Am I in Victim Mode?
On Setting Boundaries and Being They/Them'd by Strangers.
I recently had a brief online chat with a black woman about my recent post on being they/them’d by white folks, and she told me ‘not to be afraid’ to correct people because they don’t have a right to call me what they like.
Here was part of my response:
I have been processing how best to respond to being 'they'd' for a while. The reason why I haven't corrected people en-masse is because it happens so often that I feel it would take too much energy. I don't want to get into the 'pronoun dance' where I'm correcting people in the same way they police others about pronouns.
If someone calls me 'they', it reveals a deeper form of brainwashing and complicity, and it's something I don't want to engage with on an individual 1:1 level.
The feelings I have are not about being misgendered, or correcting someone about my gender or pronouns. It's much deeper than that, and THAT framework cannot be addressed by asking someone to call me 'she'...all it does is result in them re-classifying me as a 'cis woman' which is just as bad.
It will potentially also get me into conversations and exchanges that I don't want to get into. What I do instead, is I withdraw my energy and don't engage with such people on a more personal level.
I will correct people if I need to, like if someone is writing an article about me, or if we're going to be interacting over a longer period of time, or if I feel comfortable doing so. Maybe that will change, but that's where I'm at for now.
She then told me that if it were to happen to her, she would make a big fuss about people making assumptions about her, and nip it in the bud right on the spot. She outlined exactly what she would say in those situations. And I was like, I totally support that sort of response, but you probably wouldn’t want to do that 10x per day.
And she was like “Actually, I would. Everyone responds to things differently”. And then she said that my posts are very sincere and well thought-out, but there is an “underlying pain” that shows in my writing.
That really hit me. Because I’m seriously like…am I in pain about this? Should I start correcting people and telling them to call me ‘she’? Is that going to empower me and make me feel better? Am I a self-silencing sheep? Is the pain and anguish of my victim mode dripping off every word I write?
I’m not going to sit here and act like I don’t have any pain points or major challenges in my life, because I do. I often share my personal challenges in my writing, as well as the wisdom that I derive from them.
The key is that I’m consciously working on the difficult areas in my life.
I endeavor to care for myself in a way that doesn’t allow my challenges to take up more space than what they are due. Ultimately, I don’t allow my problems to overshadow my light, or dictate my destiny.
My writing is sacred to me, and it is an authentic expression of my mind, heart and spirit. I would never want my Creative Self-Expression to be characterized by an undercurrent of pain. So when someone suggested that that’s the case, I took it to heart, and really checked myself. Maybe her comment hit a sensitive spot, at the time.
However, something felt off about this woman’s interpretation of my writing, and her suggestion that I have a deeper pain that is connected to a fear of speaking up for myself, particularly in demanding that strangers refer to me with she/her pronouns.
So, I wanted to take this space to process that, in a more personal way.