sorcyress | A childe called they

Ah, crap crap crap, I almost just outed myself to one of my coworkers. And now, I'm honestly feeling more regretful I *didn't* than anything else.

We were talking about the holidays, and I casually mentioned it was my first Christmas with two sisters and she talked about her "daughter who is a they" and the difficulties in finding a word that shows the relationship, but doesn't deny her child's gender or adulthood. And I mentioned something along the lines of "yeah, my mom uses childe -c-h-i-l-d-e- to refer to" brain interferes at about this point with "YOU AND YOU'RE NOT OUT AT WORK ABORT ABORT" "...some of the many kids she's acquired."

I am currently out¹ to, at most, six² coworkers. Which is honestly about four more than I expected to be out to at this point in my life. It's almost the end of the second quarter, I have a year and a half to go before I could potentially get professional status, before I can...stop hiding.

But then, I have never really been good at secrets concerning mySelf. I am so wickedly self-aware of who and what I am, and I have refused closets my whole damn life. So maybe in that case it's more surprising my actual gender isn't known by *more* coworkers³.

And it's really hard, because I would like to be out to all of my coworkers. Gods above, I'd like to be out to the students --there are genderqueer students at this school, I teach at least one of them, and just...I want them to have a role model. And I want the kids who *aren't* genderqueer to have a role model, to see that it's not really any more of a thing than the rest of it, it's just...another way of being a person, no more wrong or right than being comfortable in your given skin.

So I'm kinda torn, and may find the least awkward way to later go to this particular coworker and be all "so you know how you have a genderqueer childe about my age..." because damnit, she sounds like she'd get it. And every person I'm out to means a person I don't have to lie to, means I can feel a little more Real.

~Sor
MOOP!

1: As genderqueer. The poly thing is...much less relevant to my life at school, where I am an ascetic monk, pure as the new-fallen snow.

2: Rachel, who I know from SCD, keeps forgetting that she knows, which is very funny. I sidled up to Michael (from the science department) at ESC to be all "so like, my pronouns are on my badge and I don't know if you noticed, but I'm not out at work" which was honestly at least half the "yeah it's clear as shit I'm poly please don't be a dick about that".

Two of my math colleagues know explicitly from when we had Trans101 and we were supposed to introduce ourselves with our pronouns (for practice) and I said "she professionally, they personally" and have regretted it madly ever since. Except for the part where I did speak my truth and sing my song, but oh god.

I'm only *really* explicitly out to the English teacher who's part of culture committee, the one who ran the queer training last year and mentioned that she's bi but didn't tell anyone until after she had her professional status --we were getting lunch together one day and it came up.

And then there's the black⁴ teacher in the history department, also part of culture committee, who had a stash of pronoun ribbons (!!!) for people to attach to their IDs. When I asked if she had spares, she started digging in her desk for a "she" and I said quietly that the "they" would be fine. I don't remember how much I copped out and pretended it was for a student. She's not an idiot, but I also think she likes me (!) in general⁵, so I'm not worried.

3: This is among the _many_ reasons I don't drink. I go to the First Fridays and the post-holiday show party and that sort of nonsense, but hahaha, nooope. Not happening.

4: You can't say this about the math department because we've got four of 'em! Which might be two thirds of the black teachers in the entire school and gods, never let anyone tell you my school is perfect, because it's got some real high points but also hooboy. (also even 4/15 for us is not a great ratio, especially not when the student ratio is *much* higher.)

5: I mean, I'm always surprised when people like me, but this is a woman with pretty good social clout among both students and staff, plus she's like really cool so it's like extra-shocking.