Alexander the Ok

I have X on all of my documents. Birth certificate, passport, ID, you name it I have an X on it. I'm intersex & trans. I'm percieved as ambiguous 100% of the time and I can't pass for shit. Stealth is not an option for me, I am visibly intersex/trans no matter what.

Having either M or F on my documents wasn't any more feasible than having an X on everything at the time I got my documents. Which I had to work my ass off to get, by the way, because I was homeless and had no documents and I needed to obtain everything from scratch, which of course is made as hard as possible to do. (How do you provide proof of identity without any identity documents? How do you provide proof of address without an address? How do you pay for any of this when you can't even afford your own groceries and you get all your needs met through local mutual aid? How do you drop anything off or attend interviews or court without transportation?)

Goddamn right I was getting an X on my documents after having to go through hell to obtain them. If I had to work that hard for them, my documents were going to be how I wanted them.

Now I'm being told the president is trying to invalidate my documents, that depending on how things go I may be held if I try to go anywhere due to my passport having an X gender marker, that we don't know the ways this will be enforced and whether I will still be able to use my documents or not, and my trans community is saying it's actually my own fault for having an X gender marker in the first place and that I was just begging to be discriminated against by having one.

I am in a very vulnerable position and I should be supported by my own community when anti-trans anti-intersex discrimination targets me and people I care about. Y'all are dropping the ball and abandoning your siblings when we need each other most.

during the pandemic, we invented something we call "astronaut time."

when it's astronaut time, it's like we are two astronauts wearing the big helmets, moving around the station on totally separate tasks. one of us is outside the space station and one of us is inside the space station. our radios do not work and we have no way of communicating with each other. we might see each other through the lil porthole windows, but we ignore each other because we both have different things to do.

"astronaut time" is how we get total privacy when we live in the same apartment. I will pretend you don't exist. You will pretend I don't exist. we have a nonverbal, zero-contact signal for when astronaut time is over (usually "I'll draw a smiley-face on the whiteboard in the kitchen when I'm done"). No talking, stay out of each other's line of sight, we are actively avoiding each other, unless you are currently experiencing a medical emergency goodbye.

it has been. a godsend. imagine living with your partner and being able to close every single tab in your brain related to social interaction. no fear of being interrupted by a "hey, quick question--" or "sorry to bother you, but do you know where the scissors are?" or "did you want something to eat, too?" Once or twice a month, we look at each other lovingly, hold hands, and say "baby I think I need some astronaut time tonight," and the other person goes "okay cool. bye! have a nice night!" and nobody's feelings are hurt and we both go and have a lovely evening completely by ourselves.

i have great news for you! you won't be addressed by it/its pronouns! i will be! lucky for you, these are my pronouns, not yours, and at no point will you ever be referred to by it unless you explicitly ask me to!

whenever i explain that i feel great discomfort and dysphoria being referred to by they, he, or she, these same people suddenly fall silent and have nothing to say. imagine if every time someone told me they use they, he, or she pronouns, my immediate response was "i would be so uncomfortable being called they/he/she, i don't like that."

this reaction is one sided and is only used to target it/its users. no one else. when someone tells you their pronouns are it/its, keep your discomfort to yourself. that is your burden to bear. we have to accept that all pronoun sets, no matter how "normalized" they are, are going to make certain people feel like shit.

when a trans man asks you to use he/him pronouns because she/her pronouns makes him uncomfortable, your gut response isn't to say "he/him pronouns make me uncomfortable, i won't refer to you that way." when a trans woman asks you to use she/her pronouns because he/him pronouns makes her uncomfortable, your first reaction isn't to say "she/her pronouns make me uncomfortable, i'm not going to use them for you."

people can have bad experiences and even trauma with any set of pronouns, this is not exclusive to it/its. there are trans men across the world who feel like absolute shit when people use she/her pronouns for them, there are trans women across the globe who feel like absolute shit when people use he/him pronouns for them. nobody seems to consider this. any pronouns can cause discomfort.

don't single in on it/its users. don't make the first comment out of your mouth be about yourself. don't make someone else's pronouns about you. keep your personal discomfort with those pronouns to yourself. that is not the it/its cross to bear: that is yours. you don't get to decide what pronouns a stranger can and can't use, that's not your choice, you don't get to make it for them.

important addition from the tags:

Her name is Valentina Petrillo and she is a visually-impaired sprinter.