Self-Organizing Man

I had a rather ugly argument with my family recently after both my father and my sister used my legal name and refused to understand how unpleasant I found that. That, and the question of whether I should insist in writing that midwives at my confinement call me "Nick", have set me to thinking about names and identity.

Most of my cisgendered friends cannot see what the big deal is. So my family call me by the wrong name? They don’t mean anything by it. As for wanting to be called Nick in the delivery room, one friend suggested that I would have far more to worry about than mere names.

My trans and trans-aware friends, of course, can see the big deal. So much so that I feel guilty at the way I explained the problem to them. I referred to my legal name as "my girl name", and with that choice of words implied that the acceptance I’m looking for, the acceptance that my family are deliberately or accidentally withholding, is of my male identity.

Like so much in life, it’s more complicated than that. My legal name, to me, represents a person I no longer believe exists, but it wouldn’t be accurate to say that she was female and I’m male. She was reticent about expressing her male side because she feared it would alienate people she cared about; I claim my male identity with pride and reason that although I may care about those I alienate, they possibly don’t care about me. But the distinction doesn’t just exist for gender.

[My legal name] believed she could live like "normal" people. She dreamed of a nuclear family, of a traditional wedding, of a home life more or less like the ones she saw on TV. I know that a "normal" life is beyond my reach. Although I often sigh for traditional-style romance and family life, I understand that I could only achieve them at a cost too great to be worth paying: I would have to sacrifice my identity.

I admire a lot of what [my legal name] stood for. Letting go of her dreams is hard, and I haven’t completely managed it yet. And that’s the reason why I’m so adamant that people don’t use that name any more. Every time someone slips and calls me by her name, it reawakens her ghost inside me, and I slip back a little into the old ways.

It’s hard to explain this. People on the outside can’t see the huge changes that have happened inside me, and so can’t understand why I need to draw this line. One friend insisted that [my legal name] still exists because I have bank accounts and credit cards in her name. If I had the courage for a formal name change, it might be easier to insist on Nick, but it would leave most people more baffled than ever.

Gender dysphoria is a useful excuse. "Don’t call me [my legal name]; that’s a girl’s name and I’m not a girl any more," is a simple enough explanation. But it is, at best, a half-truth. My need to draw this line arises from the changes I’ve been through in the last year and a half, and although these changes have shaped my understanding and expression of my gender, they aren’t directly connected to it.

When psychiatrists make my gender the biggest issue and all others secondary, it infuriates me. And yet, how can I blame them, when I yield so readily to the temptation to hide behind the gender label?