[ti]brain[/ti]Being name indifferent

[Leena]

I hate the whole gendered name thing, and that as a child of Catholics, my first and middle name are very masculine gendered. I totally would have thrived as Shannon or Jamie...

Of course, I could change my name to Shannon or Jamie or some other gender neutral name that was popular for people my age. Even that bothers me, I'd personally prefer to not have a name and only be known by my SSN or some other number...but that's not a possibility. So I'm Paul or Leena depending on the situation, or also PJ or Paulie is good in most situations, but neither of those work for some situations...

[Trinity]

Mar 10, 2019 12:30:23 GMT 8 Leena said:

I hate the whole gendered name thing, and that as a child of Catholics, my first and middle name are very masculine gendered. I totally would have thrived as Shannon or Jamie...

Of course, I could change my name to Shannon or Jamie or some other gender neutral name that was popular for people my age. Even that bothers me, I'd personally prefer to not have a name and only be known by my SSN or some other number...but that's not a possibility. So I'm Paul or Leena depending on the situation, or also PJ or Paulie is good in most situations, but neither of those work for some situations...

I have different names for different places.  And my birth name is andro, funny how that went.

But yeah....

And pronouns can be strange.

Fluid must be a wierd place to be at times.

[Leena]

The gender I'm flipped to often doesn't match the gender I'm presenting as. I sometimes forget how I'm presenting when I'm out.

I kind of like presenting in such a way that I can quickly switch my presentation by putting on or taking off a jacket or sweater...though that's not always practical.

Somehow the idea of correcting people on my name or pronouns makes me more dysphoric than people using the wrong ones. I don't really want to give people the power to make me unhappy by saying a word.

This isn't how most trans and non-binary people seem to be though, and I don't want to imply deadnaming or using the wrong pronouns for other trans and non-binary people is OK.

I'm just curious if anyone else is name indifferent.

[Ativan Prescribed]

I pretty much am, I am so used to using Ativan that it is the name I have given people if they ask when I am out and about.
I use it when I order stuff online a lot of times, especially if it is probably a one off thing, but then the debit card thing comes up, but it clears and then I am Ativan again.
But thats just a handy to use name that I needed a long time ago, so it isn't like it feels right either.
My SSN would be better as well.
And there are a lot of variants for my real name, and those roll around yet they never quite come to the surface.
An odd name would be OK, Jet, Attack Dog, What, You?, Spidermonkey, just anything that would stop people in their tracks and ask again, I can do that stuff straight faced for hours.
I used to tell people my name was Akmod, however you want to spell it.
Just a running joke in the bars I hung out in, I am middle eastern but born in Germany to Americans so I am an american and not middle eastern, that gets a wtf look.
Then that just goes into whatever ridiculous thing I want my life to be, I'd get a few people standing around and listening, asking questions, I'd tell them to get me another beer as long as they are getting one for themselves.
They would, I'd get free beer so long as I could keep the story going, and it was on the level of tall tales to be sure, so a straight face was needed.
I used other names too to spin a story, and that was an offshoot of bored at work doing sales so we would do these stories and see how long we could keep a straight face, and the story always had to one up the other guys.
So going to the bar after a day at work was sometimes just a continuation of the same game, but I did win it a lot.
So the fantasy stuff of a different name is easy enough, but it isn't like it is going to be satisfying and a done deal.
And here changing everything on the records can be done in one motion, it's just a signature away.
Once you start it and it is always a done thing, no matter what you want for a name, you can request that old records have the name change as well.
But the state and the feds have access to the old name.

[Leena]

I might not be as name and pronoun indifferent if I were presenting fully feminine. If I were to change it legally it would probably be to Pauleena though I don't know that I will ever do that. It really depends on if I ever start being comfortable presenting fully feminine and want to be able to have an ID that matches my presentation.

It seems like that is a long way away, I don't like that I can't do it and have to do guy mode or androgynous instead when that's not how I'm feeling most of the time.

That all said, Pauleena is what people used to call me at an old job where I was forced to present fully masculine. They even changed it on the electronic time clock and spelled it that way. Kids at elementary school used to call me Paula, among other things. I like Pauleena better than Paula so I'm not indifferent to that, but it's funny how other people used to gender me correctly as kind of a not funny joke when I was younger and didn't want them to, but gender me masculine now when I don't want them to.

[Von]

It's funny you say you might've thrived as a Shannon - That happens to be my birth name. Tadaaaaaaaa.

I used to be neutral on it; but people were always mis-hearing me when I spoke, whether it's because I have a hard to understand speech pattern, or they're HoH, I'd get called Sheri or Sharon a lot. Sometimes Cheryl. Pissed me off.
I always knew Shannon could be for either sex, having grown up with a boy Shannon in primary school.

But nobody ever treated it that way? The guy I knew got shit about his name all the time after we grew up a little, and was constantly compared to me, which I think is why he and his friends always bullied me as kids.

The final straw was a few years ago now... Pulling up to a McDonald's with my BF, I was paying, so I handed him my debit card to give the cashier. Who looks at it, hands it back without charging it and says "This is stolen, Shannon is a GIRL'S name!" Besides being indescribably pissed off, I leaned into view and said, "It's MINE. Run it."

It was just forever tainted past that point.
Forget the name screw ups, being what my abusive mother decided I should be called...
That was just it - I couldn't stand it anymore.

Even when I picked my new name, I gave "evidence" to my BF that it was "also a girl's name" by showing a percentage of children named Von in the world, leaning toward female. He still battled it for months.
His grandmother still calls me Shannon all over Facebook when my name is changed on there. I stopped speaking to her.

So I guess... I REALLY care what I'm called.

[Ativan Prescribed]

It does depend on the intent and the strength of that in the names we are called, intent can be light hearted, or mean as fuck.
But we also get to have all the usual names that are the in general kind of names as well, the faggot queer kinda stuff, I know there is more than that, to lazy to think about it right now.
So proper names are one facet of all the things we all get called growing up, and they change with the times, the popularity of them just like proper names do.
What was once a girls name is now a boys name and so on, and people will use what is easiest and display their ignorance at any given chance about what a name is.
To that end, names to me are not a reflection of the person, although many of us can change our name to one we want, most won't, just don't hear their name the same as they grow up.
It is the cruelest though to screw with a person's proper name, it isn't theirs, it is their parents who gave it to them and it is a reflection of them and not the person.

[Leena]

I knew just as many guy Shannons as girl Shannons, and one of the guy Shannons was very popular at my high school. I thought having a name like that would be great, but maybe not.

Yeah, Paul wasn't my choice, I hated it as a kid. I really thought I would switch away from it completely with Veronica, but somehow I don't have a real connection to that name, and I considered a lot of other ones as well, but the same thing. They just don't feel like my name. That people at work called me Pauleena in the past makes it feel more like my name.

Pauleena is my name. Maybe I should be less name and pronoun indifferent, I just don't feel confident doing it, especially how I currently present. I might after another year of electrolysis, but that will likely mean getting a job as Paul to pay for it.

[charley83]

I still go by my very feminine name on a daily basis. I do use the name Charley alot just because its a name that picked me. Well sorta lol. In high school when before I knew what being NB was and I dressed very androgynous my friends called me charley and it stuck. It didnt help that my last name was brown. I'm very indifferent to my given name and because I have dealt with it my whole life and have been teased constantly ive learned to live with it.

My name is April. Yeah very gender specific and I was a child when teenage mutant ninja turtles came out and my birthday is 6 months away from that month so yeah I got teased.

When I cgose names for my kids I picked out bames that were gender neutral or coyld be slightly modified. I didnt want to force a specific gender on my kids.

[Ativan Prescribed]

My names are both tied to specific things, one is a huge one that caused a lot to change their names, but not all, overall there are less than a thousand, by far, in the world.
First name is because my mother liked a movie star at the time, and there is no mistaking it as anything but male.
But I have used different names on and off all my life, I hate both of my names and the middle one is no prize either.
Last name was shortened to a different sounding name, the first name was there, but nicknames came and went, most knew me by one or two of them.
I'm very sensitize about my last name, it is still being used to set precedence in the courts, and it isn't the name, it was the first time that it came up I suppose like it did, but that was ages ago and they can't let it go.
First name can have a feminine version of it, but not really, but people tried and that never went very far, so just stuck with it pretty much.
I am at the point of wanting to entirely change it into something bland that doesn't stick out, mostly because all the old, even the family, are gone from my life and I don't want the association with them anymore, the ass clowns, all of them.

[Becky]

My real first name is Matthew, and IRL it's the name I go by every day. There is NO WAY I'm going to try out Maddie or Matilda - ugh. And don't get me started on my last name. I'm not ready to reveal it here, but let's just say that it's one of the most genderqueer last names possible, and opened me up to a LOT of teasing all through my school years.

My parents chose Rebecca as my name if I had been born a girl, and I really like the sound and feel of Becky. It may not ever be my legal name, but I've really come to love it here on the forum.

[charley83]

Mar 29, 2019 10:48:04 GMT 8 Becky said:

My real first name is Matthew, and IRL it's the name I go by every day. There is NO WAY I'm going to try out Maddie or Matilda - ugh. And don't get me started on my last name. I'm not ready to reveal it here, but let's just say that it's one of the most genderqueer last names possible, and opened me up to a LOT of teasing all through my school years.

My parents chose Rebecca as my name if I had been born a girl, and I really like the sound and feel of Becky. It may not ever be my legal name, but I've really come to love it here on the forum.

My daughters name is Mattilynn. He dads middle name is Matthew and mine is Lynn so we combines them and she mainly goes by Mattie but will also answer to Matt or a variation of her middle name Michelle.

[Taka]

I have a rather rare female name which is often misheard as a way more common male name. It's funny, the puzzled look some people get until I repeat my name and they hear it's not what they thought they heard. But the funniest story is when my boss called me her husband's name, almost out of nowhere. Our names are really similar enough for such a mistake to happen.

My daughter has a female name,which she seems sufficiently happy with. When she wanted to be a boy at 3,I asked qhat I should call her, and she'd rather only change her social gender, not her name. When she wanted to be a boy at 6-7, I told her it would make more sense to use the boy's name I had chosen before she was born. She thought about it, and decided that she didn't need to become that much of a boy. I think her reasons were social both times, and that just means that society really is able to make gender roles suck gor kids.


My youngest brother changed his name completely a few years ago. He never really identified with his given name, and saw no reason to keep it after his parents got divorced. Even cis people can have trouble with their names.

It's unfair that western cultures don't really allow name changes and insist on gendered names. I like the inuit naming tradition, where a child gets the name of the last person who died. The name itself never dies that way, the person lives ob in a really interesting way, but not as a gender. A little girl could be proud to the strong huntsman in an old picture.

But there really should be more name changing rituals in western culture. Kids should get to choose a new name when they start school, for their confirmation, at all sorts of important occasions in life.

[Leena]

Apr 8, 2019 5:15:55 GMT 8 Taka said:

I have a rather rare female name which is often misheard as a way more common male name. It's funny, the puzzled look some people get until I repeat my name and they hear it's not what they thought they heard. But the funniest story is when my boss called me her husband's name, almost out of nowhere. Our names are really similar enough for such a mistake to happen.

My daughter has a female name,which she seems sufficiently happy with. When she wanted to be a boy at 3,I asked qhat I should call her, and she'd rather only change her social gender, not her name. When she wanted to be a boy at 6-7, I told her it would make more sense to use the boy's name I had chosen before she was born. She thought about it, and decided that she didn't need to become that much of a boy. I think her reasons were social both times, and that just means that society really is able to make gender roles suck gor kids.


My youngest brother changed his name completely a few years ago. He never really identified with his given name, and saw no reason to keep it after his parents got divorced. Even cis people can have trouble with their names.

It's unfair that western cultures don't really allow name changes and insist on gendered names. I like the inuit naming tradition, where a child gets the name of the last person who died. The name itself never dies that way, the person lives ob in a really interesting way, but not as a gender. A little girl could be proud to the strong huntsman in an old picture.

But there really should be more name changing rituals in western culture. Kids should get to choose a new name when they start school, for their confirmation, at all sorts of important occasions in life.

I don't know, I don't like choosing a name period. This strangely makes me more dysphoric than a lot of other things. Having multiple times to choose one would make things much worse. We didn't do separate confirmation names at my Catholic church when it came time, though they did it at the one we went to when my sister was that age, I guess I lucked out on that at least...

I'm not even sure if being name and pronoun indifferent is all that good of an idea. It seems to be quite the opposite of how most binary trans people act, and most non-binary people as well. That said, I think defending your name and pronouns when transphobes isn't really a good look. It just lets them play the bully and win. Having any sort of reaction to what they say is what they want.

[charley83]

I dont think I could have picked out a mote masculine name or even a gender neutral name on my own. I lucked into the name Charley. My surname was brown and when I was a teen all my friends and some family started calling me charley brown. I really liked it and it felt more me than April so I used it.