Sunday, July 12, 2020

Five People, Four Sets of Pronouns: Introducing the IDL Podcast



Hello Friends,

Today's post is a short one because I'm hoping you'll give a listen to my first ever podcast episode. It's an interesting one, if for no other reason than because Buddy decides it's time to start using their real name. Many of you have gotten to know me in real life, or in closer online conversations and friendships and know who the kids are. Even for others, the identities of my kids is at best, a loosely guarded secret. After all, once you start doing TV interviews the jig is pretty much up. Still, I have tried to afford them some shred of anonymity so that at least their peers won't find them through lazy googling. Then they signed their names on the information for the protest they organized and things have progressed from there. 

One of the other tipping points, and the reason I decided now was a good time to launch the podcast is that Buddy recently came to us with big news. They came out as being non-binary. It was an emotional night for us, many tears were shed in relief that Buddy was finally living out as the person they really are. As I walked Buddy to bed at the end of the evening, they looked at me and said, "Well this is blog post."

I wasn't sure what to say to that. Did Buddy want it to be, or not? Did I want to write about this? I understood the comment, I write about these kinds of things. But for this, it felt like it wasn't my story to tell. As the kids grow up, they take more ownership of their identities in the world. They'll tell me to post or not post pictures I take. I've started asking them about what I can write about, and what they'd rather keep in the family. I knew I wanted Buddy's story out there. I thought it was important, not just for us, but maybe in the wider conversation on trans issues and the emergence of more trans youths. Still, I didn't feel like it was something for me to write about. Buddy's 11, they can tell this story better than I can. So I asked the kids if they wanted to do it as an interview so they could tell their stories in their own words. They both agreed, and I can't imagine a better way to launch a podcast than to talk to these two wonderful kids about a topic this personal. 

Oh, the title of this post! Right. Buddy is using they/them pronouns. Yo has decided to use xe/xir like Lou. Though we're not sure of Yo's motivation, we're going with it. T and I are using our cis gender pronouns. So we now have five people using four sets of pronouns. We're constantly correcting each other since we're all still getting used to Buddy and Yo's. It feels right. Everyone is happy. 

Thank you as always for reading, and I hope you'll give this a listen.

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