Unfortunately Not a Real Pony

Once again, I am complaining about the "nonbinary as a discrete third gender" thing.

A third gender with a specific set of words, and a specific type of clothing, a specific collection of behaviors, a specific way to present yourself to the world.

The whole point! Was to do away with the whole arbitrary, restrictive set of rules!

YOUR TRINARY IS NOT AN IMPROVEMENT OVER THE PREEXISTING BINARY!

Not deadname as in "that person is dead" or deadname as in "that person was always me but I use a different name now" but deadname as in "lol that person never existed".

As it turns out, when you're a trans person married to a trans person, and you start talking about "our kids", people get VERY confused VERY quickly trying to figure out How That Happened.

What I meant to do: get a soda on a quick break.

What I actually did: met two transgender coworkers.

Part of the story I'm currently writing is set before the main character came out as trans.

Conclusion: writing narration without using pronouns is a bit of a challenge, but really not THAT much.

"I can fix him" I say, taking out a fresh pair of thigh-high socks, a cat ear headband, and baby name book.

There's a version of my resume that had my name listed as "Palomino Unicorn (formerly Sad Butthead Jr)" and it's apparently still floating around science job recruitment sites.

I just got an email addressed to "Dear Formerly" which is the only word in that heading that definitely ISN'T a name.

The idea that there's One Consistent Way that boys are socialized and then One Consistent Way that girls are socialized doesn't even hold together if you're looking at white middle class suburban families. Once you take into account that this is a small fraction of all people, well...

My parents raised me to never cry and that sadness was acceptable in only a few scenarios. Was that a factor of them raising me as a boy? No - it was a factor of them raising me as an Eastern European.

They also raised me to clean up after everyone. Was that a factor of raising me as a girl? No - it was a factor of them raising me as poor.

It was kind of weird to look at my country's baby name statistics and see that the names popular now are mostly the same ones that were popular when I was born.

Which were also the same ones popular when my parents were born.

And when their parents were born.

It was especially shocking to see my deadname in the top ten.