Ever since the pandemic started I had a lot of free time on my hands to think about not only my sexuality but also my gender presentation. I had the opportunity to meet a group of friends who helped me understand all the new things I was discovering about myself. In recent months I “came out” to my family. I put “came out” in quotes only because the closet door was glass, I wasn’t hiding that part of myself I was very much openly queer since like the 5th grade. My friends and family knew I wasn’t only into men and that I didn’t fit perfectly into feminine roles but recently I was able to really put a label on everything that I was feeling both in the aspect of who I wanted to be and who I wanted to be with.

The first question that my cousin asked me was “How to use pronouns?” it was an easy explanation. The second question that came from another cousin was “Does this mean you’re transgender?” It wasn’t a difficult question to answer, but I did have to go into a deeper explanation of what being Non-binary and being Transgender meant. The conversation basically went about me telling my cousin that no I don’t want to go on hormones to change my body but that I wouldn’t mind getting a chest reduction and presenting either Masculine or Feminine whenever I wanted. That I didn’t care for pronouns that if someone wanted to refer to me as he or they, it didn’t bother me, but that there were some feminine terms that did bother me and I didn’t want them used to refer to me by. It was a long conversation but at the end of it, I felt like I was closer to my true self.

Name: Ellie, El

Pronouns: They/She/Him I don’t care! 😀