I too, identify as tired: My Nan(ette)-ifesto

I’m tired of showing my gender to you.

I’m tired of shaving my legs, my face, my arm pits.

I’m tired of painting my nails. I’m tired of putting on makeup.

Don’t get me wrong, I love love love doing those things, and I will do them for myself, but I am TIRED of having to do them for you.

Don't get me wrong, I am nowhere near as tired as most AFAB people are who are socially expected and often compulsed to do these things.

I’m (not) sorry that my jaw is square.

I’m (not) sorry that my chest is flat.

I’m (not) sorry that I’m a middle-easterner and I’m covered in hair on every inch of my body.

I’m (not) sorry that I get depressed and shave my head to feel like a different person, so I’ve never had long hair.

I’m tired of reminding you that AMAB genderqueer people exist.

I’m tired of you saying “You prefer they/them” pronouns and still using “he/him.”

I am tired of being called “sir” and “gentleman” and “man” and “dude” and “guy” and “bro” by the people who say their pronouns in introductory circles and forget to listen.

I’m tired of signs and signifiers and sitting silently secretly wondering if someone will say something back but we’re too PC to call people out.

We are ALL implicated when someone misgenders me.

We are ALL victims of an oppressive gender binary that tells men not to cry but to fight and to scream. A binary that tells femmes to sit in silence because no one will listen or let you speak.

A binary that erases anything else.

I’m tired of policing my pronouns, that’s not what this is about.

I want you to see a possibility that we are more than what we look to be, that society can’t file us by semiotics, that we can’t know someone just by looking at them, and that we can’t act like we know them just because we see their exterior.

But most of all, I’m tired of you making me feel like an alien inside a body that I don’t understand: a body that I listen to and move and breathe and laugh and dance inside. This is a body I know better than most humans know their bodies, and yet I feel like I don’t know myself. I can’t see myself the way you see me. I’m tired of reminding myself of how you see me so that I can take care of you. I’m tired of being constantly aware of my AMAB body when I stand in front of you and reminding myself that you don’t see what I feel and how do I acknowledge that but also make the work that I want to make about femininity and masculinity and queerness, but even if I do, we’ll go back to calling me “he” but using my nickname that means “she” in another language so you can remember to call me “she” but not “they.”

This rant brought to you by:

Nanette by Hannah Gadsby

and

Dean Spade: http://www.deanspade.net/2018/12/01/we-still-need-pronoun-go-rounds/

Jen Manion: http://www.publicseminar.org/2018/11/the-performance-of-transgender-inclusion/

via Kadin Henningsen