Feedback,  Gender[queer],  Q&A

Q&A: “I’m the anon reading lexicons in order to find a word…”

anonymous said:

I’m the anon reading lexicons in order to find a word to describe myself. Thank you very much for taking so much time for me, for your long, very interesting and helpful answer. In fact, I was only looking for a single word because everybody here seems to have one (they say ‘hi I’m this or that’) and it was driving me crazy that there wasn’t one for me. I thought everyone but me had a word that suited completely. You put my mind at ease. You’re right I should find my own combination of words.

(re: this post)

no problem, anon. thanks for coming back and responding. 🙂

even though it may feel like everyone has a particular word / identity / label that describes them completely, rest assured that that totally is not the case. not everyone is able to (or even wants to) put a word to their gender and even for those who can / do that one word generally does not describe them completely. there’s always more to a person than that one word that they say when they say “hi, i’m ___!”

to use myself as an example, i could say “hi, i’m Vesper and i’m maverique!” because “maverique” is my gender. that said, being maverique says nothing about how i feel about my body. it says nothing about how i express myself. all it tells you (or anyone else) is that my gender is maverique. that when it comes to how i see myself and how i interact with the social framework that is gender, it’s as a maverique rather than as a man, a woman, an agender person, etc. if i were to talk about my feelings regarding my body, about how i express myself or anything else i’d use various words in addition to maverique to do so.

even if you think about a cis person’s gender, the same thing applies. someone saying “hi, i’m ____ and i’m a man!” is not that person saying that he feels any particular way about his body, nor is he saying anything about how he expresses himself. hell, him saying “i’m a man!” isn’t even him saying anything about his pronouns, i’m just using he / him / his because i can. the only thing that he has just told you with his self-introduction is that he is a man. that when it comes to his place in society and the social framework that is gender, he interacts with it as a man. to find out about the other stuff (body feels, expression, etc), you’d have to actually ask him, at which point he would then use various other words to tell you about those things. “man” does not encompass that. “maverique” does not encompass that.

so yeah, even those of us who do use a single word with which to refer to our gender still use a combination of other words to help add detail to the bigger picture that is our gender, anon. 🙂 that said, i do wish you all the best in finding words that resonate with you. words that will help you beautifully illustrate the wonderfully complex and unique picture that is your gender.

YouTuber and Blogger, Vesper is an American expat currently living in Japan.