A Little (Or a Lot) on Labels

So, recently I decided to write down everything I was feeling about who and what I was, and ended up writing quite a bit more than I'd expected. Here are some snippets of a few relevant things for this class, such as: names that I've used/preferred, pronouns, orientation labels, etc...

"My biological name is Patricia Leeann McGown. I am biologically female. I was born on December 10, 1992 to a Christian background. Almost exactly two years later, my brother was born. During my life so far, all seventeen years, I’ve learned a lot about who and what I am. It’s been a long, drawn out process. I’ve done some stuff that I’m not exactly proud of, and I lie a lot to hide from the things that I’m ashamed of.

Over the years, I’ve acquired quite a set of pseudonyms and nicknames that I’ll answer to. Some of them are from the internet, some of them make sense, and some of them are from God knows where in my mind. Here’s all the ones I remember right now:

• Tricia
• Trish
• Tish-Tish
• Patty
• Pa
• Trishy
• Squishy Trishy
• Clarke Alessane
• Reppy
• Dear
• Lonnie Leeann
• Leanna Crescent
• Clarke Classified
• Drew

I was in eighth grade when I discovered the Gay Straight Alliance in my school. Up until then, I’d been a Christian, in the Club for Christ, and I was everything a mother would ask for. I was a girl, I acted like one, I played feminine sports like volleyball, and I wore my hair long when I could, otherwise I curled or flat ironed it every morning. I was a straight girl. And then I realized that I liked girls. It was actually a very sore thumb moment. I remember waking up one morning and thinking to myself, “You’re going to Hell because you don’t just like boys.” That one was a shock, and I kept it to myself all through high school. Well, from my parents at least.

I started the coming out process (as bisexual) somewhere toward the end of my eighth grade year. I came out to Caroline, Gabby, Elena, and a couple other close friends. And then, at eighth grade promotion, I decided to tell Christine B. that I had a crush on her. She said she was flattered. I also begged her not to tell anyone because my family would find out, and I was terrified of that. And then summer came, and I ignored school for a straight three months. Everything was fine. I was happy and accepting of myself. I started looking up being bisexual and educated myself about the community. I came back from summer ready for high school.

Except when I started coming to summer volleyball practices, I noticed that I was being avoided. Nobody patted me on the butt when I made a fantastic block or crushed in practice. I saw girls doing it to everyone but me. I got no high fives, no butt pats, not even good jobs. When we took water breaks, I would go to the girl’s locker room to drink my water, otherwise the girls would look at me funny and not use the water fountain after me. So I finally asked someone. The response I got was, “We know you like girls, Tricia.” I was astounded. How did everyone know? I talked to Caroline, who talked to a couple other people, and we realized that Christine B. had told Laura W. that I was bisexual, and Laura told the entire tennis team, who, over the summer, had managed to tell everyone who was an entering freshman that I liked girls.

Not the greatest way to start off freshman year. So I was alone. I ate alone. There was no Gay-Straight Alliance. I thought, if this is what it’s like to be bisexual, I hate it. I joined the water polo team freshman year. The plus side to freshman year was water polo. Nobody seemed to care who I liked.

Starting my sophomore year, I was determined not to let my sexuality be the reason I had no friends. I started to tell people when I met them that I was bisexual until the whole school knew, and I became the president of the Gay-Straight Alliance. I worked with it for three years and set it up so that I would still be involved, no matter what. Which, coincidentally, meant that I was doing a lot of research about sexuality. Sometime between my sophomore and junior year in high school, I discovered pansexuality and things started to make sense. I’d heard of trans people, and I wondered who exactly would love them. I thought that I would if I could, and I realized that I did. Pansexuality seemed to just slip into place better than bi, and I was, by the end of my junior year, calling myself a pansexual girl, but I also said that I was a gay man in a gay woman’s body. I had no idea how true that was.

Senior year came and went, and college started. At Occidental, I realized how easy it was to be me. I could discover myself without the fear of being labeled. I could cut my hair short if I wanted to, wear what I wanted, and say what I wanted about myself without being shut down. So I did. I wear my hair short, I refer to myself in sometimes feminine pronouns, and sometimes masculine. I have discovered what I am, even if it’s got a lot of labels. I am the following:

• panromantic
• demisexual (or, more correctly to the asexual community, a “grey A”)
• transgender (in that I am bi-gendered/genderqueer)
• female-bodied, androgyne-identified (aka: biologically female, but feels androgynous...most days)
• queer
• African-American
• Irish

But more importantly, I am human. I deserve the same rights that everyone should have. I want to be able to get married to whomever I fall in love with, with the pronouns that the both of us prefer (at the time, forever, whatever [it shouldn’t matter]). I should be able to get married to whomever I fall in love with.

The labels shouldn’t be important to me.

I am a part of the LGBTQQIAAPD+ community, and damn it, I’m proud of who I am. I refuse to hide me anymore. I’m out to my parents as bisexual. I did it. That’s the big one, right? I did it. I’m out to my friends. I’m out on campus.

I am Patricia/Tricia/Lonnie/Clarke/Drew/Whatever I feel like calling myself, and I’m human.

It’s taken me seventeen years, eleven months, and fifteen days to say it, write it all down, understand, and accept it."

This is what labels have done in and with my life. Now, if we were to take a moment to think about what labels are doing for all kinds of other people in the world right now, what kind of a place would this be?

PS, this is a super interesting article (10 pages long, but worth your time when you have some) on Theories of Sexual Orientation. Take a look!