Trans and Non Binary Name Help

Did you have a bad day? Are you feeling dysphoric? Do you feel uncomfortable or sad because you aren’t accepted and loved like you deserve to be?

Well come on down, folks, and get yourselves some free validation!

Here’s how it works:

Send an ask with your pronouns and your chosen name. (It’s totally fine if you wanna leave out your name. Anons are welcome.)

If you want, include other information like your gender or something you might be upset about at the moment.

Wait for that sweet, sweet validation to come your way!

As I mentioned, this is open to anyone. People any age, race, ethnicity, gender identity, sexual orientation, or any other sort of background can send an ask. I encourage anyone who wants to share advice or experiences to please do so, whether via submitting a post or commenting on someone else’s ask.

I hope to be meeting and helping some of you guys soon!

Love,

its time to step the fuck up and really understand that nonbinary looks like anybody. nonbinary looks like you. nonbinary looks like your family and friends and it looks like the strangers who you thoughtlessly call “he” or “she” because of their appearance.

really supporting nonbinary people means understanding that theres no visual tell - you wont recognise all of us as nonbinary on sight. you have to actually LISTEN to us. you have to BELIEVE us. and it means challenging your assumptions about gender, starting with the assumption that youre an ally to trans people while youre still doing puerile shit like gendering body parts and clothes.

but like…Becky, of course LGBTQ+ people existed before Stonewall. We’ve all existed since the beginning of time. But the movement got a shock to its senses, a jump-start, a rocket-into-space when that glass shattered via Marsha P. Johnson, and when Sylvia Rivera was up on-stage protesting guess who was on the sidelines heckling her?

Calm Harm can be tailored to your needs and will provide strategies to help you get past those crucial moments of wanting to harm.

It’s also totally FREE.

These kind of questions are never bothering me, don’t worry! I’m glad to be able to offer some advice. Here’s the tips that came to mind:

If you want some more options, search for baby names. It depends exactly what kind of name you’re looking for, but one tip I’d suggest is searching for the most popular names in your birth year. This is a really good option if you’re looking for a good, traditional name, and it might bring up some new suggestions.

Another thing that might influence your name choice is the meaning you want your name to have. This is one of the nice little things about choosing a name for yourself. The meaning behind your name might go deeper than the literal meaning of the name, the meaning of your name can include sentimental meaning. For example, I chose Carteret as my middle name. Carteret is not only the name of my favourite towns to visit on holiday, but it’s also a common surname on the island where I grew up. In this way, Carteret has a sentimental meaning to me because of the connection to my home and my travels. 

(My first name, Beckett, apparently means bee cottage. You can tell I didn’t choose that based on meaning.)

Now this one is entirely dependent on whether or not you’re out to your family. If you’re not, disregard this point entirely. If you are, ask your parents’ opinion! Remember that it is ultimately your decision, but involving your parents in the name choosing process can be a real bonding experience and also harks back to the tradition of your parents deciding your name. Aside from that, having a second opinion is always helpful when making decisions.

Try it out! Either in person, amongst whoever you’re out to, or online, using services like @trans-names-help. Most people don’t have that fabled “Eureka!” moment, so trying out your different name options for a short while really helps you to get a feeling for what you think might suit you in the long run. This is actually how I started, by going to a similar blog for name validation and then asking people online to call me ‘Beckett’ for a short while so I could see how it felt. That was over two years ago; clearly, it stuck.

Some other blogs that you might find useful are @transnameadvice, @transnamesuggestions, @transnamehelp, @trans-nonb-nameadvice, @transgendernamesuggestions, @trans-nb-names and more!

As some of you know, I am a makeup artist in a holistic beauty boutique in a very wealthy area of eastern New York. The week before Halloween I was offering simple costume makeup designs for both adults and children. So my last client of the evening was a 15 year old girl who came in to get her makeup done for the Halloween dance at her school. I was enjoying a conversation with both the girl and her mother when suddenly the topic of transgender came up. I got a little nervous because I have a hard time keeping my mouth shut when I hear people speaking negatively about these sorts of topics and as I mentioned, my store is in a very upscale, white, conservative area…

Anyway, the girl starts telling us that her friend prefers to be a boy now. She says it very simply and comfortably and it made me happy to see her talk about it as if it was really no big deal.

Her mother says

“How does she even know what transgender is though? She’s a little young to be making a decision like that. I really think the media is taking things too far with all this gay stuff. I’m not against it or anything, but didn’t you just tell me two boys in your class are dating too?”

The girl said that yes, two boys she knew were dating and another boy she knew was gay also. (And she also corrected the pronouns her mother used for her friend)

“I don’t mind that she knows that homosexuality is,” the mother said. “But I don’t think it should be taught at such a young age. Did you know it’s on Disney channel now?”

It took me a moment to respond, I just kept painting the girl’s face until I could figure out what I wanted to say.

“Well,” I said. “We tend to teach heterosexuality literally from the time a child is born. Most children’s books and movies are even centered around a romance of some kind like a Prince and a Princess for example. There’s rarely a children’s movie that comes out where the main male and female character don’t end up marrying each other in the end. If we don’t have a problem flooding our children’s minds with heterosexuality from the time they are able to sit up and watch a movie on their own, what is so wrong with showing them two boys or two girls being in love? We aren’t showing them sex. We aren’t showing them anything inappropriate. Since when is love inappropriate? If we show them love in all it’s forms (be it gay or straight) from an early age, they will see that it’s all perfectly normal and natural and maybe we can finally put homophobic the past…”

The woman considered this for a second and then said “I just feel like they see it and then they start to think that they might be too.”

“And maybe they are. But isn’t it better for them to know that it’s okay? They aren’t hurting anyone.”

Then the girl said. “No ones going around just thinking they are gay because they know what gay is, mom. I know what a chicken is, that doesn’t mean I’m going to wake up tomorrow and start clucking.”

This is an attempt to collect as much information as possible about nonbinary people’s pronouns.

This survey opened on 2017-08-19, and will stay open until there are less than 10 responses per day. I will then process the responses into some useful statistics and lists, and publish them.