundred people in a week (and not the same hundred each week) and it'd be impossible to teach every single person the rules. Plus, there are so many people who want to get pronouns right and would stress about using mine correctly.

So I decided to choose one and if people want to switch it up, that's up to them. I stuck with 'he'. I have been 'he' to everyone so far, people who meet me when I'm presenting masculine might be confused when they hear 'she', and I feel like 'they' doesn't give me any sort of validation - no matter which way in presenting. Nobody has been switching it up. Or calling me Lexi. Some people have noticed that I'm not always comfortable with 'he', though, and have asked if I'm sure that's right for me. I'm not sure. :(

I'm being a little whiny. And long winded. I just want to know how others might solve/look at this problem. I miss being addressed as a girl when I'm presenting that way.

Posted Mar 12, 2020, 6:18 AM UTC

12
Loading comments…