When I came out as queer in college, it was never a question of “if.” It was always a question of “when.” (And, as it turns out, that “when” happened on live television during a surprise debate with a conservative pastor about marriage equality, but that’s a story for another day.)
I feel lucky that I never wrestled with my queerness. From the time I was a young teenager, I knew I wasn’t straight, I just didn’t have a word to express my sexuality—small town Virginia doesn’t exactly leave you with many options to learn about such things. As soon as I attended my first queer student organization meeting in college, though, it clicked. “Queer” felt like home.
Ironically, my comfort with my queerness meant that I would have to enter completely uncharted territory to interrogate my gender. My identification with the “Q” in “LGBTQ+” was always with queer, not questioning. How does one begin to shed the gender constructs thrust upon their own body to forge a new path? I’m an educator and activist, but this wasn’t about moderating a panel on queer and trans liberation or creating a presentation on gender-inclusive language in abortion access. This was about my gender, not an external project.
So, what’s the verdict? What did I learn about my gender through this questioning process?
As it turns out, I don’t have one.
Looking back, I can’t say there’s a time I’ve ever felt like a woman. When I came out as agender to my parents, I asked my mom how she knows she is a woman, and if there was any time she had questioned that. For her, womanhood is an inherent part of her identity. On my side, I can’t identify a single thing that makes me a woman. We talked at length, and I explained that I’m not a woman or a man, and I’m not genderfluid. When it comes to gender, I feel nothing at all. I am gloriously genderless.
I vividly remember the first time someone referred to me using they/them pronouns. I don’t recall their face, their name, or where this happened. What I do remember, however, is how it made me feel. Two simple words—“they said”—warmed my heart. No, I really mean it: I felt warm. I felt light. I felt radiant.
I felt visible in a way I didn’t know I needed.
To my knowledge, that was the first time another person looked at me, didn’t assume I was a woman, and verbalized it. That gesture of inclusivity, and those that have followed since, have helped push me to gain a clearer understanding of who I am.
It took me months—maybe even over a year (thanks, trauma brain, for having no concept of time)—to take the next step and introduce myself using they/them pronouns. It was in the safest space I could imagine possible at the time, Creating Change, an annual conference for LGBTQ+ leaders, activists, educators, students, and community members in the United States.
Not all conversations have been as easy as the one with my parents. Questioning your gender, at least in my experience, can be awkward, beautiful, messy, and cringeworthy, all at once.
After using they/them pronouns at Creating Change, I felt solidly in the “I’m definitely not a woman, but I don’t exactly know what’s going on here” camp, and I started introducing my new pronouns into all areas of my life.
After adding them to my Twitter and Instagram bios—urging folks to use both “she/her” and “they/them” pronouns to refer to me—I updated my Slack username at work. For reasons I’ve tried and failed to analyze, I decided that sending an extremely formal message to my two supervisors and one colleague would be the best way to go about informing people of said pronoun change. It went like this:
“Hi, I wanted to share with you that I’m using they/them pronouns now, in addition to she/her. I’m genuinely fine with either. I wanted to tell y’all before I added them to my Slack name.”
If I could rewrite that message now, it would look something like, “Hey, I’m also using they/them pronouns now,” or it wouldn’t look like anything at all. My unconscious impulse to tiptoe around cisgender people and carefully inform them about the intricacies of my gender (or lack thereof)—which only benefits their comfort, not my own—is a process I’m working on unlearning.
Over time, they/them pronouns started to feel more right, and she/her started to feel uncomfortable and restrictive. If I’m honest, when I first introduced my new pronouns, I wanted people to use they/them much, much more often than they did.
Eventually, I stopped introducing my pronouns as “she/they” and tried leading with “they” instead. Still, people saw that I used multiple sets of pronouns and went with “she” 9.5 times out of 10.
It’s not hard for me to figure out why. To many people, I probably look like a woman. Far too often, gender presentation gets wrapped up in people’s perception of gender identity, and they project what they think they see onto the person’s gender. Even when I explain that I’m femme, I’m often met with questions about how that’s different from being a woman.
As I gained clarity about my gender, I gained clarity about my pronouns, too. Using multiple sets of pronouns is perfectly valid—and should be normalized—but she/her pronouns don’t feel authentic to me anymore.
Recently, I dropped she/her pronouns entirely. I feel free, expansive, warm, and lighter. I spent eighteen months of my life questioning something important to me, and now that I have the answer, I want to shout it from the rooftops.
So, hi. My name is Sarah, my pronouns are they/them/theirs, and I’m agender.
This is just my story. My lived experience does not reflect the lived experiences of all trans and non-binary people.
As luck would have it, this post is perfectly timed to be part of Mx. Nillin’s One Rainbow Apart Pride Month meme! Click the image below to see what other trans and queer bloggers around the world are writing this month.
