Stop Trying to Understand Neutrois

article image

The following is a transcribed excerpt from Every Thug Is A Lady: Adventures Without Gender (AK Press).

Neutroisrefers to an individual who has no gender and does not identify as male or female. Many have gender dysphoria very much like that of trans-people. It is often denoted with the ‘null’ symbol, meaning empty set.

I frequently get misgendered in public, mostly because dealing with people of alternate gender identities is still a niche problem that the general population isn’t hip to, and I have no idea whether I should correct people or not. Probably my #1 source of anxiety in life is the thought of inconveniencing other people with my existence, thus compounding the problem.

What if I correct them and they get confused and call me by the other binary gender and I still make a frownyface and the get ULTRASUPERCONFUSED, and I have to correct them AGAIN? I might as well just die at that point because of how inconvenient I’m being. They don’t care. They just want to get me to sign up for a monthly coupon book. They’re making minimum wage. They don’t want to deal with my confusing, made-up-sounding gender identity issue: They have a quota to meet, and I am suddenly the lady at Starbucks with six kids in tow ordering a double nonfat skim skinny vanilla latte, three shots — ONE decaf and TWO Pike Place —nine pumps of syrup NO MORE AND NO LESS no whip with cinnamon at exactly 165° and DEAR GOD DON’T TOUCH THE LID, IF YOU TOUCH THE LID WITH YOUR HAND-OILS YOU WILL LITERALLY RUIN MY DAY when they were just trying to be polite by using a proper title. It’s not their fault. Until I turned around and started talking, they thought I was some sort of homeless male teenager who likes Rocky Horror. Now I’m making a scene, and taking up their time, and they just want me to go away. And I, in my day-job, am a lowly photo tech who is forced to interact with plenty of longwinded people who generate scenes and talk altogether too much, so I know how uncomfortable it is. Plus, I’m pretty much the laziest person in existence, and have no idea what I want people to call me in all manner of pronouns so I just … don’t. And I don’t really have anything to correct them to! How awkward is that, “uhh, you called me ma’am and I’m not.” ‘Oh, sorry, sir!’ “I’m not a sir either … uhh … I’ll be going then …” So I just don’t bother. Cuz I’m lazy, and people are stupid and easily confused.

One time I got in a fight on Facebook with my best IRL friend over a status talking about my wanting nothing more in life at that moment than a canned pasta product and a pair of boxer-briefs. I am a girl, he contested, therefore I have no dangly-bits that need the sweet carded-cotton cradling that only a pair of boxer-briefs can provide. It was probably the stupidest argument I’ve ever been in on the internet, and I have had arguments on the internet about base tones of semi-permanent vegetable hair dye.

But it actually really upset me, because here’s a guy that’s known me for 4 years, who I consider almost an extension of myself, and he’s arguing gender politics in regards to fucking UNDERPANTS on Facebook. I expected him to know better, but then again we don’t talk about all that lame touchy-feely hugboxy gendery shit. We have heated discussions about how much we dislike Max Green in Escape the Fate. We don’t do gender politics.

And really, I don’t mind it, otherwise I wouldn’t be friends with him. We do things like mosh together, and drive to Toledo together, and go to IHOP and eat French Toast together. We are, quite simply, bros. We’ve been bros since day 1 — all the way back in 2007 at a FFTL show when I was a raccoon and he was a recovering suburban thug. He doesn’t treat me like he treats the girls he rolls with — I don’t know if his gender-confusion radar is so finely-tuned that he saw past my trying-too-hard from the start or if he’s just picking up on the general air of neutrality and mosh-readiness I throw off, but I’m OK with it. I’d much rather get in the pit with him than bitch, complain and start drama. Maybe that’s it — I don’t act like a whiny bitch, so he doesn’t treat me like a whiny bitch.

And no, I haven’t come out and told him, “hey brah I’m not really a boy or a girl so plz refer to me with the singular “they” kthx let’s get IHOP nao plz?” and that sort of bugs me (it feels like lying! But he probably already has it figured …) but on the other hand, does it matter? He’d probably just push me and I’d fall down in a parking lot again and scrape my back all up and then my mom would accuse us of having sex again (LOL, NO) and honestly it doesn’t really matter cuz he already treats me like a person and not like a fucking vagina.

I love him to bits. BROS

To read our interview with Juliacheck out the aptly titledAn Interview with Julia Eff.


Julia Eff is the author of Every Thug Is A Lady: Adventures Without Gender. Julia’s latest zine is called Brothers and Sisters, I am an Atomic Bomb.

  • Published on May 6, 2021
Tagged with: Gender, Julia Eff, zines
UTNE
UTNE
In-depth coverage of eye-opening issues that affect your life.