Author: Meaghan Ray

Feeding My Baby as a Nonbinary Person

PLANNING

When I was pregnant and looking ahead to having a newborn, it was very hard for me to tell how I would feel about nursing. I have dysphoria around my chest that fluctuates and when I read information on or listened to people talk about ‘breastfeeding’, my dysphoria would get worse. I didn’t always know if that was because I was feeling more masculine at the time I was absorbing the information, because the language used was dysphoria inducing, or because the act itself would cause dysphoria.

So we planned for all options. I learned what I could about nursing (which turned out to be just the basics because it would inevitably make my dysphoria worse). We purchased a set of bottles, nipples, a sterilizer, and formula. And I looked up information on pumping and bought a basic manual pump to try. No matter how I felt about nursing or how our baby did with it, we had a way to feed them.

NURSING

The first time I tried nursing was nothing special. There was no feeling of euphoria or ecstasy, no overwhelming feeling of connection with my baby. But it went well and within the first few days both of us had figured out the mechanics. During this initial phase, it was all about learning a new skill and as long as I focused on that, the dysphoria was secondary.

By the fourth day we had pretty much gotten the hang of it but my baby was still looking a bit jaundiced and was showing signs of dehydration. It turned out that although my milk was coming in, my let-down was nearly non-existent. My midwives explained that this is common after receiving an epidural. So they showed me how to hand express during nursing to increase the flow.

This worked well and my baby quickly improved. However, hand expression meant I had to be constantly engaged with my chest during nursing every few hours. My let down didn’t seem to improve a whole lot and after a week of doing this my dysphoria had increased to the point where I needed to keep myself, and therefore the baby, covered during feeding. I would express by feel and be able to watch tv as a distraction without the view of my chest in my peripheral vision.

The juxtaposition of the baby that I had a lot of love and connection to and my chest that I was increasingly uncomfortable with was very emotionally taxing. But due to the intense fatigue that comes from recovering from a four day labour and sleep deprivation from having a newborn that needs feeding every 2-3 hours, I was in survival mode and didn’t recognize how emotionally drained this experience of nursing was making me.

In addition, nursing sessions were lasting longer and longer, often an hour or more. According to everything I had read and been told, once my milk came in and the baby learned how to suck and swallow efficiently, nursing would get faster and faster, eventually down to about twenty minutes. I didn’t know why this wasn’t the case for us but I knew it likely wasn’t good. Not to mention the longer sessions were increasing my dysphoria significantly faster.

At our two week follow up with the midwife we found out that the baby wasn’t gaining weight like they should. Despite all the physical and emotional energy I had been putting into nursing, it wasn’t working. Without warning, I broke down into tears. I felt like we had been doing well. The midwife explained that between the baby’s lower body weight and the long nursing sessions, it sounded like I didn’t have enough milk supply. The baby was burning more calories than they were getting. So we decided to start supplementing with formula.

BOTTLE FEEDING

The plan was to nurse at each feeding time for 15-20 minutes per side, then offer formula in a bottle until the baby decided they were full. We discussed other supplementing options like a supplemental nursing system or SNS but since we already had bottles and it would mean that my husband would get a chance to be involved in feeding (which he was excited to try) we decided bottles were the way to go. Besides, an SNS would likely only increase my dysphoria further.

Luckily our baby took to bottle feeding very easily. Maybe it was because it was a clear source of the nutrition they had been struggling to get from me but without all the effort. My husband did the first bottle feeding session using a paced feeding technique. At the second meal, I tried it. The emotional experience of feeding my baby from a bottle as compared to nursing was significant.

I was able to stay engaged, watching my baby figure out how to coordinate sucking, swallowing, and breathing. I could enjoy the cuddles without experiencing dysphoria at the same time. Since both my husband and I were feeding the baby this way, it was a completely gender neutral or gender irrelevant experience. It was lovely.

Once I discovered how much better feeding my baby from a bottle was, I was reluctant to keep nursing. But I wanted to feed my body as much human milk as I could because of the health benefits and the ease of digestion for their still developing gut. So in order to keep increasing my supply without nursing, I had to start pumping.

PUMPING

I started using the manual pump I had purchased while pregnant. It was fairly easy to figure out. I still didn’t have much let-down due to low supply and therefore had to continue to hand express while pumping which meant the dysphoria was just as bad with pumping as with nursing, but it wasn’t competing or overshadowing the positive emotions I had for the baby. I could experience my love and bond with my baby separately.

I also had a feeling of altruism because I was doing the hard work of extracting the milk so my baby didn’t have to. Unfortunately, pumping 4-6 times per day with a manual pump while hand expressing takes a toll on your hands pretty quickly. My hands started getting too sore to express and too sore to pump more than 3 times a day. So I had to be satisfied with whatever milk I got from those sessions (one eighth to one fifth of what my baby was eating) and say that it was better than nothing.

Luckily, my midwives were connected with a publicly funded, trans inclusive lactation clinic in my area and put in a referral.

LACTATION SUPPORT

As soon as we discovered that I had low supply, I started taking supplements to help increase my supply slowly. I was reluctant to take the stronger, recommended medication in case it increased my supply more than I could handle in terms of dysphoria. I really disliked the few times I experienced the feeling of being engorged while my milk was first coming in. The supplements or the pumping seemed to be working because my supply was increasing. By the time the initial visit with the lactation consultant came up, I was consistently producing a fifth to a quarter of what my baby was eating.

Despite knowing that the lactation clinic was trans inclusive, I had significant anxiety and dysphoria leading up to the initial appointment. But they turned out to be great. The intake form that I filled out online in advance didn’t ask explicitly about identity and pronouns but it used inclusive language for the most part and had a fill-in-the-blank box at the end where we could put anything else we thought would be relevant.

They clarified my pronouns right off the bat and asked about my goals. They made it clear that their role was to support me in achieving whatever goals I had, whether it was to increase supply, maintain current levels, or stop lactation altogether. They were understanding and respectful of my experience of dysphoria and my need to balance that with the desire to feed my baby as much using my milk as possible.

Ultimately, I started taking the standard medication to increase supply and rented a hospital grade, double electric pump. I was nervous about how this style of pump would feel and it definitely took some getting used to but it allowed me to set it and forget it while still getting as much milk as possible. I adapted a sports bra to hold the flanges in place and was able to watch tv or play on my phone while pumping. Best of all, I didn’t have to wear out my hands to get milk. Sure, the altruism factor related to the hard work was less but being able to stay covered up and ignore it was great.

WHERE WE ARE NOW

Now, at three months postpartum, I am producing three quarters to 100% of what my baby eats. We have noticed a big improvement in our baby’s amount of gas and therefore their ability to sleep through the night. Even that, without any other benefit, is enough encouragement to keep me going. I am still taking the medication and my supply is still increasing slowly but with minimal feelings of engorgement and only pumping three times per day.

My plan is to continue what I’m doing for another three months. I will stop taking the medication after about eight weeks on it or once my supply is to the level I want, whichever comes first. Once my baby is six months old and starts eating solids, the lactation clinic will help me decrease and ultimately stop lactation.

I am happy with how this journey has turned out, despite the struggle at the beginning. I have had phenomenal support from my midwives, the lactation clinic, and especially my husband. Regardless, I am definitely looking forward to the day when I can wear my binder again.

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When Your Name or Pronouns Fluctuate

Many people that have a fluid gender identity use different names and/or pronouns at different times. Figuring out how to make this work for you can be a challenge, and then following through and making it happen is even harder.

I’m still learning how to do this but I thought I’d share what I’ve learned so far.

KNOW YOURSELF

The first step to knowing what pronouns or name you prefer at a given time or in a given context is to figure out how your gender fluctuates. I did this by tracking my gender daily on a scale of 5 female to 0 neutral to 5 male for the span of a month and a half. You can make up whatever scale works for you.

I also made note of my other activities, habits, emotional state, and menstrual cycle. Correlating the shifts in my gender with these other factors gave me a much better sense of what influenced my gender and how the shifts in my gender influenced my mood and behaviour.

Tracking my gender daily forced me to check in with myself. I learned what to pay attention to within myself to indicate where my gender was sitting and what strategies would be useful to minimize dysphoria and maximize euphoria. This is a hugely important skill for anyone who’s gender fluctuates. Even now, a couple years after the gender tracking that I did, I am much more in tune with where my gender is sitting, when dysphoria is affecting me, and what I can do about it.

Once you know how much your gender fluctuates and what influences it, you can have a better idea of when you’d be more comfortable with one name or pronoun over another. This still takes real world testing to be sure. So finding an online community who will refer to you however you wish on a given day (or a platform that allows you to change your username at each log in) or an in person group of at least two friends who will help you trial names and pronouns.

Now you know how your gender fluctuates and what name and pronoun you want people to use with each state of your gender. Next you have to decide how to find a balance between the different states of your gender and how to go about asking other to refer to you.

STRUCTURED APPROACH

My gender doesn’t fluctuate a whole lot and usually sits close to an equal balance between my male and female components. So I’m almost always most comfortable with they/them pronouns. But in my case, I don’t have a single name that is gender neutral, I have one name for my female side and a different name for my male side.

My job is such that it doesn’t feel feasible to have people refer to me by anything other than my female name and she/her pronouns. So in order to find an overall balance, I decided to use my male name and they/them pronouns almost exclusively in queer spaces.

Maybe you have a supportive work environment but you’re not out to your family yet. You may chose to use your ‘trans’ identity at work because you are always referred to by the name and pronouns you were assigned at birth when you’re at home.

Whatever the case, if there is one area of your life where you feel restricted in your ability to come out or advocate for yourself, this approach may be the best option to still allow you a sense of balance and a chance to experience all aspects of your identity.

GO WITH THE FLOW APPROACH

For some people, their gender fluctuates too often or on too wide a spectrum for the structured approach to feel comfortable. So the other option, if your life circumstances allow, is to go with the flow. This means that however you feel at a given moment, you indicate or request to be referred to by the corresponding name and pronouns.

This approach give you a lot more flexibility and perhaps a stronger sense of authenticity but it requires more clear signaling and more frequent self-advocacy.

GLOBAL APPROACH

Another option is to find a middle ground of where the different components of your gender overlap and use that as your default with the option to request a different name or pronoun if needed.

Or perhaps your gender is in one state the majority of the time and only occasionally fluctuates to a different state. You could use the most common state as your default and only specify when it differs.

Or, like me, perhaps you have a way to refer to yourself that encompasses your entire identity. I am 100% of the time comfortable with they/them pronouns and prefer to be referred to by both my names as though they are hyphenated. I can still specify differently if I need to but this gives me a lot of safety and authenticity.

Whichever system works for you, or if you come up with a completely different one, you will need a way to indicate or express to others how you wish to be referred to.

SIGNALING

One way to indicate to others which name and pronoun to use is via non-verbal indicators or signals. This can be anything from clothing to jewelry to behaviours to pins or name tags.

If you feel most comfortable presenting in a distinct way with each different state of your gender, you can use your general presentation to indicate to others how they should refer to you. This will still take a bit of explanation initially and maybe a few reminders but, in general, would be pretty straighforward.

If you present fairly similarly regardless of your gender or your presentation doesn’t relate to your gender in that way at all, you can use other means to signal your gender. I have a necklace that has Meaghan on one side and Ray on the other. Most of the time I wear it inside my shirt but if I’m in an environment where it is safe to do so, I will wear it outside my shirt with the Ray side facing out as a reminder to others of how to refer to me. You can do something similar with a bracelet, name tag, pronoun or name pin, or more subtle means such as a certain piece of jewelry indicating a certain name/pronoun combo.

Keep in mind that the more subtle the signal is, the more explanation and reminders it will take for people around you to pick up on it and get it right. But if you’re in a potentially unsafe environment, subtle might be necessary for safety.

ADVOCATING

No matter what signals (if any) you choose to use, you will always have to have some sort of conversation with those around you to explain that your gender fluctuates and you wish to be referred to by a different name and/or pronoun depending on the situation or the day and how they will know which one to use. This initial coming out conversation is difficult for any trans person but especially for those with a fluid gender that doesn’t fit binary notions of gender. See Related Posts at the bottom of the page for ideas on how to have this conversation.

As with any trans person, you will also have to correct people when they get your name and/or pronouns wrong. When your gender fluctuates and the name/pronoun you use changes, it takes even longer for those around you to get used to it and inevitably causes even more slip-ups. So decide how often you want to correct people and how best to do it. This will likely depend on your relationship with that person and the context you’re in at the time.

One good practice to get into the habit of is introducing yourself using your name and pronouns every time you meet someone. Not just someone new, even people who know you and already understand your gender. Something like ‘Hi [friend], I’m Ray and using they/them pronouns today’ works well.

Also let the friends and family you interact with regularly and who you’re out to that if you forget to inform them of your name and pronoun at the beginning of an interaction, it is helpful for them to ask about it or cue you to indicate if it isn’t clear from your signaling. How they ask is up to you and again, will likely depend on your relationship with them and the context.

Sometimes, all it takes is having one ally in the room who you have informed ahead of time what name and pronoun to use. Their role is to find an opportunity to refer to you using that name and pronoun within the first minute of you arriving and as often as necessary throughout the event.

IMPORTANCE OF GLOBAL IDENTITY

When you have a fluid gender identity with multiple components it can be easy to get caught up in the parts and forget about the whole. For me, it important to take a step back to make sure I am achieving an overall balance that works for me, even if I can’t get people to refer to me the way I’d prefer in every situation.

The goal of all this work and advocacy is to be able to experience and be comfortable with all parts or aspects of your gender. To get to express yourself in the most authentic way no matter what your gender is. So try not to get caught up too much in the details of every interaction and instead aim for an overall more authentic and gender-filled existence.

I hope this helps give you some ideas of how to navigate the world when your gender and therefore name and/or pronouns fluctuate. Comment with your own experiences, send me an email, or reach out on social media. You can find me on instagram @meaghan.ray.peters.

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How to Ask About Someone’s Gender

We always say that if you don’t know someone’s gender or pronouns, just ask. But how do you do that in a respectful way? As a stranger, we can use they/them pronouns and avoid gendered language for everyone we meet until they specify. But what if this is a new colleague or a friend of a friend? Or what if your partner or child just told you they are questioning their gender?

The closer you are to someone, the more impact your questions are going to have. You can ask questions to find out the basic information such as how they identify and what pronouns and name to use. Or you can ask deeper questions to get a better understanding of what their identity means to them, how they picture themself, and what their experience of gender is day to day. These deeper questions can help you form a more accurate mental image of the person as they see themself so that you are more likely to gender them correctly. They can also help the other person sort out some of their confusion around their gender (if need be).

THE BASICS

When asking questions about gender (or any other sensitive topic), I follow the principle of not asking any question I wouldn’t also be willing to answer. I also use the caveat that they never have to answer a question I ask, though I do appreciate knowing why they don’t want to answer so I avoid asking other questions that they don’t want to answer.

If you are ever uncomfortable about asking something, it’s a good bet the other person will have some discomfort in answering as well. Be honest about your discomfort but don’t let that stop you. Be aware of your surroundings and choose a place where both of you feel the most safe (likely a private space).

If you’re not sure how to phrase a question or what language to use, be honest about that too. Try to avoid saying ‘I don’t mean any disrespect, but…’. Instead, use a phrase like ‘I’m not sure how to word this question. Is it okay if I ask it anyway and you can tell me how I’m supposed to say it?’ Usually, there is a reason why a certain question is inappropriate. Either the word you chose is seen as offensive, how you used it was incorrect, or the subject matter isn’t appropriate to ask about. It is helpful if you can find out why the question was wrong so you avoid making the same mistake with other questions or in other circumstances.

Asking about basic information such as gender identity, pronouns, or name is pretty straightforward. Offer yours first, then ask. ‘Hi, I’m Wendy. I’m a cis woman and I use she/her pronouns. How do you identify and what pronouns do you use?’ Keep in mind that knowing how someone identifies isn’t usually necessary. Pronouns and name are enough to interact with them respectfully.

Always question yourself about why you want to know the information and what purpose it will serve for you. If you’re just curious, generally you should refrain from asking unless you have a close relationship with that person and you’re in a private space. But, if you feel that you do need to know more information, you’re going to need to know what questions to ask.

DEEPER QUESTIONS

As I said above, you can ask these more intense, specific, personal, and invasive questions to learn more about someone’s gender for your own understanding or to help them figure out their own gender. I have grouped these questions into categories to make it easier to follow. These are just examples – feel free to pick and choose from each list as needed rather than using every question. This list is by no means exhaustive.

Gender Identity

  • How do you identify with regards to gender at the moment?
  • Has your gender identity changed over time?
  • What labels do you use for your gender and how do you define them?
  • Does your gender always feel the same or does it fluctuate?
  • Does your gender influence your sexual orientation in any way?
  • Are you comfortable with your gender identity or is it a source of frustration?
  • Are you confident in your gender identity or do you still have some confusion?

Language

  • What pronouns feel best for you?
  • Do you always prefer those pronouns?
  • What name do you want me to use?
  • What other language feels best for you (guys, ladies, girl, ma’am, sir, bro, dude, etc)?
  • What familial terms feel best for you (sister/brother/sibling, son/daughter/child/offspring etc)?
  • Is there any way I can help you test out various names/pronouns/language?

Body Dysphoria and Euphoria

  • Are there parts of your body that feel wrong or bring discomfort?
  • Are there parts of your body that feel good?
  • How do you picture your body should look?
  • Do you do anything to make your body feel more authentic for yourself?
  • Do you do anything to modify how your body appears to others?
  • Are there specific ways you would like me to refer to or interact with certain parts of your body?
  • Is there any way I can help you test out various presentations?

Medical Transition

  • Are you planning to/have you already started hormones?
  • How do you feel about the idea of/changes from taking hormones?
  • Are there any challenges you are facing with accessing hormones?
  • Are you planning to/have you already have any gender affirming procedures/surgeries?
  • How do you feel about the idea of/changes from [procedure/surgery]?
  • Are there any challenges you are facing with getting [procedure/surgery] done?
  • Have you ever encountered transphobia in a medical setting?
  • Is there anything I can do to support you with accessing basic or trans-specific medical care?

Legal Transition

  • Are you planning to/have you already changed your legal name?
  • Are you planning to/have you already changed your gender marker?
  • What documents have you changed so far?
  • What institutions have you informed of this change?
  • What documents/institutions do you still need to change/inform?
  • Is there any way I can help you with making these changes or support you during this process?
  • If we are in a situation where I need to disclose your legal name/gender, what would you like me to say? (hospital, banking, insurance, police, etc)

Practical Concerns

  • Who are you out to?
  • How would you like me to refer to you around people you are out to?
  • How would you like me to refer to you around people you are not out to but who know you and who you also interact with?
  • How would you like me to refer to you around people you are not out to but who you have no interaction with?
  • Have you encountered any transphobia?
  • Is there anything I can do to provide support?
  • Is there anything I have been doing or saying that is uncomfortable? What would you like me to do/say instead?

I hope this list of suggested questions helps guide your discussions of gender with anyone you interact with. Remember to think about how you would answer these questions before asking them of someone else. These questions are designed to guide a discussion that would be a follow up to the basic learning I talked about in How to Be a Trans Ally so don’t forget to start there.

Let me know how your discussions about gender are going! Or, let me know if you have other questions that you have found helpful in your discussions and I will add them to the list above. Leave a comment on this post or send me an email! Looking forward to hearing from you.

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How to be a Trans Ally

ALLYSHIP 101

Being an ally for any minority takes more than being accepting of a friend or acquaintance from that identity. Not being a biggot is not the same thing as being an ally. Being an ally isn’t a perspective, a state of mind, or even a level of understanding. It requires ongoing action that at first can be a challenge but eventually becomes automatic.

As someone who is part of a majority group, it is not for you to say that you are an ally. If you take actions that show to members of the minority group that you are safe to be around, understanding, supportive, affirming, and uplifting, they will label you as an ally.

Being an ally takes work, requires an open mind, and most of all, a willingness to feel uncomfortable. At some point, someone from a minority group will tell you that what you’re doing isn’t helping or may actually be causing more harm than good. Being an ally means listening to this perspective, asking questions to understand it further and what you can do differently, then acting on what you’ve learned.

Being an ally for one minority does not mean you are an ally for all minorities or even all the identities encompassed by that minority. Being an ally at one time does not guarantee you are an ally forever or in all circumstances.

But don’t let this discourage you! We need more allies!! Below are a number of ideas for what it means to be an ally to trans people. Please leave a comment below or get in touch with me if you have questions or other things to add to this list!

PRONOUNS

Put your pronouns in your email signature, your social media profiles, your video chat name, and on name tags. As a cis person, you likely have never had your pronouns questioned, never felt uncomfortable with the pronoun people assume you use, and never had to justify your use of that pronoun. Trans people have to do this every day or deal with the discomfort of being misgendered. So please, normalize the expression of pronouns by including yours.

Along the same lines, when you are introducing yourself to someone (anyone, not just someone you guess or know to be trans), introduce yourself with your pronouns. “Hi, my name is _____ and I use ______ pronouns.” You may get some funny looks or confusion from cis people who are not trans aware and you may feel awkward the first few times but just like anything else, it gets easier with practice. If you give up the first time it is uncomfortable, you really aren’t understanding how uncomfortable, scary, and often painful it is for trans people to be in a similar situation. And they don’t have the choice to just walk away, pretend it doesn’t exist, or avoid the discomfort.

Learn how to use a variety of pronouns. No, she/her and he/him are not the only singular pronouns out there. They/them is fairly common. There are also neopronouns such as per, xir or zir, and aer. Learn how these pronouns sound, how to use them in a sentence, how to switch between different pronouns, how to use pronouns that seem counter to your perception of someone’s gender, and how to avoid using pronouns altogether. Often, in English anyway, it is easy enough to rearrange a sentence to remove pronouns or substitute the person’s name.

KNOWLEDGE

Understand what it means to be trans. Understand the difference between sex, gender, sexual orientation, and gender presentation. Learn about some of the various identities that fall under the trans umbrella. Learn about the different steps someone might take to transition. You don’t need to know all the ins and outs of all the medical procedures or medication options (unless you are a healthcare worker and this is relevant to your field) but a general understanding is required.

Understand some of the challenges faced by the trans community in your area. This may be systemic barriers such as access to medications and medical procedures, cost of changing ID, wait times for medical procedures and documentation changes, lack of inclusive forms at medical clinics, banks, and workplaces, and difficulty accessing employment and housing. Or it could be interpersonal barriers due to transphobia that increase the risk of physical and emotional harm. Or personal challenges such as dysphoria, lack of social support, or struggles with mental health or addictions.

Some of this knowledge can be gained through online resources (such as this blog) but you will also have to engage with your local trans support networks and advocacy organizations. You may be tempted to simply ask your trans friend a slew of questions to learn about all these things. DO NOT do this. Trans people have to educate almost everyone they come in contact with. As an ally, you do not want to be another one of those people. If you have looked up everything you can online and joined the mail lists of your local organizations to learn more and still have some specific or personal questions to clarify a couple things, ask your friend if it’s okay with them if you ask them and when a good time would be. They are not obligated to answer. If you see this refusal as a lack of their friendship you really don’t understand what it means to be trans.

CHECK YOUR ASSUMPTIONS

Avoid making assumptions about someone’s gender based on their sex, presentation, physical characteristics, or mannerisms. Keep your language neutral by referring to everyone using they/them pronouns and neutral language until they have disclosed their gender to you. Yes, everyone. Not just people who fall outside the ‘norm’ of gender presentation or someone you think might be trans. You can’t tell someone’s gender from the outside. Being an ally means creating a safe place for trans people that you haven’t met yet. The only way to do that is to consider that anyone could be trans and act accordingly.

Once you learn someone’s gender, don’t make an assumption about what pronouns they use, what steps they have taken or plan to take in terms of transitioning, or what their experiences are with dysphoria. Every trans person’s identity, journey, and experience is different. You don’t have to understand all the different possible experiences to be an ally but you do have to keep an open mind and understand that there is no one way to be trans.

KNOW HOW TO ASK QUESTIONS

You may not be able to learn everything you want to without asking a trans person some questions. And if you’re not supposed to make assumptions about anyone’s gender, you may have to ask someone questions to learn more about their experiences. Knowing what questions to ask, how to ask them, and when/where it is appropriate to ask them is part of being an ally. This, too, takes practice.

The knowledge you have gained about terminology will help you with appropriate wording. Knowing what challenges trans people face will help you be aware of the context and choose an appropriate time and place. Beyond that, honesty is the best policy. If you’re not sure if the question is appropriate, or you’re not sure how to word it, make sure you’re in a safe and private environment before asking and then be honest about your lack of knowledge. Ask for feedback and be open to it when it’s given, solicited or not.

Keep in mind that just because one trans person was comfortable answering a particular question does not mean every trans person will be. Some people are open, some people are private. This is true for trans people as well.

ADVOCATE AND AUGMENT!

As an ally, your main roles are to set a good example for other cis people and to create a safe environment for trans people. This means correcting yourself when you make a mistake with pronouns or other gender references and correcting those around you if they misgender someone (regardless of whether the person is present or not). If you’re not sure whether the trans person wants you to correct other people on their behalf, ask them!

If someone asks you to speak about trans experiences and issues or asks you to review a policy or resource to ensure it is trans inclusive, defer to a trans person, especially if it is a paying opportunity. It is not your job to speak for trans people but to give trans people the support, space, and opportunity they need to speak for themselves. You can also share social media posts from trans accounts and spread news stories that talk about trans people in positive ways.

On a smaller scale, you can offer to be a buddy for a trans person in your life, especially if they have limited social supports. Whether it’s going to the public washroom with them for safety, going with them to medical appointments or registry offices for document changes, or being a caregiver after surgery, there are lots of ways you can help support a trans friend when other people who aren’t allies wouldn’t realize they would need extra support or when the trans person wouldn’t feel comfortable asking for support from non-allies.

I hope this helps give you some ideas of how to be a trans ally. If you are a trans person, feel free to share this with people in your life. We need more allies! Please leave a comment below if you have any questions or if you have suggestions for other ways to be a good ally.

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How Being Trans Prepared Us for Parenting a Newborn

On August 27, 2020, a new member of the family was born. Our little one has a full head of hair and is doing well, as are we. But parenting a newborn, especially your first child, is not easy. There are many fears, frustrations, and sleepless nights. Of course, there are also the successes, excitement, and pleasant surprises.

The first three months are said to be the hardest. The baby is the most dependent and only able to communicate via crying. Initially, they only go three hours between needing to eat which leads to very little time for anything beyond basic baby care – feed, change the diaper, rock them to sleep, then two hours later, repeat. Their digestive system is predominantly inactive when they are born and has a steep curve which causes lots of gas pains and therefore screaming. During these gassy periods there is almost nothing you can do as a parent to help beyond be a calming, reassuring presence.

Needless to say, the first three months, and most especially the first six weeks, are extremely difficult. I can’t imagine how single parents or those with minimal support network do it. Even with two of us, and support from our parents on both sides, it felt extremely challenging at times.

Now that we are at week 9, things have settled into a routine and life is more predictable. Looking back, a lot of the skills and strategies we used to help us through the first part of our little one’s life were honed throughout my husband’s transition. It feels like that experience, though it was a huge trial in itself, taught us how to navigate new parenthood. No, we didn’t learn how to feed a baby or change a diaper during his transition, but those more concrete things are easier to pick up. It’s the squishy stuff that is much more challenging.

As I mentioned above, having a new baby can be exhausting and frustrating. You don’t always know what to do or have the emotional reserve to repeat the same actions every three hours. The repetition is exhausting to the point that when you do have a free moment, you no longer have the energy to do any of the things you have be wishing you had the time to do. You are in a constant state of boredom, restlessness, and exhaustion all while feeling like you’re supposed to be enjoying every moment.

Transition is also exhausting and frustrating. You have to repeat your personal story and defend yourself to acquaintances, service providers, friends, and family multiple times a day. You feel worn down but still have to deal with the next interaction that comes along. There are systemic barriers and long wait times that are overwhelmingly frustrating. And the whole time, you just want to be happy and excited that you are slowly becoming the person you want to be.

Learning how to deal with this long, slow burn type of frustration and function despite emotional exhaustion prepared us for new parenthood. The strategy we use is to recognize the emotion of frustration for what it is – a reaction to a situation that you feel you have no control over – and find ways to regain control either within that situation or by completing other tasks.

Another part of the strategy is to focus on the little things that are positive, small signs of progress, and keep the long term picture in mind. With a little baby who can only communicate by crying and who has minimal vision and no control over their limbs, it can be exhausting to sink all your positive emotions into this being and receive only fussing and crying in return. Sure, there are also the times when they are sleeping like an angel and are so sweet you just want to cuddle them and squish them but you don’t dare touch them for fear of waking them. But at the beginning, it can feel like the frustration outweighs the positive feedback. So any sign of development, that they will eventually grow out of this stage, is cause for celebration.

My husband’s transition taught us something similar. Transition is a long, slow process and at times can feel like despite all the fighting, frustration, and effort, you haven’t made any progress. But then you look at your pre-transition photos or compare a voice recording and you realize you have made progress. Keeping up with his transition as his partner required me to recognize and celebrate the little things with him – each crack of his voice as it dropped, each new whisker in his beard, each piece of ID that came back with his correct name and gender marker. We learned how important it was to pay attention to and celebrate the little things and applied the same strategy with our newborn.

Through both gender transition and new parenthood, being aware of your own mental health and being able to communicate how you’re doing with your support network (be it your partner, parent, or medical professional) is extremely important. Through his transition we each learned how to track our own emotional state, how to recognize the signs of depression, burnout, fatigue, or distress in each other, and how to express our own needs as well as raise the issue if we had a concern about the other person.

During his transition, this tracking of our mental and emotional states was up to us. There was no professional checking in, no tracking app with mental health questionnaires and resource articles, and minimal community going through something similar. Since becoming parents, we have had way more support in this area, though we found that both of us have been doing quite well. And when we have a bad day, or a few days of minimal sleep in a row which puts us in a state of burnout, we recognize it quickly and work together to figure out how to regain our positive, stable outlook and look for ways to avoid the same thing in the future.

My husbands transition and my experience supporting him through it didn’t teach us how to be parents. But it did give us the mental health and relationship skills to weather a stressful, exhausting, frustrating, and overwhelming time and turn it into something amazing, fulfilling, enjoyable, and a means of strengthening our bond.

Maybe you haven’t been through a gender transition yourself, or with someone you are close to. But maybe you have been through other trying experiences. If you can look back on those experiences and see what skills you developed or what your learned about yourself that helped you through, maybe you’ll be better prepared for whatever life throws at you. Or maybe you or someone you love is going through a gender transition now. If you are a parent and can remember back to the first six weeks of your child’s life, the skills you developed to get through those six weeks will serve you well over the next 3+ years of navigating transition.

If you are trans and have been told that this means you will never be a good parent, I would argue that the opposite is true. We have felt like, by being trans and navigating transition together, we have superpowers that have already served us well on this new, crazy, and exciting chapter of our lives.

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Let’s Talk Gender S2E8: Nonbinary Pregnancy and Parenting

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Hi everyone. Welcome back to Let’s Talk Gender.

This episode is about pregnancy and parenting as a nonbinary person including navigating the incredibly gendered world of fertility and pregnancy, the physical experience of being pregnant, and my thoughts as I look ahead to parenting.

FERTILITY AND TRYING TO CONCEIVE

Over the course of four years, my husband and I tried as many methods of getting pregnant as we could access. This included home insemination, known donor, IUI, and eventually IVF. I have heard many stories from folks who have gotten pregnant after only a couple tries of these earlier methods but, for no discernible medical reason, this was not the case for us. 

The IUI (intrauterine insemination) trials were done at a fertility clinic. Their language was generally inclusive of gay couples (referring to the partner as ‘partner’ instead of husband) but all the references to patient were female. We also ran into a few situations where, once my partner was identified as a man, people were confused as to why we were using donor sperm. Most notably, the psychologist we had to see to get the go-ahead to use donor sperm (which seemed strange to begin with) wanted to talk about if there was any guilt or shame on my husband’s part about not being able to provide viable sperm and when he stated he was trans she became very interested and curious, wanting to ask a bunch of irrelevant questions about his transness, and nearly derailed the appointment multiple times. You can bet I provided feedback about that encounter. 

The fertility clinic itself also did not have a gender neutral bathroom option and I had to empty my bladder immediately before each procedure. So that was fun. I did end up finding a single use bathroom in one of the medical areas during the IVF but it required a staff member to use a swipe card to get there so not actually for public use. 

I never came out to the fertility clinic, doctor, or nurses as nonbinary. With all the emotional ups and downs of trying to conceive, I didn’t have enough energy to educate or correct any misgendering that would happen afterwards. It was easier to let them assume I was female and deal with the dysphoria as best I could. 

Honestly, I didn’t find the IUI attempts to be that difficult. The procedures were fast with just me and Jake and a nurse in the suite, no high tech stuff. And it was only one procedure every two months. We decided early on that we needed to take a month off between trials to reset and breathe emotionally. Otherwise we would be required to order the next round of donor sperm before finding out if the previous trial had worked which felt a bit like having bad karma by assuming it wouldn’t. 

The IVF process was much more invasive and dysphoria inducing at times. They had to do an internal ultrasound as a baseline, after one week, and then every other day or every day thereafter for about five more visits before the actual procedure was scheduled. The ultrasound wand is much bigger than an insemination catheter and they had to move it around and dig it in to get good images of both ovaries. If my gender happened to be more female aligned on that day, this was mostly just physically uncomfortable. But there were a couple times when my gender was particularly male aligned and let me tell you, the dysphoria during the procedures on those days was a hell of a lot more uncomfortable than the physical part. I think I death gripped my husband’s hand to keep from crying at one point. Oh, and did I mention that these all had to take place first thing in the morning before I went to work? Where I’m also not out to most people and have a decent amount of dysphoria? Those were not good days. But hey, at the time of this recording I am 37 weeks pregnant and by the time this airs we will hopefully have been parents for a couple months so as far as I’m concerned, it was all worth it. 

PREGNANCY, MISCARRIAGE, AND GENDER

Being pregnant comes with its own slew of gendery things. One of those IUI attempts actually did work though it turned out that the egg that was inseminated was empty. I didn’t know this was something that could happen but apparently it’s very common. Usually these types of pregnancies end in miscarriage before the person even knows they’re pregnant. But my body was so ready to be pregnant it did a really good job of implantation and building a gestational sac despite the fact that nothing was growing inside it. So I experienced all the symptoms of early pregnancy until 10 weeks. 

During this first pregnancy, my gender shifted early on to the far end of my female range (which is still only about halfway from neutral) and stayed there. At first I was grateful. I had so much less dysphoria, both social and physical, and without the gender shifts I didn’t have to pay attention to my gender as much or worry about dysphoria taking me by surprise. But after a few weeks I started to feel like a part of myself, that I had only recently gotten to know, was missing. The male half of me that I knew was still there felt like a ghost, something I couldn’t quite touch, feel, or embody. The times I was interacting with queer friends who knew me as Ray felt dysphoric in a way they hadn’t before. I didn’t feel like Ray at all. It was very strange and disconcerting. 

After the miscarriage I was worried that my gender would suddenly shift to the male side and I would be swamped with dysphoria. But the hormonal confusion that I went through either masked that or overrode it completely. By the time my hormones stabilized and I felt more like myself, my gender was back to normal, feeling mostly neutral with a gentle fluctuation to either side. Still, it took some conscious work to re-learn how to use my dysphoria management strategies that I had developed before this weird female pregnancy experience. 

PREGNANCY (AGAIN)

Then I got pregnant again, after the IVF procedure. I was expecting a similar experience and had tried to think of strategies I could use to help with that ghostly feeling of losing contact with my male side for nine months. But as it turned out, my gender has stayed pretty consistently neutral. If anything, the only change is that it fluctuates less, if at all. 

This means that I have experienced dysphoria with this pregnancy. In the first trimester, before many people knew I was pregnant, it was mostly chest dysphoria as my breasts increased by multiple cup sizes. My chest was too sore to be able to wear a binder right from the beginning. I did use tape a couple times but even that was uncomfortable.

In the second trimester, the breast growth slowed down but my binder no longer fit. Once we announced the pregnancy I was slammed with social dysphoria as everyone started using more female language for me and asking about the gender of the baby. I continued to struggle with chest dysphoria until my belly started to grow. As my belly got bigger, my chest looked and felt smaller and smaller in comparison. In the third trimester, my belly was big enough that most regular t-shirts created a tenting effect that nearly completely hid my chest. I’m sure it looks funny to other people but it feels great to me. 

Throughout the pregnancy process I have been trying to consume as much information as I can about pregnancy, birth, and baby care though apps, websites, books, podcasts, and medical care providers. The majority of this information is female centric. The pregnant person is always referred to as mom or mom-to-be, is always assumed to be a woman, and dysphoria is never mentioned as one of the potential symptoms of being pregnant. 

We were lucky enough to find a midwife team in our area that is LGBT inclusive who we were upfront with about both my husband being trans and me being nonbinary from the start. This was hugely helpful for me. I don’t have to brace myself to go to every pregnancy related appointment like I had to during the fertility/trying to conceive process. If you are trans or nonbinary and trying to get pregnant, I highly recommend finding a trans inclusive care provider if you can. If none exist in your area or you don’t have a choice of who you go to, I recommend finding a trans inclusive doula to add to your support team who will advocate on your behalf throughout the process. You will have enough to deal with without having to do all the advocacy and education related to your gender identity on your own. 

At some point mid-pregnancy, I had an aha moment based on something someone posted on one of the facebook groups I’m in. They explained how they had re–framed their pregnancy as a nonbinary experience in a nonbinary body because they identify as nonbinary. When it was put like that, it seemed so simple. Of course if I identify as nonbinary, my body is a nonbinary body, and anything it can do, including getting pregnant and growing a baby, is a nonbinary experience. This mantra has helped a lot on days when my social dysphoria is getting the better of me or when I am trying to consume information that is highly gendered. 

INCLUSIVE TERMINOLOGY MATTERS

I have been able to find some resources that are trans inclusive. The Birth Partner, 5th edition is the best one. I included links to trans doula practices that also provide inclusive resources in Related Posts and Resources at the end of the show notes. 

The prenatal classes we attended were advertised as being LGBT inclusive and did a good job of being LGB inclusive, referring to partners instead of husbands, but they didn’t have much awareness of the trans component. They didn’t introduce themselves with their pronouns, so naturally I didn’t either. They almost exclusively referred to the birthing person as a woman or mom using female language. And when they were talking about feeding the baby they only ever talked about breastfeeding and used that terminology.

Particularly during the class on feeding, I had so much dysphoria that I became claustrophobic and had to pace in order to be able to stay in the room to get the information I needed. One of the perks of being in a pandemic was that these classes were all run over Zoom so I was able to be off screen and still listen in. Otherwise I probably would have had to speak up or leave the class entirely. I also provided the instructors of this class feedback (a couple weeks later once my dysphoria had calmed down) which was well received. 

When I’m trying to absorb information that will likely be helpful in navigating pregnancy, birth, or postpartum and caring for the baby and the information is presented in a gendered way that triggers my dysphoria, it’s very hard to tell if I am dysphoric because I just happen to be feeling more male and have more dysphoria that day, if the language used in the resource is triggering dysphoria that otherwise wouldn’t be there, or if the situation I am learning about will be dysphoria inducing when I’m experiencing it and I should prepare for that. This is why inclusive language is so important. 

If I feel dysphoric when picturing myself in a situation as I read an inclusive resource, it seems much more likely that I might struggle with that experience when the time comes. Since that very uncomfortable prenatal class, I have re-read the section on chestfeeding in The Birth Partner and watched videos by trans doulas on chest and body feeding and the dysphoria I feel when picturing myself doing this has decreased significantly. After this episode airs I will write an update on my blog and let you know how it’s going in real life. 

After the experience with the prenatal class and comparing it to reading The Birth Partner, I wrote a blog post with a list of inclusive pregnancy, birthing, and feeding terminology. This includes using gestating or pregnant person instead of mom, birthing person instead of woman, and chest or body feeding in addition to breastfeeding.

NONBINARY PARENTING

Of course the pregnancy journey doesn’t just stop relating to gender after the baby is born. It turns into a parenting journey. As I am not quite yet a parent, I can only speak to what I have been wondering about and talking to others about in preparation for this next step. 

First of all, there’s what the baby will call me. There are lots of nonbinary parental terms that people use and lots of nonbinary parents that are comfortable with either mom or dad. I honestly don’t know where I will go with this yet. I feel ok with mom but less ok with mommy or momma. I’m considering the name Mur based on my initials M.R. Or there’s something different like Ren or Renny from paRENt, or Mapa which seems highly accurate to my experience but doesn’t have any particular emotional connection for me. I guess we’ll see what sticks once we test them out. 

Then there’s deciding whether to gender your child based on their assumed sex or whether to raise them as gender neutral until or unless they specify otherwise. We have decided to gender our child but raise them in a gender inclusive, gender expansive way. For me, fighting for our child to be recognized as nonbinary when it is likely that they will identify as cis is not worth the effort and would be extremely dysphoria inducing for myself. We will of course be open about our own identities with our child and ask them often about their identity and adjust our use of language as often as they wish. 

This brings up another point. If we are open about our identities with our child, that necessitates being open with anyone the child interacts with – family, medical systems, school systems, playgroups. My husband is fairly open about being trans so this won’t be a huge shift for him. But I have only just started coming out to co-workers and family so this will likely be a steep coming out curve for me. I guess that is a pretty solid way of shifting the ‘need’ factor up in the coming out equation I talked about in Episode 5. 

And lastly, I have heard from many nonbinary parents that the world of parenting is, if possible, even more forcibly gendered than the world of fertility and pregnancy. I’m sure that is something you learn to deal with as it happens. But it’s probably good to have low expectations in order to be prepared and maybe occasionally pleasantly surprised instead of constantly irritated and defensive. 

REACH OUT!

If you are struggling through the process of trying to conceive, currently pregnant, or a nonbinary parent and want to reach out, please email me at letstalkgenderpodcast@gmail.com. You are not alone. 

That’s it for Season 2 of Let’s Talk Gender.

The music for this podcast is by Jamie Price. You can find them at Must Be Tuesday or on iTunes. 

As this season is airing, I will hopefully be at home with my husband and newborn baby, learning what it means to be a parent. If you subscribe to my blog, you will continue to get regular updates on our parenting journey and how it relates to gender as well as any other gender related thoughts and experiences such as updates on coming out as nonbinary or any medical or legal transition steps I take in the future. 

I hope you have found this podcast helpful. Please reach out by commenting below or emailing me at letstalkgenderpodcast@gmail.com. I’d love to hear your reactions, thoughts, experiences, and suggestions for future seasons.

Bye for now. 

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Let’s Talk Gender S2E7: Living in the World as a Nonbinary Person

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Hi everyone. Welcome back to Let’s Talk Gender.

This episode is about living in the world as a nonbinary person including what ‘passing’ means for nonbinary people, navigating public washrooms, going to the gym, and how a nonbinary perspective can influence how you interpret other aspects of society. 

PASSING AS NONBINARY

Passing typically refers to the idea of ‘blending in’ with one of the binary genders, or being consistently recognized as the gender you identify as (assuming it’s one of the binary options). In Western society, we are trained to categorize everyone as male or female as quickly as possible because we learn from a young age that this is a vital piece of information that we need in order to interact with people. Since ‘nonbinary’ isn’t a gender that people assign to strangers, passing doesn’t exist in the same way for nonbinary people. 

Some varieties of passing that might apply to nonbinary people are being read as female in one situation and male in the next, or causing confusion and hesitation when the cues they typically use to gender you are conflicting.

I have found that some of these cues are stronger than others. Voice is one of the strongest. Luckily it doesn’t come into play until you interact with someone but this can be very frustrating over the phone, radio, or at a drive through. Another strong one is whether you have a curved or flat chest. There is some variability to this one depending on body size and structure but a chest that is curved or rounded, as when pushed up by a bra, is, in my experience, exclusively read as female where a flatter chest does not signal male nearly as strongly. On the flip side, having facial hair strongly signifies male, especially if it is darker, thicker, and more widespread, whereas having no facial hair does not necessarily signify female. A slightly less strong cue is bone structure, particularly of the face, presence of an Adam’s apple, a person’s stature, and shoulder to hip ratio. And lastly, clothing and hairstyle can have a significant effect from farther away but are easily overridden by the other cues above. 

I don’t mean to list these as a way to trigger dysphoria in anyone. It’s more a way of expressing my frustration that society is so hung up on these aspects of how we look and present that they can completely hijack a stranger’s brain into categorizing us a certain way regardless of our efforts to flag our gender. 

I also think about the list of cues above as a guideline of how to mess with the gendering system in other people’s brains. If I avoid the cues that have a stronger effect in either direction by flattening my chest, speaking in the lower range of my voice, wearing clothes that look boxier, and keep my hair short, maybe I will have a stronger effect. Or for someone else, this may look like having facial hair, wearing more feminine clothes, and maybe even a padded bra or breast forms. 

Unfortunately, if you can’t be easily categorized into male or female, you tend to stand out and draw attention to yourself. Always feeling like you stand out just for being who you are can be exhausting and often we end up compromising our personal comfort in order to blend in, even if just temporarily. This can be for safety reasons or to have one day where we don’t get second glances, stares, and looks of confusion. Some days I’m able to reframe the double takes as a positive thing, that who I am is showing through and challenging their binary views of gender, but most of the time it just feels like unwanted negative attention. 

ASSUMED CIS

Passing is usually referred to in a way that makes it sound like trans people are attempting to hide i.e. be ‘stealth’, trying to trick cis people, or frames passing as the goal of transitioning. These perspectives can be very toxic to lots of people, but especially nonbinary people. 

Instead of using the term ‘passing’ to mean ‘being identified by stranges in alignment with my identity’, which doesn’t feel like it will ever apply to me, I prefer to use the term ‘assumed’. Most of the time, I am assumed to be female by strangers, acquaintances, co-workers, really anyone I’m not out to. There has been the occasional time when I was assumed male and got called sir. One of these times they ‘corrected’ themself and changed it to ma’am when I turned around and spoke. The other time I was so surprised, in a good way, that I couldn’t remember my breakfast order and my husband ordered for me while trying not to laugh at my deer-in-the-headlights reaction. 

Anyway, I much prefer the term ‘assumed’ to ‘passing’. Not only does it relate much more strongly to my experience as a nonbinary person, but it also assigns the action to the stranger rather than to me. This is also much more accurate to my experience. I am living my life, presenting and interacting however is most comfortable for me and it is the people around me who are assuming that I am a cis woman. 

PUBLIC GENDERED BATHROOMS

There are some specific situations where not blending in with either binary gender can make life a lot more difficult. Namely, public gendered bathrooms and gym changing rooms. Let’s start with bathrooms.

When it comes to using a binary gendered public washroom, I have a few different options. Choosing either binary gendered washroom comes with the psychological impact of having to misgender myself in order to use the bathroom. I can use the bathroom I’m guessing that most people are assuming is in alignment with my gender regardless of how I’m feeling (usually the women’s which is lucky because it has a lower safety risk). I can use the bathroom that most closely aligns with my gender at that time to minimize the psychological cost (but if this happens to be the male bathroom I am trading the psychological cost for a much higher safety risk). Or I can avoid going to the bathroom until I have access to a gender neutral, all-gender, or non-gendered washroom with the increased risk of getting a UTI if this becomes a regular occurrence. When I’m out, having a friend to go to the washroom with can help protect against the safety risk posed by strangers but it doesn’t take away the impact of having to misgender myself in order to use the bathroom. 

As you can see, none of these options is great. But it has led to me making note of every business I come across that has non-gendered washrooms. 

GOING TO THE GYM AND OTHER PHYSICAL ACTIVITY

Going to the gym includes a few different things I want to talk about. The first is the changeroom situation. This closely mirrors the things I talked about related to public washrooms but with a few extra points. We aren’t just using a stall at the gym, we’re actually getting changed, often in view of strangers. This can be terrifying for anyone who’s body doesn’t fit the gendered expectations associated with the space they’re in. Getting changed is also often a trigger of dysphoria for lots of trans and nonbinary people. So overall, this experience sucks. 

On the plus side, most change rooms include bathroom stalls or changing stalls. This added privacy can definitely help with the safety risk. There are also often family change rooms that are single use. I know it feels weird to use those as a single person (maybe this is one of the random benefits of being a parent as a nonbinary or trans person?). I’ve done it when my dysphoria was too bad to feel comfortable using the women’s change room (and there’s no way I look like I belong in the men’s). It feels like everyone is watching you and judging you for using the one family change room as a single person but I know it’s what I need to do sometimes so I change as fast as I can and try to ignore the feelings of guilt. 

Then there’s the working out part of going to the gym. Let’s ignore for a minute that there’s a global pandemic and lots of areas have gyms closed or many of us are choosing to work out at home instead. Some of this will still apply. 

Gyms often have at least one wall made of mirrors. This sucks for a lot of people with dysphoria. Though I have found that sometimes, if my dysphoria is mostly social in nature rather than physical, seeing my body do something strong and personal and gender-affirming can actually help mitigate dysphoria or increase euphoria. 

The physical activity involved in working out can have lots of positive effects on our bodies in terms of endorphins, health, mood, energy level, and a sense of control over our physical being that we often feel so at odds with. All of these things can help improve our resilience and resistance to the negative effects of dysphoria. Unfortunately, with the nature of lots of types of physical activity, we can’t use some of our dysphoria management strategies such as binding, tucking, or packing. And feeling parts of our body move around that we don’t feel should be there in the first place can make certain types of physical activity a strong trigger of dysphoria.

Luckily there are lots of different types of physical activity to choose from. And that’s the last part of going to the gym, or in this case, even working out at home, that I wanted to talk about. For me, different types of physical activity feel more or less affirming depending on how my gender feels at the time. Whether it’s social conditioning or something inherent in the types of movement and how they feel in my body, stretching, Pilates, and low impact or endurance cardio feel more feminine to me, kickboxing and Thai chi feel more neutral, and weight lifting and higher intensity cardio feel more masculine. I can choose the type of activity that feels most in alignment with my gender at the time or I can choose a type of activity that will temporarily make me feel a different aspect of my gender to increase my sense of balance. 

THE POWER OF A NONBINARY PERSPECTIVE

Discovering you are nonbinary starts with questioning the gender binary. But living as a nonbinary person and challenging the gender binary on a daily basis also gives you the skills and awareness to recognize other binary situations and systems that you are uniquely equipped to navigate in a new way. 

For example, we have the saying ‘there are two sides to every story’. But what about a third or fourth interpretation? What about recognizing that those two sides overlap? What if neither side is wholly correct or wholly incorrect? 

In divisive politics and crisis situations, there is often a rhetoric of ‘you are either for us or against us’ or there being a ‘right way’ and a ‘wrong way’ to react to a situation. A perspective derived from a nonbinary view of gender teaches us that there is lots of space for middle ground, other options, and nuance. 

And lastly, when it comes to emotions, we often struggle with so called ‘conflicting’ emotions – grief and gratitude, love and anger, excitement and frustration, relief and shame. We often express these emotions by saying something like ‘I’m so excited to get my new ID but it’s taking forever!’ or ‘I will really miss my grandmother but I’m glad she’s in a better place’. We use the word ‘but’ between concepts that feel like they conflict because the two can’t possibly exist in the same space at the same time. This would be equivalent to me describing my gender by saying ‘I’m female but I’m also male.’ Instead, what I say and what feels true for me is ‘I’m both female and male.’ Applying a nonbinary perspective to conflicting emotions teaches us that just because these emotions are different from each other does not mean they are in opposition, in conflict, or are mutually exclusive. Just as various experiences of gender can exist in the same person at the same time, so can various emotions. Try listening for the times when you use the word ‘but’ and switch it out for the word ‘and’. You might be surprised by how this little change in phrasing makes the experience you are describing feel more whole and valid. 

REACH OUT!

If you have other thoughts on how being nonbinary has influenced your perspective on the world or you’re struggling with the day to day experience of living as a nonbinary person, send me an email at letstalkgenderpodcast@gmail.com. I’d love to hear from you and help if I can, or connect you to other resources. You are not alone. 

That’s it for Episode 7 of Season 2 of Let’s Talk Gender.

The music for this podcast is by Jamie Price. You can find them at Must Be Tuesday or on iTunes.

Coming up in Episode 8 I will be talking about pregnancy and parenting as a nonbinary person including navigating the incredibly gendered world of fertility and pregnancy, the physical experience of being pregnant, and my thoughts as I look ahead to parenting.

Talk to you soon.

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Let’s Talk Gender S2E6: Complexities of Nonbinary Identities

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Hi everyone. Welcome back to Let’s Talk Gender.

This episode is about some of the more complex aspects of being nonbinary such as genderfluid identities, how physical and social aspects of gender can feel at odds with each other, and how nonbinary genders interact with sexual orientation.

GENDERFLUID IDENTITIES

Let’s start with a deeper look at genderfluid identities. I’m going to break this into three different categories for ease of explanation. These categories are arbitrary but I have found them useful in making sense of various gender experiences and the vast number of nonbinary identities. 

The first category is multi-genders. This includes bi-gender, tri-gender, co-gender, etc. People with these gender experiences have more than one gender and fluctuate between them. They can experience one at a time or a combination of all their genders. They may shift between them on a fairly regular schedule, completely randomly, or depending on the situation they’re in. They may experience one gender more often than the others or all their genders equally. It may be an hour, a day, a week, or even longer between shifts. 

They may have a different name, pronoun, and presentation for each gender or they may consistently be comfortable with one name or pronoun. When beginning an interaction, they may use a short hand of ‘I’m Meaghan and I use she/her pronouns today’ or ‘I’m Ray and I use he/him pronouns today’. People they are out to who they interact with regularly will get used to these shifts and may not even need this explicit identifier but I have learned that it is a good habit to get into for my own sense of confidence, authenticity, and visibility. 

The second category is single, fluctuating genders. People with these genders only have one experience of gender but that gender moves around various parts of the gender spectrum. It can move over a large variety of genders or a very narrow range of genders. It can consistently cover the same parts of the spectrum or suddenly feel like a completely different gender than it has before. And similar to multi-genders, it can fluctuate in a predictable way based on time or situation or in a random way. 

People with this experience may have a variety of names and pronouns they use or pick a name and pronoun that feels comfortable for the majority of the time and stick with that. It’s always a good strategy to ask them how they identify or want to be referred to at each interaction. 

The third category is a gender expansive experience. People with this type of gender have one gender but it encompases a wide range on the gender spectrum. They may choose to present one aspect of their gender at a time or embody a variety of components at once. They may appear to have a genderfluid identity when in actuality their gender is stable but expansive. People in this category may choose a gender neutral name and pronoun that feels right no matter which part of their identity they wish to express, they may be comfortable with their birth name and gender marker, or they may have an ‘alter ego’ that they use when they want to present differently from their typical day to day expression. 

If you are genderfluid and your experience differs from all of these, please let me know! I’d love to hear your experience. You can send me an email at letstalkgenderpodcast@gmail.com or leave a comment below. 

Explaining your experience of gender as a genderfluid person can be challenging. Not only does it include much of the basics that cis people often don’t understand about nonbinary identities that we talked about in Episode 5, but you then have to explain your overall experience of your gender as well as your current experience of your gender. 

You often need to develop a code to flag to people how your gender feels and how you want to be referred to each time you see them. This can be a verbal code such as simply stating the name and pronoun you wish them to use at that time. It can be a tag of some sort such as a name badge, pin, or dog tag that states your current name and pronoun. Or it can be more subtle such as a piece of jewelry or combination of presentation aspects that signal one name and pronoun combination over another. The more subtle the signal, the easier it is for you but the more practice it takes for the people around you. So if you opt for a more subtle approach, be prepared to correct people if needed and to resort to a more overt approach for people that you interact with less often or who don’t know you as well. 

PHYSICAL AND SOCIAL ASPECTS OF GENDER

Shifting gears, I’d like to talk about physical and social aspects of gender, how these don’t always line up, and what I do in those situations. 

If you’ve listened to previous episodes or read parts of my blog, you know that I have both male and female components to my gender and that they overlap in the neutral area. The balance between these two sides shifts at times such that my day to day sense of my gender moves around between about 25% male to 50% female. I use my innate sense of my gender, various types of dysphoria, and various experiences of euphoria to determine where my gender is on that scale at any given time. 

This is where it gets interesting. Dysphoria and euphoria can both be broken down into physical and social components. Anything to do with my body that I experience with no outside influence whatsoever I consider to be physical. Anything to do with interacting with others including how they gender me based on my body I consider to be social. When I was tracking my gender to see how much it fluctuated, I tracked physical and social aspects separately and discovered that they actually fluctuated differently. 

I often have very little physical dysphoria and have an innate feeling that my body is female or, on a different day, that my body is neutral. But at the same time I will be very uncomfortable being identified as female by others and will prefer to go by Ray and use they/them pronouns if I can. It is more rare to be the other way around but does occasionally happen. 

So what do I do in these circumstances? I tried to come up with dysphoria management strategies and euphoria heightening strategies that targeted either the physical components or the social components. For me, some of the physical strategies were wearing more masculine clothing and jewelry, wearing a binder, or wearing a packer. My social strategies included not responding to feminine language, ‘forgetting’ to wear my name tag, and spending less time with cis het folks I wasn’t out to and more time with queer friends and allies. 

The times when I feel physically male and socially female are easier because I can wear a binder and masculine clothes and people will barely notice and I don’t feel uncomfortable hearing my name, she/her pronouns, or female language. The times when I feel physically female and socially male are much harder. I don’t personally have the need to change my appearance and would feel comfortable wearing my more feminine clothes but if I do, I will have even more social dysphoria about feminine language and she/her pronouns. So I often have to employ some of the physical strategies just to feel like I am having some influence on the social interactions or at least that I did what I could to flag how I wanted to be identified and if the other person didn’t pick up on it that’s their problem. 

Managing this balance can seem complicated and some days it definitely feels exhausting. But I’ve found that the more I can be aware of my own gender and whether it is physical or social aspects that are bothering me most, the better I am at using appropriate strategies to manage it. 

GENDER AND SEXUAL ORIENTATION

Another area where being nonbinary can feel unnecessarily complicated is how it relates to sexual orientation. Gender and sexual orientation are two completely separate concepts and yet not only do many people tend to mix them up but when we are exploring our gender it often makes us feel unsure about our sexual orientation as well. 

I think this is partly a language thing. Many sexual orientation labels define who we are attracted to in relation to what our own gender is so when our gender or the way we define it changes, often those labels feel like they no longer apply even if who we are attracted to hasn’t changed. The easiest solution to this is to find a new label for your orientation that doesn’t relate it to your gender. 

However, sometimes when we are exploring our gender, it changes how we relate to others and can directly influence our sexual orientation. For example, before doing any of my own gender exploration, I identified as gay. I was female presenting though always more of a tom boy, female identified, and often was labeled as a lesbian. This term never felt right to me and I never used it for myself, which I now think was likely due to my yet undiscovered gender identity. When my husband transitioned I felt no less gay and no less attracted to him. This wasn’t specifically what made me question my own gender identity but once I started to I realized that I had always used the term ‘gay’ to mean ‘attracted to people like myself’. As my awareness of my gender shifted towards the neutral part of the spectrum, so too did my orientation. 

I know of lots of people who’s sexual orientation has remained stable throughout their gender exploration and transition. They have remained attracted to the same types of people they were prior to any gender questioning. I know other people who’s sexual orientation remained stable in relation to their own gender and shifted with their gender through the exploration and transition process, more like mine has. And I know people who’s sexual orientation expanded significantly as they explored their gender because they learned how to see bodies and people as separate from gender. 

Having your sexual orientation questioned when you come out as nonbinary can be frustrating and confusing. If you have an easy answer, feel free to use it. If not, try reflecting their question back to them and see if they can question their own assumptions about how your gender and sexuality interact. Sometimes they are informed and know of all these different experiences I talked about and just want to know which one applies to you. But more often than not, they are making an assumption based on the labels you have used in the past and the way they categorize both gender and sexuality as binary, all-or-nothing, or as static. If you can get them to recognize their own assumptions rather than having to do all the education we talked about in Episode 5, go for it. 

REACH OUT!

If you are working through some of these more complex aspects of identifying as nonbinary and want to reach out, please email me at letstalkgenderpodcast@gmail.com. You are not alone. 

That’s it for Episode 6 of Season 2 of Let’s Talk Gender.

The music for this podcast is by Jamie Price. You can find them at Must Be Tuesday or on iTunes.

Coming up in Episode 7 I will be talking about living in the world as a nonbinary person including navigating public bathrooms, going to the gym, and what ‘passing’ means for nonbinary people.

Talk to you soon.

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Let’s Talk Gender S2E5: Coming Out as Nonbinary

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Hi everyone. Welcome back to Let’s Talk Gender.

This episode is about coming out as nonbinary, why it is so darn hard, how to figure out whether it’s the right time and place to do it (again), and how to respond to inappropriate questions and ignorance. 

TO COME OUT OR NOT TO COME OUT…

I look at coming out as an equation between pros and cons. On the pro side, I have need and benefit. How much do I need to come out? This often comes down to how much I’m struggling with not being out. As someone who is somewhat genderfluid and about 50% of the time is comfortable being identified as female, most of the time my need to come out is pretty low. If I’ve been experiencing a lot of dysphoria or been through a triggering situation, the need definitely goes up. 

How much will coming out benefit me? And how likely am I to receive those benefits? The benefit to me of everyone I come out to accepting me 100% as a nonbinary person is very high but the likelihood of that happening is very low, much lower than for binary trans people. This is simply due to society’s reliance on the gender binary and the lack of understanding of nonbinary identities. 

On the con side, there’s cost and risk. What is the emotional cost required to receive the benefit? I.e. how much emotional labour will I have to do to get someone to the point where they understand my identity or at least understand how to be supportive and are consistently following through on that? This varies but is generally on the high end. Also included in cost is the emotional cost of being misgendered. In mine and my husband’s experience, being misgendered by someone you have come out to hurts a lot more than being misgendered by someone you haven’t come out to yet. And if it’s going to be a struggle for people to understand my identity and gender me correctly, I am likely to get misgendered more often than correctly gendered. So this definitely puts the cost at the high end. 

I think of risk as what I might lose by coming out. Is there a risk to my physical wellbeing either due to safety or stability (job, housing, etc) by coming out? In my case, I have a lot of privilege and support in this area and have very low risk to my safety and security. 

So if the need and benefit of coming out are both low and the cost is high, why have I come out to anyone? Well, certain things can shift this equation in favour of coming out. As I said, the need goes up when I’m having a particularly difficult day, a longer period of more intense dysphoria, or experience a triggering situation. The cost can also go down significantly if I am talking to someone who is queer, someone who openly expresses awareness of trans issues or, even better, nonbinary identities and pronouns, or if I am in a position of power in relation to the person or people I am coming out to. 

The longer I have identified as nonbinary and the more times I’ve come out to people, the better I get at recognizing these low cost situations and capitalizing on them or the higher need situations and making sure I get the support I need without traumatizing myself further by having a high cost conversation with someone just based on proximity. 

COMING OUT CONSIDERATIONS

So what are some of the things you should think about when you’re deciding to come out to someone?

The first thing should be safety. This includes both emotional and physical safety. What views has the person expressed? How much risk is there to your wellbeing if the conversation isn’t received well? Coming out is always a scary process. I don’t think I have ever come out as nonbinary to someone without at least a small amount of fear. So it definitely can be a challenge to figure out if this fear is your natural anxiety about doing something big or if there is a legitimate risk to your safety. Take precautions, have a back up plan in case it doesn’t go well, find outside sources of support and stability as much as possible, and trust your gut. 

The next thing to do is figure out what your expectations are. What outcome are you expecting from this particular coming out conversation? How much might you lose? How hard to you think the conversation (or conversations) will be? This will help you figure out if it’s worth the cost. 

And lastly, consider the context. Who are you coming out to? If they are someone that is very close to you and has a high impact on your safety and stability, the emotional cost and risk will be higher, but also so will the need and benefit. Are they likely to talk to anyone else, either because they tend to spread news or because they will need to have someone to discuss it with in order to process? Are you ok with that or is this something you want to explicitly discuss during the conversation? Who else is around you at the time you are having this conversation? Are there others that might overhear who you don’t want to be coming out to, or who you would like to overhear so they know without you having to explicitly tell them? What medium are you using to come out? Up until now I have discussed it as though it is a face to face conversation but this doesn’t have to be the case. Both my husband and I have found a written format, usually via email, to be the easiest. But that only works for the planned, thought about in advance type of coming out conversations, not the ones where you capitalize on a low cost or high need situation. And lastly, consider your ability to care for yourself in that context. Will you have time alone soon after? Will you have access to your most effective self-care tools or support networks? How can you adjust the context so you do have access to those things?

This can seem like a lot of questions to ask yourself in a split second between someone calling you by a binary term and you deciding to correct them or not. But some of these questions will be more important to you than others. Some of them are make or break. Those are the ones you want to focus on. 

EXPLAINING YOUR IDENTITY TO CIS PEOPLE

So let’s say the equation tips in favour of coming out. Coming out as nonbinary, or any queer identity for that matter, requires using language that is not necessarily understood in the same way or understood at all by the person you are coming out to. When we find labels that work for us, they help us understand ourselves and often help us connect with others who share our experiences. But when we are going to use them as a communication tool such as in the coming out process, we have to remember that words are used to represent abstract concepts and not everyone has the same understanding of those concepts as we do. 

There are lots of aspects of queer identity and culture that are not understood, or misunderstood, by mainstream culture. This is because the majority of exposure to queer culture is via the media which is notorious for picking stories that are sensational, that are the most shocking or the most palatable to the mainstream, and that are the most visible or common. This leaves many queer experiences misinterpreted or not represented at all. So when we use language that connects to concepts built by the media, it can take a lot of energy to counteract those concepts in order for the person we are trying to come out to to accurately understand our experience and identity. 

This knowledge gap can be very frustrating and can often take you by surprise. What do you mean you’ve never heard the term nonbinary? What do you mean you’ve never heard of anyone using they/them pronouns? When we have been so immersed in this world and information as we try to figure ourselves out, it can be a shock to realize how far behind everyone else is. 

When you are coming out, you can ignore this knowledge gap and expect people to look up the terms you used that they don’t understand (and even provide them resources) but what if they don’t even understand that it is important enough an issue that they need to do this work? If you can find a key person or two in each group of people you are coming out to (family, co-workers, friends) and spend the time and energy to bring them up to speed, they can hopefully then help bring others along or at least be a good example of how to refer to you. 

The first step to bringing someone up to speed is noticing when there is a knowledge gap and identifying how big it is. If they have looks of confusion or ask vague awkward questions like ‘So when did this start’ or ‘Why are you telling me all this’ or even ‘What, what do you mean, nonbinary,’ these are good indicators that they do not have the background knowledge required to understand what you are telling them. 

The next step is to connect the dots. I tend to use a working backwards approach. If they’re confused about nonbinary, I suggest that gender isn’t just male and female. If they relate my gender to my body, I talk about gender and sex being separate concepts. If they want to know my life history and make everything about gender or are looking for some kind of trigger, I talk about identity as an ever evolving thing that was there from the start even if I didn’t have the words to understand or express it. If they have a strong, especially negative, reaction to a label I use, I ask them what comes to mind when they hear that label. If it’s a new label to them, they might just not like the feeling of being confused. Or, they may have a bad or incorrect association with it from media representation that I would then have to correct or find a different label to use (which is why I like knowing a few different ones that work for me). From there, I work my way back up to the understanding of my identity that I wanted them to have in the first place. 

The last step is to leave them with a clear takeaway message. For me, this is usually a combination of ‘You don’t have to fully understand my identity in order to support me’ and ‘I would like you to avoid female gendered language and use these terms and they/them pronouns instead’ or whatever my expectations are for that individual or group. Check out the post on bridging the gap between mainstream and queer and trans culture for more tips and useful phrases.

EXPLAINING DYSPHORIA TO CIS PEOPLE

Another aspect of coming out is often having to explain why you don’t feel like the gender you were assigned at birth. Typically this includes a description of the types of dysphoria you feel. Most cis people don’t know about the concept of dysphoria let alone understand what it feels like. So I find it helpful to relate it to something they might have experienced. Some of the phrases I’ve used include wearing an ill fitting piece of clothing that you can’t take off, having pins and needles that range from annoying to distracting to painful that you can’t do anything about, or not recognizing yourself when you look in the mirror. 

Even more important than explaining what dysphoria feels like is explaining what the impact is on you. For this, I describe how exhausting it can be to have part of your mental and emotional space taken up by the effort to ignore those sensations of pins and needles, or how it feels like being pinched every time you’re misgendered by someone who doesn’t know any better (someone you’re not out to) and punched when you’re misgendered by someone you are out to, or how you feel like the parts of you that feel comfortable are invisible and the parts everyone can see are the ones that feel wrong. 

I hope you find these phrases helpful in your coming out process. 

THEY/THEM PRONOUNS

If you are someone who uses they/them or neopronouns and will be asking people you come out to to adopt these pronouns, these conversations are all about shifting the other person’s mental image of you. This takes practice and most people have never had to do this until someone they know comes out as trans. So naturally, the more clarity you can give them on who you are, why your old identity doesn’t fit, and why the identity you are telling them about feels authentic and important to you, the easier time they will have in adopting the pronouns and name you are asking them to use. Take a listen to Season 2 Episode 4 for more ideas on names, pronouns, and other gendered language. 

EXPLAINING FLUID GENDER IDENTITIES

If you are someone who has a fluid gender identity, coming out often requires an explanation of your total gender experience and a shorter version of how you feel in the moment and how you want to be referred to that you would repeat at each interaction or when your gender has shifted. I’ll talk more about this in Episode 6. 

KNOWING YOUR BOUNDARIES

As you will have noticed from what I’ve talked about so far, and likely experienced yourself, coming out involves a lot of educating others. Often, especially at the beginning of this process (that goes on for the rest of our lives), we engage in conversations that are more exhausting than they are worth or reveal more personal information than was necessary for that individual or situation. In short, we cross our personal boundaries before we realize. 

People will ask invasive and inappropriate questions without knowing that’s what they’re doing. And sometimes, you will answer them without realizing that you don’t owe them that information. This can make you feel exposed, defensive, or antagonistic either in response to the question or at the next encounter with this person. This has definitely happened to me and is never a good place to be. The other person may be surprised when your demeanor suddenly changes or may become antagonistic themself. The relationship that you valued enough to want to come out can become a source of pain or even a safety risk. 

So how do you figure out where your boundaries are before you or someone else crosses them by accident? Here are a few questions you can ask yourself that might help. 

With regards to general information, are you comfortable…

  • Disclosing your birth name?
  • Explaining why you prefer the pronouns you use?
  • Talking about your experiences of dysphoria?
  • Talking about specific strategies you use to change your appearance  or presentation (binding, packing, tucking, padding, etc)?
  • Talking about how supportive your family, significant other, or other people in your life are?
  • Talking about what support groups you attend/are a part of?
  • Talking about wait times, difficulties finding a trans friendly family doctor, and other systemic barriers?

With regards to medical and legal information, are you comfortable…

  • Talking about medication you are on related to transitioning?
  • Talking about changes you are experiencing as a result of these medications?
  • Disclosing what surgeries/surgery you are interested in having/have had?
  • Talking about legal documentation changes?
  • Discussing transphobic policies and politics?

Answering yes or no to each of these questions is a good start. You may want to do this a few times based on who you are talking to or what context you are in. For example, you may answer differently if you are talking to a co-worker, a close family member, a trans person, or your medical doctor. 

So what if someone asks about one of those things that you aren’t comfortable disclosing that information but you don’t want to discourage them or shut down the conversation completely? Here are a few different options. 

Try explaining why that’s not something that is appropriate to ask or why this is not an appropriate context to ask it in. This response still provides education and helps them be better informed and a better ally and keeps a positive relationship and rapport between you but without crossing your personal boundaries. 

Have resources ready to recommend so they can look up general information on the topic they are asking about. Usually acquaintances, co-workers, or friends are asking you specifically because you are the first trans or nonbinary person they have been exposed to and you happen to be there when the question occurs to them. They don’t necessarily want to know your specific story even if that’s how they phrase the question.

Challenge them based on the phrasing of the question. If they ask ‘Are you having the surgery?’ you can respond ‘What surgery?’ If they can’t answer with a more specific informed question, they don’t deserve your personal response. 

Provide a general response instead of a personal one regardless of how they ask the question. For example ‘I’m not comfortable answering that for myself but from what I’ve heard from other trans people, some do [example A for these reasons] and some do [example B for these reasons]’. 

Remember, hindsight is 20/20. There will definitely be times when you disclose more than you meant to or realize later that there was no reason why you had to answer their question. This can lead to a lot of guilt and regret about not standing up for yourself or protecting your privacy when you had the right to. Try to be kind to yourself. We’ve all done that and all you can do is learn as much as you can from others about how to have the conversations in advance and explore where your boundaries are before they are crossed. 

SEXUAL ORIENTATION AND GENDER

Another aspect of coming out in terms of gender is how it impacts your sexuality. When my husband came out at trans one of the most common questions I got was whether that made me straight. I haven’t gotten nearly as many questions about my sexuality when I have come out as nonbinary but I also haven’t come out to nearly as many people. However, I definitely questioned my own sexuality and how to describe it to others when I came out to myself as nonbinary. Also consider that coming out to your partner may cause them to question their own sexuality (which they may or may not feel prepared to do). I’ll talk more about all these intersections of gender and sexual orientation in Episode 6 as well. 

GUIDELINES FOR CIS PEOPLE

One of the other posts on my blog I recommend checking out is called How to Be Respectful Towards a Trans Person. This is a resource written for cis people as a guideline of how to respond when someone in their life comes out to them as trans. It has different sections depending on the nature of the relationship to the trans person. You can read through this yourself to get a better understanding of how people should and should not respond to you when you come out or you can include it in your resources that you recommend or give to people when you come out.

REACH OUT!

Coming out is an intense, scary, repetitive, exhausting, but often rewarding experience. If you are struggling with this process and want to reach out, you can email me at letstalkgenderpodcast@gmail.com. Remember, you are not alone. 

That’s it for Episode 5 of Season 2 of Let’s Talk Gender.

The music for this podcast is by Jamie Price. You can find them at Must Be Tuesday or on iTunes.

Coming up in Episode 6 I will be talking about some of the more complex aspects of being nonbinary such as genderfluid identities, how physical and social aspects of gender can feel at odds with each other, and how nonbinary genders interact with sexual orientation.

Talk to you soon.

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Let’s Talk Gender S2E4: Name, Pronouns, and Other Gendered Language

Hi everyone. Welcome back to Let’s Talk Gender.

This episode is about figuring out how you feel about your name, pronouns, and other types of gendered language and how to decide what feels right. 

NAMES

Some people feel very uncomfortable with their birth name, either because it is typically interpreted in a gendered way or because it is associated with their past identity before coming out. 

Some people are perfectly comfortable with their name but decide to change it because of how it is interpreted by society or to signal their change of identity to others.

Some people are comfortable with their name and never feel the need to change it. 

Some people, and this is the version that relates to my experience, use different names depending on how they feel or what situation they’re in. 

I’m pretty comfortable with my birth name – Meaghan – because it represents the female half of myself. I also have the name Ray that represents the male half of myself. I think of myself as Meaghan Ray and will go by Meaghan or Ray or Meaghan Ray depending on the situation. Primarily I use Meaghan in everyday life and with family and Ray in queer spaces. So far I haven’t changed my name legally but I am considering changing my middle name to Ray.

But how did I figure out that this way of using different names was right for me? 

If you listened to Episode 1 of Season 2 you heard me talk about my initial gender experience in grade 10 where I was switching back and forth between Meaghan (female) and Ray (male). I had no idea why I was responding to the name Ray or where it came from. It just seemed to be part of my male identity from the start. So essentially, I never had to search for a name that fit. But that also meant that switching to a new, gender neutral name that would encompass both parts of myself didn’t feel right either. So I had to figure out how to use both Meaghan and Ray as names in a way that gave me a sense of balance and authenticity. 

At first it felt awkward and scary to introduce myself as Ray in queer spaces. One of the biggest experiments I did with this was going on a writing retreat on a cruise ship with a whole group of strangers that I may or may not ever interact with again. The organizers were very queer friendly and had everyone fill out a form stating what we wanted on our name badge. It didn’t have to match our legal name and would include pronouns. So I went with Ray and they/them pronouns. People followed through on the name really well because they had never known me as anything else. Pronouns were a different story but I’ll get to that in a sec.

If you are uncomfortable with your name and want to change it, here are a few strategies to try. 

Start with a gender neutral or more affirming nickname version of your name if one exists. If this feels better than your birth name, it not only points you in the right direction and gives you a bit of affirmation and euphoria but is also easier to get people to use without having to come out (if you don’t feel ready yet).

Look up gender neutral names in a baby name app or ask close friends what they think might fit you. Test out various names by writing about yourself in third person, using that name as an online identity, ask close friends to test it out with you, or put a different name in each time you order something online (or when ordering coffee) so you see how it feels when it arrives. 

There will be a name that you keep coming back to or that stands out as feeling right. Even if it’s not the one that everyone else thinks you should use, if it feels right to you, that’s the one to use. 

If you’re comfortable with your name, either because it is gender neutral to start off with or because it feels right regardless of what gender it flags to everyone else, that’s fine too! You don’t have to change it in order to be ‘trans enough’ or ‘nonbinary enough’ to claim a particular identity. 

Keep in mind though that people generally associate who you are with your name and may have trouble understanding how their perception of you is incorrect, and struggle to correct it, if your name is staying the same. If this turns out to be the case, you can always decide to change your name later if you feel you want or need to. 

PRONOUNS

Getting people to use they/them pronouns, and even more so neopronouns, is a big struggle. So much so that it has been a huge barrier to me feeling like it would be beneficial to come out as nonbinary. If I’m not changing my name and no one is going to use the correct pronouns anyway, why bother?

When I say that getting people to use they/them pronouns is a struggle, I’m comparing it to getting people to switch from female pronouns to male pronouns when my husband transitioned. That was still a struggle and took quite a while (and he still gets misgendered by coworkers four years later!) but at this point he almost always gets referred to using he/him pronouns by strangers. Not only will strangers forever label me as female and revert to she/her pronouns but even when I have explicitly asked someone to use they/them pronouns (and even have it printed on a badge I am wearing) they still struggle with it unless they have had prior experience and know other people who use they/them pronouns. 

There are a number of reasons why I think people struggle with they/them pronouns more than binary ones. 

I’m not even going to talk about the ‘it’s not grammatically correct’ hurdle because seriously, it is, you use them all the time as a singular pronoun already. 

The sticking point is that people don’t often use them consciously as singular pronouns. They only use they/them singular as a default when they don’t know someone’s gender such as when referring to an unknown person when they find an umbrella forgotten on a bus. To use they/them singular consciously seems to use different brain circuitry. 

Another component to this sticking point is that in those circumstances where they already use they/them singular, they are using it for someone who’s gender is unknown, not someone they know. Most people have an association with they/them pronouns as being ambiguous, vague, distant, a place-holder until you identify the person’s gender. So when we ask them to use they/them pronouns to refer to us, someone they know, it makes them feel like they are referring to us in a way that denotes distance in the relationship, not familiarity. 

When my husband socially transitioned and asked people to start using he/him pronouns, they struggled with it until their mental image of him was that of a male person instead of a female one. After that he was misgendered significantly less. This is another thing that creates difficulty with people adopting they/them and neopronouns. If people have a hard time conceptualizing nonbinary identities let alone applying that identity to me specifically, they will likely have a hard time automatically using the correct pronouns.  

I do have some strategies that I want to recommend to help people adopt a new name and/or pronouns if that is a change you want to make.

Request that they change your name or add your pronouns next to your name in their phone contact info for you. Every time you text or call they will be reminded of the correct name and pronouns. 

Have as many open conversations as you can with them about how you see yourself in terms of gender. The better they understand how you see yourself, the easier time they will have of changing their own mental image of you and therefore the name and pronouns that they associate with you. 

Have an ally with you who will model the correct name and pronouns. If you would like, this ally can also correct the other people’s use of name and pronouns or they can simply set a good example. 

Set ground rules about how you will correct their use of pronouns. You can use a code word, for example ‘potato’, every time they get it wrong, or you can correct them once during each interaction, if that’s all the energy you have, with the understanding that you expect them to correct themselves and each other from then on.

One suggestion I would stress is to make it clear that you expect them to use the correct pronouns and name for you even when you are not present and to correct each other if they get it wrong. This is the only way they will ever get it consistently right when you are around. 

OTHER GENDERED LANGUAGE

But of course, we can be misgendered by more than just our name or pronouns. There is lots of other gendered language that people use without realizing. 

There’s the everyday Ma’am and sir, ladies, guys, dude, bro, hey man, hey girl.

Then there’s the familial terms such as son, daughter, sister, brother, mother, father, aunt, uncle, niece, nephew, ect

If people I have come out to use those everyday gendered terms to refer to me I will say a quick ‘nope!’ or ‘not a lady’, ‘not a girl’, in response. This will sometimes lead to a brief conversation of what they should say instead and as long as they follow through on that next time, it can be a helpful interaction. 

If someone I’m not out to yet consistently uses those terms, especially when including me in a group of women (which happens often at my workplace), I will simply not respond to the general greeting because it didn’t actually apply to me. If they address me specifically or follow up with something else, I’ll respond per usual. I have noticed that this subliminal messaging has a decent effect on some people that I interact with on a more regular basis. Whether they’re aware of it consciously or not, they use those terms less and less when referring to me or addressing me, and they’ll find another way to get my attention. 

For the more formal familial terms there are lots of gender neutral options. Mx. is the gender neutral honorific instead of Mrs, Ms, or Mr. It is pronounced Mix which can be used instead of ma’am and sir as well. Those are most often used in a customer service setting where they could just as easily leave them off and say ‘can I help you?’ or refer to you as a customer, patron, or shopper instead of a woman or man. There is nibling for niece or nephew, sibling instead of sister or brother, child or first-born, eldest, youngest, etc instead of son or daughter. The gender neutral version of aunt or uncle is more varied and personal though I personally like Untie (pronounced UN-tee).  

Parental names are a whole other story. There are so many options for parental terms that are not mom or dad that it is hard to narrow it down or find one that feels right. By the time this episode airs, I will hopefully be a new parent so this is something that has been on my mind a lot lately. 

Not only what will the child call me but how will I enforce that term with other family members when they are referring to me when talking to the child, especially if I’m not out to all those family members yet? And how much more misgendering will I have to deal with once the child is going to school? 

I will talk about this more during episode 8 when I talk about nonbinary pregnancy and parenting. And I will definitely be posting updates on this journey as a nonbinary parent on my blog. If you subscribe, you’ll get the updates in your inbox.

More recently, during the pregnancy experience, I have encountered a ton of gendered language around pregnant people being referred to consistently as women, mom, or mom-to-be. 

When talking about breastfeeding there is also a huge lack of inclusive terminology. So naturally, I wrote a blog post about that too, with a list of inclusive terminology suggestions for pregnancy, birthing, and feeding a baby. I will be talking more about that in Episode 8 as well.

TAKE AWAY

During my own journey of navigating names, pronouns, and other gendered language, I discovered that all three of these aspects affect me differently. 

For example, as I mentioned, I’m pretty comfortable with my birth name, except for the times I’m feeling almost exclusively male. Even so, I do feel like I need some time as being identified as Ray, just to feel like I maintain a balance and a feeling of authenticity and visibility.

I’m comfortable with she/her pronouns about 50-75% of the time, he/him pronouns about 25% or less of the time, and they/them pronouns 100% of the time. 

I’m rarely if ever comfortable with the generic female gendered language such as ladies, ma’am, miss or girl. I’m much more comfortable with generic male gendered language including sir, man, bro, dude and guys. 

I’m ok with certain female gendered familial terms but only if I’ve had specific conversations with the other people involved in that relationship and know that they see me for who I am but still prefer to use the same term due to the emotional history between us. If they’re comfortable shifting to a neutral option, that is generally more comfortable for me. 

All this to say, just because your name, pronouns, and other language people use for you may all relate to the gender you were assigned at birth which you no longer identify as or feel comfortable with, it doesn’t mean that all three of these things, or any of them for that matter, have to be uncomfortable for you or that they are equally so. 

I recommend looking at each of these aspects separately and seeing if they actually cause varying degrees of dysphoria. How they feel may be different depending on the context, who is using that name, pronoun, or language, or how your gender feels at the time (especially if you’re genderfluid like me). 

If this gets overwhelming, feel free to email me at letstalkgenderpodcast@gmail.com. Remember: You are not alone. 

That’s it for Episode 4 of season 2 of Let’s talk gender.

The music for this podcast is by Jamie Price. You can find them at Must Be Tuesday or on iTunes.

Coming up in Episode 5 I will be talking about coming out as nonbinary, why it is so darn hard, and how to figure out whether it’s the right time and place to do it (again).

Talk to you soon.

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