Also, I have an update so...
AGE THREE
I was a bit of a git as a child. For example, I can't remember ever being unable to read. Somewhere, around age 3 I remember reading something in one of my grandparents' old Readers' Digest magazines about Elton John's 'Candle In The Wind'. This (somehow) led to my mum explaining that Elton John wasn't HIS birth name and Marilyn Monroe wasn't HER birth name. That is when I *discovered* that if you were famous you could choose a new name...so, naturally, I spent the next few years trying to decide how I was gonna become famous. Cos I LOATHED my birth name, even then.
AGE SIX
Boys and girls confused me. Girls, even at that age, were weird and shallow and bitchy. I wanted none of that. Boys were better but I was neither one of them nor able to become any kind of honourary member. This was the start of a lifelong whatever of being antisocial and a bit of an outcast.
AGE SEVEN
The discovery ordinary people could change their names!!! Maybe I don't have to become an author after all...although that would be nice.
AGE TEN
Contemplating the name 'Jennifer'
AGE ELEVEN
My mum sent me (kicking and screaming) to an all-girls school. A cruel and unusual punishment in my opinion. Five years later I'd gone from disliking girls to loathing them outright.
AGE THIRTEEN
Contemplating the names 'Henrietta' and 'Harriet'. Henry or Harry...
AGE FIFTEEN
I discovered the nickname I'd been using for years - 'Heggie' - was actually a *real* name, albeit a surname, and I changed it - by public declaration, on 15th December 1993.
AGE TWENTY
Despite already being 'Heggie' on everything (GCSE certificates, medical records, my kids' birth certificates etc) I had to get a Deed Poll document for my name change so I could get a passport. The name-change laws are pretty daft TBH. Weirdly I've only ever needed it for passports, a cleaning job and a meeting with a solicitor.
MID TWENTIES
I did a spot of investigating and found out that the name Heggie was a branch of the McIntosh clan, originating from the Western Isles (according to my source).
MID THIRTIES
After years of being anything from low-key annoyed to high-key pissed off that I was expected to think, act or FEEL any particular way because of my birth sex I discovered the term 'agender'.
One of my biggest bugbears had been the whole 'sisterhood' thing. No. I am an only child, thanks. I would have loved siblings but my biological sex wouldn't make me closer to a sister than a brother. That would surely be down to personality, life experience, interests etc.
I found the term 'cisgender' particularly offensive because all the time I assumed I was a biological woman identifying as a woman it seemed to be negating a lot of the stuff I'd felt over the years. Turns out the reason being assumed to be cis annoyed me so much was because it simply wasn't me...although I still suspect cis people don't always have it easy. Like you don't have to be gay to have questioned your sexuality.
To me 'agender' means exactly its definition:
It can be seen either as a non-binary gender identity
or as a statement of not having a gender identity.
People who identify as agender may describe themselves
as one or more of the following:
Genderless or lacking gender.
I am not lacking biological sex, I am not androgyne, what I am is not buying into any dumbass stereotypes, or the idea that mentally experienced gender is even a thing (obviously it is for most people but it's like explaining vision to someone blind from birth). I don't feel gender neutral as such...I just don't feel gender AT ALL.I really hate labels but finding the term agender was liberating to me. Suddenly I understood why I couldn't understand, if you follow my meaning. Gender issues simply made no sense to me because to me it's not a thing. There's biology and how you choose to identify and a bunch of social norms (which are fairly ludicrous TBH) but to FEEL a particular gender? Nope, does not compute.
For the record I am fine with her/ she etc etc, I guess I generally present in a feminine light but I am also not over my mum telling me (as a preteen) that my wanting to wear jeans and Doc Martens meant I was a transvestite. I care not at all what gender my clothing has. I have no interest in chick-lit or chick-flicks. I don't do the makeup thing or nails or hair, particularly for that matter... I have shaved my head more than once. Nothing gets my back up more than someone projecting their gender stereotype bullshit onto me: i.e. No, I will not stop swearing and be more 'ladylike', dad!
AGE THIRTY NINE YEARS, TEN MONTHS AND ONE DAY
After umpteen times discussing my name change issues, often with the disclaimer - "not that it's comparable with your transgender experience" - I suddenly clocked the comparison.
I had chosen for myself a gender neutral name a full two decades (and change) before I identified myself as being agender. Even then it took at least another two years to see that the two things might have been connected.
I don't want this to come across as me trying to muscle in on or try to assume my issues are in any way shape or form comparable with those experienced by trans men and women because I know damn well that it's not but I honestly had never connected the two issues before: rejecting the (girly) name my parents had given me and accepting my gender identity. Asserting my own sense of identity.
Ultimately, be who you want to be. Let your outside reflect your inside if that makes you happy. Not that you have to, of course. Live your life as YOU choose not as anyone chooses for you or tries to dictate how you should live. If the name chosen by people who hadn't even met you yet doesn't fit the person you've become - you can change it. You have the power, no one else.
