gender and names rambling
Jun. 8th, 2014 12:10 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
actuallyclintbartonOkay so!
As you may have noticed, I have my name set on this account to "Kate Matthew" rather than just Matthew or Mat or Shaun Matthew or whatever.
I don't really have a clear-cut explanation for this, but I'll give it a shot.
When I was four days old, I was adopted by the people who raised me. Mom and Dad have always told the story that they wanted to name me Katherine and call me Kate, but it occurred to them that it took a very strong personality to carry "Kate" and have it not devolve into "Katie", and they didn't really like "Katie". (It occurred to me a few years ago that that's a super stupid reason for not naming your kid something - YOU don't have to call me Katie, and if I like Katie then you have to deal with it. But that's beside the point.) So they named me Elizabeth after both of my grandmothers (who were Bettys).
Two days after they took me home, my mom looked at my dad and said "She's a Kate".
(They went on to name my sister Katherine, but she has never gone by Kate or Katie. She was Baby K, and then just KK, and sometimes recently Kay or Kitty, but never Katie, and never Kate.)
Fastforward through my life of nicknames - Beth in 7th grade, Lisse (pronounced like Lissie) in 8th and 9th, Evie until I was 22 or 23, then Beka as I try out the name my birth mother gave me, Rebecca - to October of 2011 when I came out as trans. At the time, I was sticking to "binary, but on the feminine side", chose Shaun Matthew as my name, and it was so much of a relief to not be "a girl" and nothing but that it took me over a year to really realize that I wasn't clicking with the binary male identity either, and cautiously tried out agender.
It fit SO much better. A year and a half later, it is still a perfect identity for me. I even found pronouns I like! (they're te/ter/ters, btw) And my relationship with gender presentation has shifted back a bit more feminine. I still dislike being misgendered as a woman, but as I'm a pretty busty person it's pretty inevitable, and let's face it, I love cute things. :3
What does this have to do with "Kate"? WELL.
Shaun was a name I liked well enough that went well with Matthew (which was always the name I liked for myself). Before I'd come out, I'd talked a lot about going by "Matthew Rebecca Rose" because I liked the idea of mixing a traditionally masculine name with a traditionally feminine name. Just to shake things up, you know? And now that I'm more comfortable both with my identity and presentation, I started thinking about getting back to that mix and shaking it up. But I also wanted a name I'd be comfortable going by. And then I got thinking on how I wish I could shake up my name sometimes because sometimes Mat doesn't quite fit for that day and I thought of how I've always wished my parents had named me Kate.
I mentioned it on tumblr, and I got two responses almost immediately. First fromyetregressing basically being xir lovely self (and infinitely patient with me for never remembering xir proper pronouns because I rarely talk about xir in the third person) telling me to be who I am and xie'll always love and support me whatever my identity, and second from ![[tumblr.com profile]](https://www.tumblr.com/favicon.ico)
nvllify (i think) saying that I seemed like a Kate.
WELL THEN.
I've just decided to go with it. Kate Matthew [insert surname that Birdie eventually settles on for writing purposes here]. I kind of like it. I could go with Matthew Katherine to emphasize the Matthew, but I'm not a Katherine, I'm a Kate. And I like how Kate Matthew sounds better.
So yeah.
Other than just... sort of laying out what led up to it, I don't have much of an explanation for it. It just is, much like how I know I'm agender. Who I am just is, and I can do my best to lay it out but in the end that's all the explanation I've got.
As you may have noticed, I have my name set on this account to "Kate Matthew" rather than just Matthew or Mat or Shaun Matthew or whatever.
I don't really have a clear-cut explanation for this, but I'll give it a shot.
When I was four days old, I was adopted by the people who raised me. Mom and Dad have always told the story that they wanted to name me Katherine and call me Kate, but it occurred to them that it took a very strong personality to carry "Kate" and have it not devolve into "Katie", and they didn't really like "Katie". (It occurred to me a few years ago that that's a super stupid reason for not naming your kid something - YOU don't have to call me Katie, and if I like Katie then you have to deal with it. But that's beside the point.) So they named me Elizabeth after both of my grandmothers (who were Bettys).
Two days after they took me home, my mom looked at my dad and said "She's a Kate".
(They went on to name my sister Katherine, but she has never gone by Kate or Katie. She was Baby K, and then just KK, and sometimes recently Kay or Kitty, but never Katie, and never Kate.)
Fastforward through my life of nicknames - Beth in 7th grade, Lisse (pronounced like Lissie) in 8th and 9th, Evie until I was 22 or 23, then Beka as I try out the name my birth mother gave me, Rebecca - to October of 2011 when I came out as trans. At the time, I was sticking to "binary, but on the feminine side", chose Shaun Matthew as my name, and it was so much of a relief to not be "a girl" and nothing but that it took me over a year to really realize that I wasn't clicking with the binary male identity either, and cautiously tried out agender.
It fit SO much better. A year and a half later, it is still a perfect identity for me. I even found pronouns I like! (they're te/ter/ters, btw) And my relationship with gender presentation has shifted back a bit more feminine. I still dislike being misgendered as a woman, but as I'm a pretty busty person it's pretty inevitable, and let's face it, I love cute things. :3
What does this have to do with "Kate"? WELL.
Shaun was a name I liked well enough that went well with Matthew (which was always the name I liked for myself). Before I'd come out, I'd talked a lot about going by "Matthew Rebecca Rose" because I liked the idea of mixing a traditionally masculine name with a traditionally feminine name. Just to shake things up, you know? And now that I'm more comfortable both with my identity and presentation, I started thinking about getting back to that mix and shaking it up. But I also wanted a name I'd be comfortable going by. And then I got thinking on how I wish I could shake up my name sometimes because sometimes Mat doesn't quite fit for that day and I thought of how I've always wished my parents had named me Kate.
I mentioned it on tumblr, and I got two responses almost immediately. First from
yetregressing basically being xir lovely self (and infinitely patient with me for never remembering xir proper pronouns because I rarely talk about xir in the third person) telling me to be who I am and xie'll always love and support me whatever my identity, and second from WELL THEN.
I've just decided to go with it. Kate Matthew [insert surname that Birdie eventually settles on for writing purposes here]. I kind of like it. I could go with Matthew Katherine to emphasize the Matthew, but I'm not a Katherine, I'm a Kate. And I like how Kate Matthew sounds better.
So yeah.
Other than just... sort of laying out what led up to it, I don't have much of an explanation for it. It just is, much like how I know I'm agender. Who I am just is, and I can do my best to lay it out but in the end that's all the explanation I've got.
