Pocket Genders
Jun. 15th, 2020 07:15 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dreamer_easySomehow I found myself over at the Gender Wiki, on a page about "Pocket Genders" -- "identit[ies] used by either one person or a small group of people [...] not recognized officially by the LGBT+ community". I'm not sure how a gender would be "officially recognised" -- I guess the author means "widely known and accepted". There are comments, of course, complaining that, with all these obviously made-up genders, the imaginary efforts of cishet teenagers who want to feel special, etc etc etc, no-one will take real LGBT+ people seriously.
Imagine, for a moment, if the wider world didn't take LGBT+ people seriously -- if they were not treated as an existential threat to a strictly policed social hierarchy. If people changed sexes and got married just as they pleased and no-one particularly worried about it.
Back in the real world, people who know they don't fit into that order struggle to articulate how they feel, who they are. Every "officially recognised" identity must have started with a few people who recognised themselves in someone else's self-description. It's possible some of the authors of the "pocket genders" collected on that page have gone on to find more widely used terms for their identities, and experienced that powerful, healing moment of understanding it's not just me -- it's us. It's also possible that this page will be where someone will read a description and think, but that's me, that's me. It's also possible that each newly labelled gender only represents one individual's efforts to puzzle themselves out.
Bigots will laugh about there being "47 genders" anyway, in an effort to cast trans and non-binary people as mentally ill. They'll do that anyway. Better than complaining, hush, the straights will laugh at us, might be to offer some guidance to young people trying to understand themselves -- which is what this Wiki seems to be trying to do.
Imagine, for a moment, if the wider world didn't take LGBT+ people seriously -- if they were not treated as an existential threat to a strictly policed social hierarchy. If people changed sexes and got married just as they pleased and no-one particularly worried about it.
Back in the real world, people who know they don't fit into that order struggle to articulate how they feel, who they are. Every "officially recognised" identity must have started with a few people who recognised themselves in someone else's self-description. It's possible some of the authors of the "pocket genders" collected on that page have gone on to find more widely used terms for their identities, and experienced that powerful, healing moment of understanding it's not just me -- it's us. It's also possible that this page will be where someone will read a description and think, but that's me, that's me. It's also possible that each newly labelled gender only represents one individual's efforts to puzzle themselves out.
Bigots will laugh about there being "47 genders" anyway, in an effort to cast trans and non-binary people as mentally ill. They'll do that anyway. Better than complaining, hush, the straights will laugh at us, might be to offer some guidance to young people trying to understand themselves -- which is what this Wiki seems to be trying to do.
