The older I get in this life, the less I care. It’s like every day the picture slowly grows larger and larger, and all the smaller details in the image don’t seem to be as significant as they did before. This could be the result of taking a sociology class this semester which taught me that quite literally everything that exists is a social construct and is not technically real – yeah, I think that might be playing a role here – but ever since, I’ve learned to embrace a new outlook on my personal identity.
I had begun asking people to use she/they pronouns about six months ago when I was feeling confined in the gender binary of womanhood. It wasn’t a huge deal back then and I would say it’s an even smaller deal now when I really think about it. I heard mostly she/her, but it didn’t really bother me. I did prefer they/them, but I wasn’t able to identify why and I didn’t feel comfortable explaining a feeling, as feelings don’t always have explanations.
When I came to UMass, there was a major shift in pronouns, I was hearing mostly they/them pronouns being used to describe me from peers and it was very fitting, but I still didn’t quite get why. So, welcome ladies and gentlemen to my gender rodeo, where you’ll find the final stop on my journey (so far at least) is getting to the point of self-identifying as a fairy cowboy.
As I said, this current mindset of mine is mostly driven by my sociology class. Oh, and camp! When taking into consideration that nothing is real and gender is entirely a societal construction whose only purpose is to govern and confine ourselves into already existing categories, you really see behind the curtain that it’s just a bunch of hocus pocus. A farce if you will. Total Bologna. That being said, I think the reason I didn’t really feel comfortable with she/her pronouns is that I didn’t want any part of my identity to be perceived in a way that it wasn’t actually; there are a lot of female experiences that every woman is expected to have and the idea that I need to follow that roadmap makes me anxious to think about. However, I still wrangle with the concept of identifying with she/they pronouns. If I don’t feel that gender is real, yet get offended when my preferred pronouns aren’t used, I’d be contradicting myself. I have to remind myself that in the big herd, I’m just a small member of the cattle and that things aren’t as important as they can feel.
When I think of gender being a construct, I think of all the other constructs I’d much rather identify with. Like the construct of a cowboy: swift like the dirt beneath his horseshoes, taking off like the sun setting on an old western ranch. Or the construct of a fairy: floating around, drizzling magic on the souls of the ones they care about. Dancing around without a care in the world, beautiful and free.
I don’t really think I’m a fairy cowboy, but I don’t really think I’m a woman or a man. So, while I ride the bull of this gender rodeo, I might as well tip my 10-gallon hat and have fun.
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