There Will Be A Day

While the character of Marshmallow on Bob’s Burgers is criticized for many reasons (played by a cisgender white male) I give props to this show for the addition of this character, and she is one of my all-time faves. If I were told that I could play the voice of a trans male who was not white like me, and I did that voice better than anyone they could find, I would do it in a heartbeat to positively represent the transgender community. However, that’s a long work around for my intentions of writing this. What I love most about this character (aside from the fact that she’s just an awesome gal) is that Bob crushes on her. There are several scenes eluding to this, one being when he tells the butcher “I’m straight…well mostly”. This genius cartoon has love for everyone and shows that we have (if we choose) to be a lot further along in acceptance of all.

I did some acceptance of my own today that was a personal big step. It was time to update my profile for my graduate studies, and the option of how I identify came up…this is an option that schools and employers are giving now that is relatively new for all of us. I took a moment to really think about this and in the end chose the option of gender queer/nonbinary, but I opted for she/her pronouns. The option of these pronouns has a long history behind it.

I am 41.5 years old, and back in my day it would have been ridiculous to identify as “they” especially in the small town of less than 1000 people that I grew up in, where I was already deemed as the weirdo outcast. I have no problem that I am in a female body, but I have always recognized myself as just “human”. I’m not a woman, I’m not a man. I am just here, as I am. My appearance has never once made me feel feminine, in fact it confused me even more. As a child I never understood why I enjoyed rough housing and playing ball with the boys and playing with make up equally.

We are in a different world now, and I can choose to be whomever I want…at 41 years old it seems like it took me long enough to get to this point, but again I blame that on my era of growing up alongside the small-town mentality I was surrounded by. I think if I had the choice I would’ve chosen as a teen to say I was “them”. But that isn’t too important to me now, and unfortunately, I still feel like we are in a time that if someone said “she” or called me “ma’m” and I corrected them they would look at me like I was ridiculous, but maybe that is all just in my head.

While it might be important to some, and by no means do I put those that find the value in it down, to me it just never really has. I am just…here. I once did a personal experiment where I wore a button with my pronouns as he/him for a few days. Not once did anyone recognize that, possibly because I am very much presented as female, but I found it interesting that not one person would acknowledge that I would have wanted to be called by those pronouns.

I think we as people, globally but particularly in the United States, still have a way to go, but day by day, moment by moment, it seems apparent that acceptance of who one wants to be identified as is becoming more and more important to everyone. Slowly but surely this “phenomenon” will go away, and I do believe that there will be a day in my lifetime where gender identification and being recognized as what makes one comfortable will be an important factor in sexual identity…straight, gay, bi, man, woman, them, zee….one of these days none of this will matter.

As we have seen over time LGBTQ+AI (I might be leaving a letter out?) has grown to include all who are accepting…it started simply as LG because our gay forefathers wanted their lesbian sisters to know that they were not alone in their fight, and then the “B” was added…and then the group wanted their trans brothers and sisters to know that they were not alone in their battle, deeming it LGBT – Unfortunately this has only confused some people, as they think that being trans is the same as being gay…nope, not the same, though one CAN be trans AND gay! Another ramble for another day. The point is, as this group grew from LGBT to LGBTQ and then LGBTQ+A and now LGBTQ+AI as I have recently seen (I’ll admit I don’t know what the ‘I’ is for, but I support it), one day those letters will all fade away because everyone will be an “A”, allies for all groups, excepting everyone. I believe in my heart that this day will come sooner than we think.

For fun check out this short clip where Bob corrects Linda for calling Marshmello “handsome”.

Note: I intentionally stole the image for this post - read the article here.