From the pages of Metro, where Ms Rachel Meghan is talking about herself:
“I’m non-binary,” I told a neighbour. We were at a barbecue and talking about queerness. I went on to explain that although my pronouns are they/she and ‘she’ is acceptable, I much prefer ‘they’.
The barbecue is in Hell. Did I mention that?
“That’s cool,” my neighbour replied, adding, “My daughter is also non-binary.”
Or, “I have badges too,” she said.
I felt accepted – but then, just seconds later, that same person yelled to their partner at the grill: “She said she wanted a hamburger!”
Oh calamity. All that specialness – dashed to pieces.
It wasn’t the first time this had happened; far from it – which is why I reluctantly continue to offer up ‘she’ as a pronoun. It’s exhausting having to constantly correct people…
And yet correcting people – constantly – attempting to make them mouth absurdities, remains a go-to impulse. An irresistible temptation. Despite those claims of exhaustion. Funny, that. Whether other parties might be fatigued by this habit is, alas, not explored.
Throw the fact that I’m a mother into the mix and people basically consider it permission to see me as a woman
Well, given observable reality, that will happen.
“Everything came to a head after I became a mother,” says she. Pretensions of themness, the craving to seem special – perhaps more special than one is – would, I suppose become harder to sustain. Given the arrival of someone more important, someone whose needs tend to come first.
I never saw myself as a mum when I was younger, just because I didn’t think I’d ever be in a long-term relationship.
That’s the spirit.
I always thought I was too weird to date.
Not sure whether that’s a fear or an aspiration.
My husband and I got married in 2020, and I became pregnant in 2023.
As women so often do.
My anatomy allows me to be pregnant, no matter how I identify, it’s just how my body works.
Specifically, a woman’s body.
But I’m also a spiritual person,
As, like, totally spiritual people feel compelled to say.
So, becoming a mum gave me a new confidence and a fresh level of knowing myself.
A spirituality of self. How terribly innovative.
After my maternity leave, I worked at a very queer space, a bookstore and bar, where I was surrounded by the LGBTQ+ community. It was here I really felt I’d found my people, and the words to describe myself.
Again, self. And repeated descriptions thereof.
I was still worried about having to correct others frequently; but eventually I decided it was more worth it to live as my truth. In 2025, I came out as genderqueer, then non-binary.
So many badges, and they’re all so shiny. Also, my truth.
My son is two now, and still too little to truly understand, but as he gets older I explain a little bit more here and there. I say, “Mummy isn’t a woman; they’re just Mummy.”
Better start saving for those counselling sessions.
My son even calls me ‘bubba’ instead of ‘mama’ most of the time – I didn’t instruct him to do that, I think he just clocked my queerness on his own.
As two-year-olds do, of course. I can hear those eyebrows raising from here.
The newer people in my life, like my co-workers and regulars at the bookstore, have no issues using they/them pronouns – but I’ve noticed that it’s a lot harder for people that have known me for a long time.
Having known the author as a girl and then as a woman, presumably. Not as some imaginary, unsexed being. One who’s had sex and consequently a child.
My husband – who had no problem with me coming out – sometimes struggles, but he makes a pointed effort to refer to me gender-neutrally.
Imagine the fun. All those corrections and self-corrections. All that pointed effort. The evenings must fly by.
However, one family member, while very leftist and accepting,
No laughing at the back.
finds it hard seeing me as anything but a woman. When I told them about my pronouns, they even went as far to say “What does it matter if you’re not in the room?”
How very dare they.
But of course it matters. It’s about how I want to be perceived by the world, and the people who love me should be supportive of that; wherever I am.
You see, in a sense, she’s always in the room, policing how her self is being perceived. On account of being so spiritual.
Update, via the comments:
What’s noteworthy, I think, is how closely these things follow a familiar, if unconvincing, pattern.
Say, the feeble, retrospective excuses for ongoing pretensions. Ms Meghan tells us of not wanting to get her nails done as a girl, and not wishing to straighten her hair, as if this were the very measure of things. Or the complaints of being exhausted by her own chosen contrivance, as if her attention-seeking were only being done reluctantly, as if she weren’t the author of it.
And the rather implausible claim of not influencing small children to make them mouth the expected absurdities. The demanded affirmation. In madam’s case, the claim that her two-year-old son “just clocked my queerness on his own,” unprompted, while simultaneously boasting of telling said two-year-old, “Mummy isn’t a woman.”
And of course the strange lack of concern for those on whom these tiresome dramas are being imposed. Including her own child.
Update 2:
John D quotes this,
I’m a non-binary mother – and I’m constantly misgendered
And adds,
Well, indeed. It’s not unlike someone who’s five foot five insisting that they be perceived by everyone around them as being six foot four. And then getting all tearful and pissy when this doesn’t happen. It’s scarcely less absurd.
You don’t get to control how others perceive you. Emotional blackmail based on demands that others must use fabulist pronouns, even out of earshot, will not change that fact. It may, however, make you look obnoxious and deranged.
‘Every time you refer to me, whether I’m present or not, you first have to clap your hands three times.’
Same vibe.
Even if it were the case that Ms Meghan feels “misgendered” – which would be assuming quite a lot – she has not in fact been “misgendered” by use of the words she and her, or by any recognition of the fact that she’s obviously a woman. She has been referred to accurately, in accord with physical reality.
Her mental health problems – any feelings of being “misgendered” – are not the arbiter of what is.
We can see what is.
And it’s curious how patterns of behaviour that until very recently would have been recognised as manipulative, abusive, insufferable, etc., are now being indulged and actively encouraged. Not least in the pages of Metro, where this theatre of the self is pretty much a staple and served up routinely.
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