Latinx: Coming to terms with gender and finding a home at UW-Eau Claire
People have a hard time understanding when I say I am Latinx. They ask me if I meant Latina, since I appear female. That isn’t true. I have been called sir and have had people use he/him/his pronouns with me. Those are not my pronouns. I am genderfluid. No one has the right to determine what gender I am, except for myself. I am bi-pansexual (it fluctuates). I am Latinx. And if you were wondering, my pronouns are: they/them/theirs.
This was certainly not a process that happened overnight. It really started in my high school years. I was a sophomore in high school when I realized when I was falling for my best friend, who is a female. At this point of time, I hadn’t realized my gender-fluidity; I still used she/her pronouns. Eventually, I started to fluctuate between what was considered male standards and female standards of mannerisms and physical identity. As a kid with no resources to help them understand what is happening, you could probably guess what kind of kid I was.
So, now here I am at the University of Wisconsin - Eau Claire. I’m about two hours away from home in Shakopee, Minnesota, and I was mortified. I didn’t know anyone, and I didn’t know what I was going to do in regards to a social life. Luckily, I broke down the awkward tension really fast with my roommate. I didn’t know how to come out to my roommate, so I made a pretty bad statement (My words verbatim: “Let’s get something straight, I’m not”). My roommate understood that I’m on the bisexual-pansexual scale and that I didn’t necessarily fit into one pretty little box in regard of gender because gender is a sliding scale for me.
I can say I am so grateful for meeting so many wonderful people who are LGBTQIA+ people here at the university. I feel so much more comfortable knowing and meeting my fellow peers. I also feel comfortable knowing that there are so many amazing faculty and staff who are willing to listen to my story and are willing to take the time to understand me. These people are the reason I feel so comfortable and at home at UWEC because otherwise I would honestly feel like an outsider to this university.
I constantly encourage people who are wanting to be allies to do some research and ask questions. It is better to ask an uninformed question rather than to live in the ignorance of your own mind. There is a wonderful tumblr post that will be linked at the end that really goes over the spectrum of sexualities and genders that a person can identify as. Regardless, I still cannot thank the wonderful people who have accepted this awkward, genderfluid, bi-pan kid from a relatively conservative town in Minnesota.
http://mmikan.tumblr.com/post/125794304036/heres-information-about-sexualromantic
-Leslie
