Over the past month I have really begun to explore the complexity of my identity, and I have started co come to terms with it. In the transgender community I have been using male pronouns for three or four months now and it is beginning to feel completely natural. I no longer pause when asked my preferred pronoun. When people are using male pronouns to talk about me, I am aware of the connection and it feels comfortable.
I am actually rather surprised at how much has happened in the past few months. Just before school began in September, I started therapy. The therapist I have been seeing is wonderful. She specifically works with transgender clients, and has helped me figure out how gender relates and intersects with other aspects in my life. We have done a lot of work around gender and relationships. One of my biggest fears is that as I become more comfortable with my transgender identity, friends who are not part of the trans or queer community will pull away.
I am afraid of how my relationships with people will change. I don’t think that they should have to change, but the dynamic between men and men, men and women, and women and women are all very different. As a man, my relationships with others will have to evolve into something new and hopefully equally strong. Being out with everyone is jumping the gun a bit, but it’s slowly becoming a not so distant reality.
From my work in therapy, and my increasing comfort in the transgender space using male pronouns, I decided that I needed to come out to my sorority. We currently have girls pledging and I wanted to tell the active sisters before the new girls are active. I addressed the organization at a business meeting last week. I have never come out to 20 people all at once about anything, let alone something as terrifying as my gender identity.
I told my Kappa sisters a condensed version of what’s going on. I told them that I had been working with this transgender rights organization all summer and that I had been using male pronouns at my internship. I told them that I wasn’t asking for them to use male pronouns right now, but that I would let them know if that changed. Everyone was really great about it, and I honestly think that things are OK. I believe now I need to learn how to navigate in this female space as a non female identified person. I wish there were other sisters who came before me who were dealing with the same issues. As far as I know, I am the first trans identified Kappa in the organizations history.
So as of now, I am out and using male pronouns at my internship. I told my sorority about my gender identity, but I have not asked them to use male pronouns. I told my new roommate (who is amazing) roughly the same thing I told Kappa. There are still a few people that I feel like I need to talk to. I get worried because the people who are left are the people I really don’t want to loose. Part of me thing that maybe I shouldn’t say anything unless I’m asking people to use male pronouns full time.
I have come so close to asking my professors to use male pronouns. I’m not sure what it is that snapped in the past month, but I have really been coming to terms with the male identified part of myself. The female part is still there, but the male part is totally trumping the female part these days.
I also find that the more involved I am with the transgender rights organization, the more often I hear myself being referred to with male pronouns. I think that the more often this has happened, the more comfortable I have become with it. There was a while where I wanted to be able to enjoy it, but it just felt wicked foreign to me. I remember that these feelings made me often question weather I had a right to use male pronouns. I now know that I do. I have a right to use any pronoun that makes me comfortable in any given situation.
-Goddess Lacey
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