So two of my friends and I are the leaders of a "writer's club" at our school, and today we had a meeting. We were sharing old work (mostly cringy stuff from middle school ) and to start off to make people feel comfortable we did a dramatic reading of a thing we did where we took all our characters from our original stories and put them together in one, and then we destroyed the fourth wall and inserted ourselves as the authors into the story and basically gave the characters existential crisises >:3. Anyways, this was written in like 7th grade, so it had my full name (I don't know if I can call it a dead name since a lot of people still call me it) and she/her pronouns. As we were reading I substituted my name for the nickname I've been trying to go by. We were reading, and then my friend, who was reading the narrating parts subbed in the pronouns for he/him pronouns (it was only in like 2 or 3 spots). I was really conflicted, I was really worried someone in our club would say something, but at the same time it felt great to be going by those pronouns, because I'm very closeted so I don't hear them that often. Just hearing those couple words made me so happy. I'm wondering if I should talk to my friend about this, but I don't really know how if I were going to. I know that they were doing it 100% to support me, so I don't want to make them feel bad. I'm really torn.
Sounds great and scary. Congratulations. Is there a GSA or other support group there you can rely on. My funniest outgoing of myself was at the doctor's. I had requested a name change and all was well. Then the tech talking blood called out my "dead name". I sighed and walked over. I said,"I'm sorry, I thought I had cleared this up. My name is Jacqui, I'm transgender." He said, "Oh. Pardon me. I was calling for that like boy over there". I shrunk several feet and slinked back to my seat. It's never cool to out someone else. Maybe you can find a nice way to let them know. It can sometimes be dangerous.
There is a GSA that both of us are a part of (they're gender fluid and we're both pan), though I can't go that often because my parents don't know about it so I can only go when I have an excuse or when I "miss the bus", when I can't stay I just go for 15 minutes or so before my bus gets there. I guess I could talk to one of the people there (who is also a trans guy) who is in my Science Olympiad. The more I think about it the more I feel like I should talk to them, but again I don't want to make them feel bad because I know the only reason they did it was to support me, so I feel bad confronting them about it (confronting's not the right word I just couldn't think of a better one). Since you mentioned a funny coming out story I'll share one my friend told me the other day (different friend than who i was talking about before). They were visiting extended family over Thanksgiving break, and she was reading a gay romance. Someone asked what they were reading and they said "a romance". There were two guys on the front cover so people started saying "oh that's weird". They then said "oh, I guess not everyone here knows." They looked at their aunt who knows and then stood up and shouted "I'm the gayest little fuck you'll ever meet." They then left the room and continued reading their book.
I love that story. Try to think of it less as confronting and more like realigning. It may not have to be awkward. Maybe it could be a, "Hey, when that happened, I kind of liked it but wasn't ready for this to be public." Some who are out already, feel everyone should just do it. Not sure if that is the case. Hope it goes well. Warmly, Jacqui
Whoooooooooo, that was so much more painless than I thought it would be. So I basically texted them and explained everything and asked them to ask me first in the future, and they apologized and said that in the moment they did feel bad because they knew they should've asked first but they forgot to and that they know they should ask for future reference. Also today one of the GSA supervisors/ Science Olympiad coaches asked me what my preferred pronouns were, which was nice because the rest of my day was really shitty.
That's great. I'm glad it worked out well. Just like everyone's lives. You win a few things then get smacked a bit. Keep it up and there may be more good than bad. "Onward" Warmly, Jacqui
