"There's a name for it"
Text and picture reposted from this Tumblr post. It might make more sense if you read the Tumblr version, since I think this excerpt makes references to things in other peoples' comments, and I don't feel like reposting the entire thing here.
The original picture:
My part of the post:
I totally get Tedd’s shock. I became aware of the concept of transgender pretty early on, around 15 or 16, but it didn’t really fit me. I started identifying as a trans woman online more out of it being the closest I knew to what I was, but privately had no idea what to think of myself as. At least, not until I read about the term “hermaphrodite.” Well, actually, the progression went more like this: A. Read term “hermaphrodite,” started using it to describe the people of this story I’d started to write, and their religion. B. Did not apply the term to myself. C. Figured out I was trans or something like it. D. Became obsessed with that story I was writing enough that I adopted the religion I’d made for them. E. Realized only then that I was closer to “hermaphrodite” than I was to male or female, and so privately began to identify as such. F. Realized I’m Otherkin, as one of the Ah’Koi Bahnis people I was writing about, which deepened the connection to “hermaphrodite.” G. Didn’t hear the term gender-fluid til… well, it’s hard to say. Only a few years ago, I think. I think I read it on Tumblr, but I can’t be sure. I have a bad habit of hearing information relevant to me and then watching it take months or even years to process it enough that I finally think “Hey wait, that’s me!”
Like, it took me six years of referring to my Goddess Djao’Kain as “the Goddess with Multiple Personality Order,” having entire conversations with “myself” that often became arguments, being continually confused by the constant chatter in my head from voices that I assumed were me but often said things I disagreed with or didn’t even understand (or used words I had never, to my knowledge, even heard before and didn’t know what they meant, yet somehow using them correctly), and being continually confused about my own contradictory thoughts and words, having wildly different responses to the same stimuli at different times (like loving a song one minute and hating it the next or both loving and hating it at the same time; or having two entirely different moods at the same time, such as being simultaneously angry and happy in unconnected ways), before I finally put the pieces together and said “Woah, that’s it. I’m a Multiple.”
Because while I had read “Sybil,” it was so far removed from my own experiences that I never for even a second thought that DID could apply to me. For one, my parents never abused me in any way, and nor did any other relatives. (Failed to occur to me that the relentless bullying I suffered for years could count as child abuse.) And we’ve always been aware of each other, able to hear each others’ thoughts, and we have a mostly common memory, but still each of us have our own personalities, our own likes and dislikes. More Sybil-like systems take ages to figure out the truth because of a lack of information; our own system failed to figure it out because of too much information. I just assumed all those voices were me, and that everyone experienced things the same way; which gave me another level of frustration, looking at other people and wondering how they coped living like that without showing some sign of the internal chaos I was living with.
Gods, and I was familiar with the terms “aspie,” “Asperger’s,” and “autism” for years before I bothered even really figuring out what it meant, and several more years after that before I started to wonder if I had that as well.
But yeah, for so long the closest concept I had to “gender fluid” or “genderqueer” was “hermaphrodite,” it fits my kin type, and I resonate with it still, so when people bitch at me with some bullshit like “hermaphrodite is an intersex term,” I basically tell them to go suck an egg.
Representation matters!
One more note: Interestingly, having the label "Multiple" to apply to ourself has made it LESS chaotic inside our head, rather than more. I'm able to go "Oh, that was said/thought by such-and-such" in most cases, and even when we can't identify the specific source of the thought, we can usually say either "That sounds like something Alex/Molly/Lo/whoever would say" or "Meh, musta been a Mask." That also serves to cut WAY down on the other part of the chaos: the confusion and frustration.
This was cross-posted from http://fayanora.dreamwidth.org/1246160.html
You can comment either here or there.
The original picture:
My part of the post:
I totally get Tedd’s shock. I became aware of the concept of transgender pretty early on, around 15 or 16, but it didn’t really fit me. I started identifying as a trans woman online more out of it being the closest I knew to what I was, but privately had no idea what to think of myself as. At least, not until I read about the term “hermaphrodite.” Well, actually, the progression went more like this: A. Read term “hermaphrodite,” started using it to describe the people of this story I’d started to write, and their religion. B. Did not apply the term to myself. C. Figured out I was trans or something like it. D. Became obsessed with that story I was writing enough that I adopted the religion I’d made for them. E. Realized only then that I was closer to “hermaphrodite” than I was to male or female, and so privately began to identify as such. F. Realized I’m Otherkin, as one of the Ah’Koi Bahnis people I was writing about, which deepened the connection to “hermaphrodite.” G. Didn’t hear the term gender-fluid til… well, it’s hard to say. Only a few years ago, I think. I think I read it on Tumblr, but I can’t be sure. I have a bad habit of hearing information relevant to me and then watching it take months or even years to process it enough that I finally think “Hey wait, that’s me!”
Like, it took me six years of referring to my Goddess Djao’Kain as “the Goddess with Multiple Personality Order,” having entire conversations with “myself” that often became arguments, being continually confused by the constant chatter in my head from voices that I assumed were me but often said things I disagreed with or didn’t even understand (or used words I had never, to my knowledge, even heard before and didn’t know what they meant, yet somehow using them correctly), and being continually confused about my own contradictory thoughts and words, having wildly different responses to the same stimuli at different times (like loving a song one minute and hating it the next or both loving and hating it at the same time; or having two entirely different moods at the same time, such as being simultaneously angry and happy in unconnected ways), before I finally put the pieces together and said “Woah, that’s it. I’m a Multiple.”
Because while I had read “Sybil,” it was so far removed from my own experiences that I never for even a second thought that DID could apply to me. For one, my parents never abused me in any way, and nor did any other relatives. (Failed to occur to me that the relentless bullying I suffered for years could count as child abuse.) And we’ve always been aware of each other, able to hear each others’ thoughts, and we have a mostly common memory, but still each of us have our own personalities, our own likes and dislikes. More Sybil-like systems take ages to figure out the truth because of a lack of information; our own system failed to figure it out because of too much information. I just assumed all those voices were me, and that everyone experienced things the same way; which gave me another level of frustration, looking at other people and wondering how they coped living like that without showing some sign of the internal chaos I was living with.
Gods, and I was familiar with the terms “aspie,” “Asperger’s,” and “autism” for years before I bothered even really figuring out what it meant, and several more years after that before I started to wonder if I had that as well.
But yeah, for so long the closest concept I had to “gender fluid” or “genderqueer” was “hermaphrodite,” it fits my kin type, and I resonate with it still, so when people bitch at me with some bullshit like “hermaphrodite is an intersex term,” I basically tell them to go suck an egg.
Representation matters!
One more note: Interestingly, having the label "Multiple" to apply to ourself has made it LESS chaotic inside our head, rather than more. I'm able to go "Oh, that was said/thought by such-and-such" in most cases, and even when we can't identify the specific source of the thought, we can usually say either "That sounds like something Alex/Molly/Lo/whoever would say" or "Meh, musta been a Mask." That also serves to cut WAY down on the other part of the chaos: the confusion and frustration.
This was cross-posted from http://fayanora.dreamwidth.org/1246160.html
You can comment either here or there.