got all gender again today for a while, partly bc i’m struggling with–– public presentation questions, i guess, things about how i actually curate my Self. like: i’m not actually haunted by the knowledge that some people will not pick up on/correctly read/“correctly gender” me based on my presentation, that’s like fine, i didn’t expect near-universal comprehension of my visual/presentational Project at any point regardless of whether it involved gender identity. it’s more that there are things that are clearly curational and that would move toward achieving more of the goals of the project/being more “successful” at coming across in [ways] to people generally. and the thing is that while a lot of the presentational project is about me/my goals/satisfying myself, it’s not like the whole concept of having presentational goals is not in many ways predicated upon having an audience to present to; i do care and care to influence how i am viewed by others, what kinds of intentional choices i appear to be making and how those would seem to coalesce.

the big things are my name and my voice. it’s hard for me to imagine an american-culture-legible person’s name that i would identify with more strongly than gray, which…. i don’t identify with. [birthname] i at once feel more and less strongly about––more simply because of like, built up associative stuff, less because it’s not on its own particularly aesthetically interesting imo and has some amount of cultural/religious gendered baggage or w/e, tho idk that that’s strictly the first association for people who are not like, deep in to bible study or w/e lmao. [if that’s the first association for jews then like whatever, that’s a little better actually, bc i do like that it’s like. pretty jewish. but still ultimately not really me.]

what i like more is, well, as i’ve said–– [static], an unpronounceable symbol, a color, if absolutely necessary maybe a non-name object noun, the word “glass”. but that feels like it foregrounds the gender thing in some pretty ostentatious and visible ways that seem to connote some things that i don’t strictly want to be always connoting. especially in a college context it feels like i’m going to put people into kind of a place of expecting me to be About gender/transness where i don’t really…. want to be. it’s fun to talk about and think about but with like, people who are actually interesting about it, which is …. not most people, and definitely does not include like, my coworkers or heterosexual friends-of-friends. and i feel like i’m therefore caught between using a name i feel neutral at best about but that incurs Difficulty bc name change problems/i still would have to talk about gender, vs using a name that i don’t really like except for ease reasons, and that would also seem to not align with everything else i’m like, doing, in ways that feel jarring/like i’m not being deliberate enough with or succeeding at my concepts, yk? like the problem with birthname is at least partly that it’s just not gendered correctly or occupying an aesthetic space that lines up with my Thing, and i don’t want to seem like a person who doesn’t understand their own Thing enough to line things up with it well, but everything that truly does align with my Thing is, you know, #898989.

so there’s that.

hopefully a faster meditation is that: i know at least sometimes my voice is the thing between me and ~~passing as male~~ since people who just see and don’t hear me will pretty unambiguously address me as sir/bro/etc if i’m wearing even remotely plausible clothing. and i think the Ideal Me would have a slightly lower androgynous-range voice. but like. i do like my voice fine, in a vacuum, and the obvious thing which is T is not uh strictly appealing to me given the range of possible effects both globally and in terms of the fact that in my very limited interpersonal experience, some people end up with voices that are “pitch shifted into male range” but also become … buzzy? or something? i think? in a way i don’t mind at all in other people but would h a t e in myself. and i can’t tell if vocal training is like…. a relevant concept here, especially since most trans ppl going my vocal direction….are on T, and also given that i get vocal strain from like Literally Any Singing and am just maybe not a good candidate for trying to do that. also i am not really feeling irreversibility rn wrt my body, just like generally.