My name is Maria. It's a pretty gendered name, it's (thank you Christianity) one of the most common names all over the world, in various declinations (Maria, Mary, Myriam) as well as "combined" versions (Annamaria, Marianna, Mariagrazia, Rosamaria, or my absolute fave Maria Addolorata).
It's also my grandmother's name, and in the South of Italy we're very big on using our grandparents' names (specifically, the names of the parents of the father - yeah mom's family gets totally forgotten over time). I love my grandma. She's a fierce woman, a feminist at heart (if she knew what feminism was in the 50s in Sicily), a fighter, a teacher, the pettiest woman I know and a badass.
But, as I said, my name is very much a female name. And I'm not a woman in the slightest. Sometimes it makes me uncomfortable.
When I was very very young, like 6/7 y/o, and my egg wasn't even in the conditions to crack, I started to refer to myself as Andrea.
Andrea is one of the few unisex names in Italian. Usually a male name, after all it comes from the Greek word ανήρ, "man", but sometime in the 90s they started calling baby girls Andrea.
And, oh gods, I knew. I always knew. I remember staying in front of the mirror with trousers and a shirt and a tie stolen from my father. And dreading Sunday Mass, because they made me wear white tights and those awful mid 90s short skirts, and all those fucking bows everywhere.
I was trying to break free, since 2005. Sometimes I ask myself if I'm really queer enough, with my super common female name, with my boyfriend and future husband, being female presenting 90% of the time. And sometimes I wish I could just go back and hold Andrea Maria and tell him it's okay, we're not a woman, we never became one, we're still the weird kid and we found people who love us.
