4/8/19
just a reminder that my pronouns are “they/them.” in a sentence that’s: “wow i like their boots!” or “they are on their way to the theater.” it’s hurtful when people come up to me & say they admire my work and then still refer to me as he/him “i was telling my friend is that him over there? and it is you.” like what??? it’s hurtful when i am invited for gigs & campaigns specifically for my visibility as a gender non-conforming person & am called he/him. it’s hurtful when i am literally being introduced to a full venue that i packed & am called he/him (lol what). these are the pitfalls of visibility: you want to look at us but you don’t want to regard our intelligence, difference, & personhood. hot take: if you actually believed us for who we say we are then remembering our pronouns once we tell them to you wouldn’t be this hard 👀 yes i know it’s difficult to shift habit & language but this is something TGNC people are doing as well! we were not magically bestowed with these knowledges & sensibilities, we are coming in to them through struggle, trying to excavate over time a more kind & gentle way to recognize & affirm ourselves & one another. heed our invitation to to this work & receive it as a blessing, not an inconvenience — one that allows you to journey beyond the tedium of the visual, the fatigue of the normative, and the brutality of the assumptive. we surpass all of this — we occupy more than physical space — we transcend convention & form — we birth language & ritual — we defy & in that refusal we create. let’s do better! love & need you. art by @cherry666soda
