I don’t feel like writing tonight but here goes.
On my way back from the gym it suddenly occurred to me, as an autistic and “Sheldon” type, that there’s a good solution to the “What am I genetically, sexually, etc.?” question. And it’s not what I see these days in the signatures of fellow co-workers who add “His/him/Them” or “Hers/her/Them” or “Whatever, I have a thousand co-workers I can’t fucking remember this shit about so I don’t add it myself because I don’t care what you refer to me as including a house plant.” I came up with a quick solution, one that only an autistic programmer could come up with, one that is surely to piss some off, and while I don’t want to piss people off with my blog, if I blog from the heart I know I’ll piss off someone.
So here goes.
Let’s think about it for a moment. What do most of us care about? I’m talking about 95% of human beings that are alive today. We care about the genes someone was born with. So you’ve got:
XX
and
YY
That’s 99% of people. You also have some variants so we can include:
XXY
and
XYY
There are certainly some others, but this covers 99.9% of us.
I’ve covered the genes we were born with and what most people (including a lot of assholes) care about. What’s next?
Sexual orientation.
So we’ve got:
S = Straight = I like the opposite of my genotype.
G = Gay = I like the same as my genotype.
B = Bi = I’m amazing, I love it all!
N = Non-Sexual = I’m just not attracted to peoples and want to fuck (well, maybe).
C = Curious
So, for that last bit I’m simplifying. There are dozens of different possibilities, but let’s stick with the most common ones: S, G, B, and N.
What’s next? How do we express ourselves? Some people born men may be into women, but they dress in, well, dresses. So they express their gender as what’s currently considered feminine (anyone that wants to get into a fist fight with me about fashion and its historical underpinnings can have a conversation with me about when and who high heeled shoes were originally designed for…moving on).
F = Female
M = Male
Okay. Let’s put it together in a naming standard only a programmer can really appreciate:
- [Gene][Orientation][Expression]
Here’s what my signature would read:
XYSCM
What does that mean?
I was born genetically a male.
I’m straight, but curious (I added SC for reasons I’ll go into later). And I express myself in a way most people would assume I’m a guy.
Now, I know, a lot will be offended by this. But it makes more sense to me than that “guy” at Safeway who obviously is XY but “acts” like an XX and has the name tag “Claire.” I don’t know how to interact with this person and respect them (but they seem to like me despite me letting it slip on night, “Have a good night, man.” If they had a name tag that said, “XYSF” or “XYGF” I’d immediately know (I suspect they’re XYGF by the way they interact with me). I know (saying that again) that a lot of folks will be like, “What about me?” and part of me almost wants to say, “Well, go fuck yourself.” I came up with something that works for 99.1% of us (that aren’t argumentative and have an axe to grind and/or have some deep emotional wounds). I mean, how many of you know my given name? I do know that in all my life only one person has ever respected calling me by it while having called me by my birth name for years (this is a sexist bit of real bullshit that occurs when you’re a heterosexual man that changes your birth name to a chosen name at some point in your life).
Yeah, we’ve all got our wounds. I take responsibility for mine. Etc. Etc.
So why can’t we do something that works for almost all of us?
Consider it.
I met a guy, the bartender if you must know, in a sex club once. Obviously gay. Good guy. According to this I’d say #XYGM. Now we all have it. He’s genetically a male, is obviously interested in men, and presents as a man. The only thing I haven’t captured here is that he present with the stereotypical American “gay male accent” (don’t get on my ass about this because there’s an entire documentary about it). But is that important? I actually think it is. But if we’re to come up with some LGBTQ+(straight) shorthand, does the accent matter? Because truly, we could end up with a set of letters that goes into the dozens, one for the minutiae of Bob who’s sitting in some apartment in NW Brooklyn frustrated that someone doesn’t understand that he’s actually identifying as an “SA” (i.e. “Space Alien”—they also don’t think they deserve only one letter). We need something that’s simple, accurate, and represents most people, not only in who they are, but also in who they want to be perceived as.
So let’s get over ourselves. If we’re to refer to ourselves by something other people refer to us as, we must come up with a system that is easy and advantageous to our entire culture, not just our subculture, or, Goddess forbid, ourselves while we’re crying in a corner sad that others’ aren’t recognizing who we want the people to think we are (more on that in a future post).
So me?
XY
My genes.
SC
I love pussy but I’d possibly make out with the right trans (undefined, would have to meet them) person (something I’ve never admitted to anyone, so this is my first!).
M
I wear a cowboy hat and walk like I want to hurt someone (or at least get from A to B).
Now I’m gonna get famous.