Nothing has actually changed.

[bladespark]

I bought a paid account today. I've been using DW since the lolita purge/fandom counts disaster over on livejournal that I think was why DW was even made in the first place? It seemed like maybe it was finally time to chip in a bit. I almost never use icons besides my default, so I don't need extra icons, and I'm not sure what other features it even has. But there you go.

Oh the topics of things that are meaningful and yet change nothing, I've been feeling in a weird identity limbo lately. I made this big announcement about going by "Aidan" now, but it's pretty much changed nothing. I don't pass any more in "real life" and my interactions online are just as they've always been, it's just that in one particular chat room I get "he" more often than "she" now. That's it. That's the big change.

It's very anti-climactic.

But I don't know what else I'd even do. Like I went to the goober's "class" today, and I'm sure I'd probably get a positive reaction if I pulled the teacher aside and explained the name change, but nothing would *change*. I'm not treated differently than the dad who comes with his son, you know?

The places where it would make a big difference are... Sigh. So much harder, so much more complicated.

The deep things are never easy. Sometimes the shallow things are hard too (I went into "the men's room" for the first time the other day, but it was only because the fucking place thought that family-style bathrooms, the kind with a toilet and sink in a locking room, needed to be gendered. Fuckers.) but the really hard things are always the deep things.

P.S. There is a small, small chance that insurance *might* cover a hysterectomy for me. Maybe. I am almost terrified at the idea, but also a little bit excited? I don't know. It's easy to laugh and go "I am so done with this uterus" but it's a fairly major surgery. It's not a small thing either.

Comments

[conuly]

Paid accounts have polls. Lately, lots of people have been using the poll feature to effectively add a "like" button to their posts... and I've always found them useful for boosting my ego, because lots of people will vote in polls who won't comment on posts.

(I went into "the men's room" for the first time the other day, but it was only because the fucking place thought that family-style bathrooms, the kind with a toilet and sink in a locking room, needed to be gendered. Fuckers.)

Those signs are sometimes bought in pairs, I think...? It's ridiculous, though, I agree.

[bladespark]

I think people doing the "men's" and "women's" signs in situations where they're not truly needed are just operating without thinking. We have two bathrooms, one should be the men's, one should be the women's, that's just what one does.

It causes more trouble for the plain old cis-people than for anybody else, though. They're the majority of the users, after all, and the situation is not ideal for them. The amount of time somebody spends in the hall waiting for one room when the other is open but it's the "wrong" one even though it's literally perfectly identical to the "right" one is probably considerable! But of course on that front, women will wait disproportionately to men, so yet again the default-patriarchy doesn't have to care. :P Meh. I am more bitter about it than I should be about something so small that people are doing just because it's literally never passed through their minds to not rather than out of malice, but it would be no extra cost to buy a pair of "family" stall signs instead, and that would be easier on every single person involved in any way. And yet nobody does.

SO MUCH of the world is harder for queer and non-binary people than it needs to be just because choices for them never pass through the majority's heads. The family bathroom thing just bugs me all out of proportion because the best choice for non-binary people would *also* be the best choice for cis people!

[silvercat17]

Sometimes people will get harassed if they go in the wrong bathroom. It's all a bunch of bs.

[bladespark]

I was in a fake beard at a convention once and I literally had no idea which bathroom to go into. I was mostly presenting femme in my life at that point, and identified as "kinda genderqueer but mostly girl, just tomboy", so Inormally went into the women's, but I had a *beard* and at first glance definitely looked male. I sorta decided to just do the "easy" thing for me and do as I'd always done, but I got the *worst* stink-eye from somebody coming out as I was going in. There are situations where you just can't win. And the place didn't have a family-style room at all, so I had to pick.

I just wanted to pee! People in bathrooms are just there to pee! Augh. Why do people have to make such a big deal of who else might be nearby when they pee, nobody is there to do anything but just use the facilities, for fuck's sake. (Apparently I am ranty today.)

[greghousesgf]

I don't know if this is at all helpful but I'm cis female and I was so damn glad to have my hysterectomy (I had evil C'thulu periods for most of my life)

[kara_mckay]

It's not quite the same thing, but for my own identity reasons, I've been in the process of switching from my real first to Kara. I plan to eventually get a legal name change. The big difference is that now my sister says, "So, K___ -- Oh, excuse me -- Kara ," whenever she addresses me by name. Which feels like it's about fifty percent more frequently that she ever used to do it.

I don't pass very well as a woman, and I've never tried to pass as a man. My experience doesn't seem to map very well onto any of the Approved Gender Identity Narratives, and I mainly just feel invisible. I hope things work out for you in ways that feel meaningful and natural.

[silveradept]

A lot of it won't change, really, either through ignorance or malice.

But where it does change, and for the better, that's really rather nice.

Everything being gendered unnecessarily, especially bathrooms, is definitely a pain in the ass.