Yeah, being a woman with body hair sucks, but try being a woman with noticeable facial hair, its a whole fucking thing. You can avoid everything else, like I just haven't worn anything shorter than full jeans in public since i was 15 and that works (sucks in the summer, but it works), but until very recently you couldn't avoid people seeing your face, and everybody on earth thinks its their fucking business. I remember that towards the end of school I was the only girl there that wasn't blonde and didn't wax/shave my face. It was fucking mental, other literal children were asking me why i didn't put in hours of work to toe the line of sexist beauty standards.
It’s crazy how early kids start to pick up on gender role shit.
When I was in first grade in the mid 90s, i liked to cook with my mom and grandmother so my mom bought me an ez bake oven bc she thought it would be a simple fun thing for me at that age.
Anyway I was talking about it to my friend and at 5 or 6 i already felt the pressure to denounce it to my male friend and was like “haha yeah my mom bought me a girl toy.”
My mom over heard me and felt like she messed up and was probably embarrassed so she said we could take it back no worries, but the tragic thing is I was genuinely super excited to play with that toy with my mom. It still breaks my heart thinking about it and how insensitive I was about it.
Comrade, i hope you're prepared for a wall of text that might be better as its own post, because i don't really know where i stand with pronouns either, and i might be typing this more for me than anyone else, sorry lmao. Also, it could be a little bit hard to explain given that my experience of gender is entitely wound up in lesbianism.
Lesbians and gender have a long history together, hell, the fundamental lesbian text Stone Butch Blues and one of the fundamental historical trans books Beyond Pink Or Blue are written by the same person, Leslie Feinberg, an icon of both communities simultaneously. Zie put a coherent voice on something that was pretty common in the community at the time, the idea that being gay (especially as a woman) inherently comes with an element of gender nonconformity.
We live in a misogynistic society that almost entirely defined women around the concept of men, and, more importantly, around facilitating hetrosexual relationships (and the exploitation of free domestic and reproductive labour within those relationships) with men - look up any definition of feminity/womanhood, and you'll see: nuturing will be on there, something about being naturally cleanly or caring or empathetic, quiet, invested in physical appearance - almost every trait listed will be "useful" to men in some way. This type of shit. As much as people might be trying to change that idea now, it was absolutely the norm for fucking centuries.
So what is a woman when they can't fulfil that societally designated function? For a while, it was an idea amongst homophobes that lesbians, especially butches, weren't real women. Or that we were women 'wrong'. They didn't like it at all when we were like "yeah sure maybe lmao" (although, of course, for slightly different reasons). Hence non-binary, transmasc, and they/them/he/him/neopronoun lesbians being suprisingly common.
To steal a blogpost that always Hit for me:
I’m very uncomfortable with being called non-binary because my standard answer to “what’s your gender” is lesbian/butch and my pronouns are he/him. I respect NB lesbians but I’m not NB. I’m not trans. I’m not cis either. I inhabit a bizarre space, a corner into which I was backed by the heteropatriarchy, and ideally this space should not exist at all. Naming it legitimizes it. It’s not normal that so many lesbians feel alienated from womanhood and feel that they can’t exist as women because of who they are. I know that if breasts weren’t considered almost only as loci of male pleasure in our culture I probably wouldn’t be dysphoric about them. I know that the reasons I can’t call myself “woman” without flinching are all linked to the violence the heteropatriarchy has enacted upon me since I was born and to the trauma of growing up as a butch in a world that hated me. I was psychologically mutilated; why would I want a name for this? Most importantly, why would I insult NB lesbians by acting like their identity is in any way comparable to the way I feel about womanhood? A non-binary lesbian has a concrete gender identity that they can usually name or at least describe; I just have a gaping hole where people reached in and tore out something I will never get back. It’s immensely different.
Feeling alienated from your (supposed) gender when that gender has been/is used as a vehicle for oppression, objectification, and demands of hetrosexuality is pretty normal, regardless of whether or not you actually are that gender (ngl it makes it pretty hard to tell if you're a different gender, or just reasonably uncomfortable with uncomfortable shit).
When a friend refers to me with he/him irl, they do it in the full knowledge that i'm not a man, and i'm fairly sure that anyone else in real life who overhears or assumes those pronouns does so knowing that, whatever the fuck i may be, i'm certainly not cishet, which is enough for me. Large swathes of my life only make sense given the context of being a butch/gnc lesbian; being noticeably non-cishet is important to me because, for better or for worse, it has informed so much of who i am and where i wound up - i don't think i'd be the same person (and i absolutely wouldn't be in the same situation in life) otherwise.
In real life, no matter what i do, i could never be seen like that, but online its extremely easy for people to assume you're a cishet man (pronouns or no pronouns) which robs some of what i say of context, as well as just feeling incorrect on my end; irl i am transgressive of people's ideas of gender just by existing, and that, at this point, is something i've come to like, its a solid 'fuck you' as far as i'm concerned, whereas online i fly under the radar in that regard in a way that makes me kind of uncomfortable. Hy/hym sees to that. It sounds the way i like, but with a caveat of being obviously and unavoidably lgbt.
TL;DR
There's no pronoun for "Lesbian, But Honestly At This Point My Relationship With Women Is The Only Reason I Might Ever Class Myself As A Woman", or "I Don't Know, But I've Dealt With Enough Misogynistic Bullshit That 'She/her' Grates On The Ears Now". Hy/hym, to me, essentially means he/him* where that asterix leads to "*but not a binary man". And that'll do for now.
Basically, i know i'm not a man because i'm a lesbian - i have no idea if i'm non-binary or maybe somewhat trans-masc, i don't know, and quite honestly i don't fucking care. I know i like he/him, but don't want to step on the toes of transmen or non-binary people, nor do i want to be mistaken for a cis man because so much of my life experience and who i am is wrapped up in removedry, homophobia, and/or being afab and gnc. (If you were asking what those pronouns mean in a more general sense, like to other people, i have no idea, but i've mainly seen them being used by other butch lesbians and/or masculine nonbinary people, so i would guess its something similar; "male" pronouns, but not a man.)
edit: this website won't let me call myself a d*ke :angery:
Wow, thank you! That's putting yourself out there a lot. But it makes total sense. I've never heard of the idea of lesbian as gender but I get it when you explain it like that.
Yeah, being a woman with body hair sucks, but try being a woman with noticeable facial hair, its a whole fucking thing. You can avoid everything else, like I just haven't worn anything shorter than full jeans in public since i was 15 and that works (sucks in the summer, but it works), but until very recently you couldn't avoid people seeing your face, and everybody on earth thinks its their fucking business. I remember that towards the end of school I was the only girl there that wasn't blonde and didn't wax/shave my face. It was fucking mental, other literal children were asking me why i didn't put in hours of work to toe the line of sexist beauty standards.
It’s crazy how early kids start to pick up on gender role shit.
When I was in first grade in the mid 90s, i liked to cook with my mom and grandmother so my mom bought me an ez bake oven bc she thought it would be a simple fun thing for me at that age.
Anyway I was talking about it to my friend and at 5 or 6 i already felt the pressure to denounce it to my male friend and was like “haha yeah my mom bought me a girl toy.”
My mom over heard me and felt like she messed up and was probably embarrassed so she said we could take it back no worries, but the tragic thing is I was genuinely super excited to play with that toy with my mom. It still breaks my heart thinking about it and how insensitive I was about it.
Hopefully this thread's an alright place to ask - what is the significance/meaning of hy/hym pronouns?
Comrade, i hope you're prepared for a wall of text that might be better as its own post, because i don't really know where i stand with pronouns either, and i might be typing this more for me than anyone else, sorry lmao. Also, it could be a little bit hard to explain given that my experience of gender is entitely wound up in lesbianism.
Lesbians and gender have a long history together, hell, the fundamental lesbian text Stone Butch Blues and one of the fundamental historical trans books Beyond Pink Or Blue are written by the same person, Leslie Feinberg, an icon of both communities simultaneously. Zie put a coherent voice on something that was pretty common in the community at the time, the idea that being gay (especially as a woman) inherently comes with an element of gender nonconformity.
We live in a misogynistic society that almost entirely defined women around the concept of men, and, more importantly, around facilitating hetrosexual relationships (and the exploitation of free domestic and reproductive labour within those relationships) with men - look up any definition of feminity/womanhood, and you'll see: nuturing will be on there, something about being naturally cleanly or caring or empathetic, quiet, invested in physical appearance - almost every trait listed will be "useful" to men in some way. This type of shit. As much as people might be trying to change that idea now, it was absolutely the norm for fucking centuries.
So what is a woman when they can't fulfil that societally designated function? For a while, it was an idea amongst homophobes that lesbians, especially butches, weren't real women. Or that we were women 'wrong'. They didn't like it at all when we were like "yeah sure maybe lmao" (although, of course, for slightly different reasons). Hence non-binary, transmasc, and they/them/he/him/neopronoun lesbians being suprisingly common.
To steal a blogpost that always Hit for me:
Feeling alienated from your (supposed) gender when that gender has been/is used as a vehicle for oppression, objectification, and demands of hetrosexuality is pretty normal, regardless of whether or not you actually are that gender (ngl it makes it pretty hard to tell if you're a different gender, or just reasonably uncomfortable with uncomfortable shit).
When a friend refers to me with he/him irl, they do it in the full knowledge that i'm not a man, and i'm fairly sure that anyone else in real life who overhears or assumes those pronouns does so knowing that, whatever the fuck i may be, i'm certainly not cishet, which is enough for me. Large swathes of my life only make sense given the context of being a butch/gnc lesbian; being noticeably non-cishet is important to me because, for better or for worse, it has informed so much of who i am and where i wound up - i don't think i'd be the same person (and i absolutely wouldn't be in the same situation in life) otherwise. In real life, no matter what i do, i could never be seen like that, but online its extremely easy for people to assume you're a cishet man (pronouns or no pronouns) which robs some of what i say of context, as well as just feeling incorrect on my end; irl i am transgressive of people's ideas of gender just by existing, and that, at this point, is something i've come to like, its a solid 'fuck you' as far as i'm concerned, whereas online i fly under the radar in that regard in a way that makes me kind of uncomfortable. Hy/hym sees to that. It sounds the way i like, but with a caveat of being obviously and unavoidably lgbt.
TL;DR
There's no pronoun for "Lesbian, But Honestly At This Point My Relationship With Women Is The Only Reason I Might Ever Class Myself As A Woman", or "I Don't Know, But I've Dealt With Enough Misogynistic Bullshit That 'She/her' Grates On The Ears Now". Hy/hym, to me, essentially means he/him* where that asterix leads to "*but not a binary man". And that'll do for now.
Basically, i know i'm not a man because i'm a lesbian - i have no idea if i'm non-binary or maybe somewhat trans-masc, i don't know, and quite honestly i don't fucking care. I know i like he/him, but don't want to step on the toes of transmen or non-binary people, nor do i want to be mistaken for a cis man because so much of my life experience and who i am is wrapped up in removedry, homophobia, and/or being afab and gnc. (If you were asking what those pronouns mean in a more general sense, like to other people, i have no idea, but i've mainly seen them being used by other butch lesbians and/or masculine nonbinary people, so i would guess its something similar; "male" pronouns, but not a man.)
edit: this website won't let me call myself a d*ke :angery:
Wow, thank you! That's putting yourself out there a lot. But it makes total sense. I've never heard of the idea of lesbian as gender but I get it when you explain it like that.
just wanted to butt in to say that your perspective is a fascinating window into your lived experiences, thank you for sharing it