Assertion and Outings

This is less a gossip post and more of a reflective post, so be warned. Less glitter and boozing and more facing realitiez.

As long as I've been out I've been in the shitty-feeling position of correcting pronouns. The scenario is familiar enough: I'm at a social gathering of some kind with some people I've just then met. I'm introduced as Russell, but the friends we have in common haven't, perhaps tastefully, prefaced the acquaintance's meeting of me with "Oh, and by the way, Russell is a TRANSSEXUAL even though he looks like a girl."

So, conversations are happening, and inevitably one of these innocent uninformed acquaintances who has assumed that I'm the faggiest butch they ever met will say, referring to me, "No, that's her sequin headband." or "She is fucking killing everyone in Cranium!" or "That girl makes the strongest martinis I've ever had."

Now, if I was a good, noble transsexual who followed my out and proud politics, I would say "I use male pronouns, cisgendered scum!" I do this sometimes--not "...cisgendered scum!", but "who you calling lady?!"--when I'm drunk, but remember, this is just a nice pleasant social gathering, a potluck or something. It's a lot easier to let it slide.

And it's not that I'm ashamed or any of that business. It's just that when, as a person who doesn't pass, you assert your actual gender, it can alter the conversation. It can easily turn from microbrews and bands to all those tedious and uncomfortable-making medical and physiological details I'm rarely in the mood to discuss in pleasant social settings. I don't always want to suddenly become The Transsexual At The Party, and a lot of the time asserting my gender--which is to say, outing myself as trans--amounts to making my gender the subject (abject?) of conversation and scrutiny.

But not correcting people is problematic, too. It makes me feel shitty, makes people with me feel awkward when they use the right pronouns, and invalidates my (and his) queerness if I'm with my dude.

And hence the seductive beauty of testosterone. As I look and sound more like a dude, correcting pronouns will not necessarily out me as trans. It will be more a case of, "Yes, I'm such a femme man that you could understandably think I was a girl, but you're wrong." Which will, instead of inviting unwelcome questions, will make whoever made the mistake wildly embarrassed. That's the kind of social interaction I'm comfortable with.