#idk what this is but it's too much effort to reread and cut now hahahahahaha

[phynali]

Hey I was just wondering something about being genderqueer and using pronouns etc. I know you're also married so do you use the term "wife" or prefer another term? I'm just genuinely curious.

(edit: omg i wrote such a long answer hahahaha sorry, i sort of misread your question at first and then rambled a lot about my husband and our relationship and i’m not gonna erase it now because uh, i love chatting about my husband and my relationship because it makes me happy haha. but there is a tl;dr). 

Every genderqueer and/or nonbinary person is going to feel differently about stuff like this.

For starters, I should say that in my day to day life, which isn’t actually much like tumblr and the online world (at... all), I let people call me by she/her pronouns. I’m not ‘out’ as being genderqueer at work though I’ve talked to a few work friends about it, and I’m only now getting used to coming out to casual friends and people outside my super close circle (ironically maybe, I’ve been out and loud about being bisexual in every facet of my life since I was a teenager, like for a decade now, but gender and sexuality and my journey for each have looked different).

So my husband calls me she/her. I know some nonbinary people wouldn’t be chill with that, but pronouns aren’t something that induce dysphoria for me (some things do, but not that) so it hasn’t been super important. He knows I’m nonbinary and has always been accepting etc, but I’ve never asked him to call me they/them, nor have I asked it of my family and friends. It happens sometimes and I love it, but it’s also not something I focus on and worry about, especially because when it comes to like a work environment, I wouldn’t necessarily want my partner or pals to call me “them” and accidentally raise questions from people I don’t necessarily want to get into a complex discussion about gender with. I like to be able to to control those discussions.

(As time goes though, I may get more pushy about pronouns, since I’ve slowly gone from “she/her is fine” to “i don’t care, whatever goes” to “please call me they/them” online, and slowly gotten used to coming out to more people irl as well and being more pushy about certain things...).

ANyway.

More to your point, I don’t mind being called wife. I actually have super positive connotations for it when my husband calls me that, because he’s always so happy/smiley when he does. he loves that we’re married, that he gets to call me his wife. and that joy surrounding the word makes a huge difference?

but also, our relationship doesn’t have strong stereotypical gender roles in any sense. he does 99% of the cooking; i clean up after. i’ll be the breadwinner as soon as i’m done school (and hell my grad stipend amounted to more than he made last year, like, we’re broke). by the other token, he’s still got some of that “stereotypical bachelor” mindset about how he likes to spend money and i still spend an egregious amount getting my hair dyed and cut. i do 100% of the driving; he doesn’t have his license. he gardens and knows more about sewing and ironing than i ever will, and he helped me iron my interview clothes because i’m a lost cause with domestic stuff like that. i do more emotional labour though, and i’m good at it so i don’t mind falling into that role. 

like all people, we do some things that might seem to fit the mould and some that don’t, but in general we’re more atypical than not, i think, in part because of my gender identity maybe, but mostly just people we’re people (and he identifies as male but recognizes there are a lot of ways in which he’s gender-nonconforming and has had to deal with shitty people trying to impose those norms on him).

so when he calls me his wife, it feels really separate from the traditional social role of ‘wife’ and the imposition that might otherwise place on me. it feels so divorced from my gender itself, honestly. and gender roles feel so constricting. when straight people talk about wives and husbands and relationships and those roles, i’m often so hard into “cannot relate” territory it’s not funny. like unless it’s about particular details of emotional labour or finances, i’m just like... “okay can’t relate but i guess...”

so all of that makes a difference on how i feel about him calling me his wife, and people recognizing me as his “wife”. i’m happy and proud to be married to him, whatever word gets attached to it. the word husband wouldn’t really fit me despite the fact that some of my roles in our relationship are more stereotypical of husbands. the word wife doesn’t really fit except that it makes me think of him, and that makes me happy. i don’t know a gender-neutral term that would suit better except for “partner” and/or “other half” and i use those a lot actually, but still.

and i should say, before we were engaged, one night i told him i wasn’t his ‘girlfriend’, i was his partner, his person. i was experiencing some dysphoria around the word girlfriend, and he totally respected that. some days i could be his girlfriend because my identity has some fluidity, and i wanted him to introduce me to people as his girlfriend (again, controlling that discussion for when i’m ready to have it), but i needed him to see me as who i was. he had no qualms, of course. he’s always fully respected what i need for my gender identity.

and he didn’t even call me his fiancee lol, he just switched right over to ‘wife’ as soon as we were engaged (he’s adorable, i swear). and if i told him tomorrow that i can’t stand the word “wife” was a problem for me, he’d stop using it. that’s what makes it all okay for me, from him and from anyone else - it’s often less about the word itself than the connotations surrounding it and who is saying it and what they know about me. in my head, ‘wife’ isn’t even really gendered that much anymore, at least not in my relationship (whereas a word like Queen is? very gendered? idk why) so yeah, i’m good with it.

tl; dl because i just rambled for like 30 mins: i’m fine with the word ‘wife’ because i have a ton of positive connotations to it thanks to my awesome husband, but i’m almost at the point where i don’t ascribe gender to that word with respect to myself now. not all people will feel this way though, and i enjoy words like ‘partner’ and ‘other half’ quite a bit as alternatives.