Still Would

Eliot Page has come out as trans, with he/they pronouns.

I'm still confused as to the significance of this. I'm a straight guy and I totally would still sleep with Eliot Page. I've noticed a lot more "females" who otherwise present as extremely feminine adopt the non-binary nomenclature. I've been on dates with them because I still find them attractive but when they mention they're enbys I just think "What am I supposed to do with this information?" Like literally why should I care? Not because I'm annoyed but I just don't get it. It's like revealing to me the brand of shampoo you use.

I tried but I just cannot comprehend the concept of "gender identity". Almost every time I dive into learning more about enbys and associated gender talk, I come away with the conclusion that I'm apparently an enby because I can't comprehend the idea of a gender identity. I'm fine with saying I express myself in a masculine manner (to wit: tall, big beard, deep sexy podcast voice, etc) but I just draw a complete blank when you ask me if I feel like a particular gender identity.

On a parallel note, I think it will be interesting to see how every grapples with so-called "deadnaming". I had a trans friend who went by [Slightly Male Name], and at one point they changed it to [More Ambiguous Name]. I didn't draw the connection the name change to their trans identity. In fact, I'm Arab and so are they, and my mind went to the common practice of "Americanizing" one's Arabic name when it proves too frustrating for others to pronounce. So I'm hanging out with a group of friends and I relay a story about my trans friend but I say something like "I was with X, but I think you know them as Y". Well one person took me aside and gave me a stern talking to about "deadnaming" trans individuals. I was just at a loss, and asked "How are people supposed to know who you're talking about?"

The person that gave me the stern talking to was also themselves enby and/or trans. They were confident in their assertion that I did a Bad Thing up until I mentioned the Arab immigrant angle and they backed down and then suddenly wondered if it was them that did the bad thing (it’s hard to remember the oppression hierarchy). I did ask them "how are you supposed to know who I'm talking about?" because I wanted best practices on how to handle this in the future and the best they could give me was to ask the person who changed their names for advice (I didn't chase that wild goose). I'm guessing that a lot of this is performative, and that we don't actually have a rational or coherent mechanism on how to handle so-called deadnaming yet.