Pronoun Trouble
1
Get this: twice during my still-in-process transition, I have misgendered myself.
The first time was after a piano concert in the Cathedral where I worship. I was talking with the chief liturgist about the Mozart piece performed by the pianist, when I exclaimed “Yes it was great, Mozart is wonderful, but I am more of a Beethoven guy!” The second was in describing my childhood to a friend: “you can imagine it was rough-and-tumble, the three of us boys.” Straightforwardly, both statements were false, and I immediately recognized this. But my affective response to both incidents surprised me: I was neither embarrassed nor guilt-ridden. I thought these faux pas were actually kind of funny. Had I misgendered someone else I would have immediately apologized, been embarrassed and felt somewhat guilty. But since the slips of the tongue were directed at myself I felt I could, and should, shrug it off with a chuckle and with a minimum of reflexive dysphoria.
This casualness about gender-talk may be a function of my age — in less than a month I will be Medicare eligible, which both unnerves and amuses me. I think there are more important times and places to give my fucks away. Gender is complicated, as is our relationship to our own genders. The grammatical basis of gender is shifting, and in a good way.
