...kind of my first time being openly agender at a thing, and it went both as expected and better than expected. ... this is what I've learnt from it:
- being openly non-binary is a CHORE. You HAVE to keep telling people all the time. Nobody questioned it when I said so, nobody was being mean or ignorant, but no matter how you look or what you wear (even that infographic tank top), people will hardly ever consider you might be something other than a girl or a boy. ... it's not like people were closeminded or anything - just Not Used to people like me. But they tried! I could pop into the web editor's office and ask them to change the pronouns they used for me in one of the articles, and they did, no questions asked. (I felt a surge of power after that. ME. BEING CORRECTLY ADDRESSED ON THE INTERNET.)
- I felt safe the whole time! It's probably something with the area I live in being very chill about these things, but despite being surrounded by tall and beefy teenagers ... that could very well be the bullies of their schools, there wasn't even a mean glance thrown my way. So that's cool!
- I learned something important: backstage people. The backstage people are weird and queer and the kinda people I hang out with. Guess who incidentally ended up sharing the room with backstage people? Yours truly. I made a good decision the day I chose rooms.
- I can finally say "not actually a girl" without feeling remorse. It's, ugh, complicated, giving up on a title I wore so proudly for so long - and I'm not gonna go indepth on why I made the decision of giving it up (unless you ask, I guess), and sometimes I still feel this pang of intense doubt like ... what if i'm wrong and only doing this to follow a weird trend or to get attention...
BUT
1) i have never done anything to be trendy in my entire life, and i'm not starting now
2) i can very well attract attention without being weird about gender.
3) would i do ALL THIS if my feelings weren't at least a teensy bit valid? Like, it would be SO MUCH MORE PRACTICAL why am i even doing this to myself if not
4) am i going to pretend I have not spent hours, days, months, maybe years mulling this over and over.
Haiz, that's great! It's always rough for anyone who's the first to break out of old categories, whether it's "female computer programmer" or "non-Christian elected official" or "neither a boy nor a girl." You'll face an uphill battle, at least to explain things to well-meaning but uninformed people. But at least awareness is gradually growing of how different people can be in *all kinds of ways.* So any new (to them) variations should come as less of a shock as time goes by.
I'm glad to hear people at the UKM thing were respectful and accepting. Today's teenagers -- at least in Norway -- seem a lot more open-minded than the lot I grew up with! And good for you for finding "birds of a feather" to hang out with. For me, that's always been one of the pleasures of any big get-together.
Rock on with your bad self!
