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| Mystery (profile) wrote, on 11-21-2002 at 5:11pm | |
| Current mood: pensive Music: Groovelily, "Little Light" Subject: I am so ridiculously afraid of words. |
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| I've been reading this week's chapter of Kate Bornstein's MY GENDER WORKBOOK, the chapter titled "Zen and the Art of Gender Maintenance." And ze brought up naming. And how names stick. And in a way it was a relief to have it finally mentioned, but in away I wish ze hadn't. I'm terrified of names. That's why I'm so obsessed with them sometimes. Names dictate beings. I've named myself many times over. I'm really not Corina anymore, I haven't been for years, I willingly discarded that one and have never regretted it. Coriana I'm still working on, trying to become Coriana without losing Cora, who I think I may never shed and don't want to. But don't want to be limited to. That's the trouble, I always want to be something new without shedding something old, and naming generally does not let me do that. Everyone knows me as Cora. Coriana and Kassandra and Helena and Jill and Corsica and Cori feel very left out sometimes. And then there's Corita who I've aquired recently and really like being, personality-wise she's really a cross between Cora and Cori, I like being her. I never was Cori much. She appeared in ninth grade, Kelci named her, actually, Kelci named Coriana too, Kelci used to know me better than anyone else in the world. But I was never Cori much. She was too vivacious, I was always afraid, being her, that I was contradicting my image and people would get mad. I'm so afraid of not being who people expect me to be. I'm glad I've reached a place, for years now really, where my name is not Corina. I never liked her, never liked being her. I like Cora as a base personality, she's all around acceptable to me and most other people. That's the one thing wrong with her. She's very acceptable. I get sick of being so acceptable. I get sick of behaving myself and following all the rules I wrote for myself years ago only I wrote them the way I thought people wanted me to write them and they're not really me at all. "And if you follow every rule that anyone has ever told you, everything will work out fine just sign here on the dotted line." Yay Groovelily. What was that cheesy song from THE SLIPPER AND THE ROSE, the prince singing "why can't I be two people? split myself right in half! Why can't one of me endure the appaling formalities, while the other me can have a hell of a healthy laugh!" I want to be Cora AND Coriana AND Corita AND Cori AND Kassandra sometimes when the mood strikes me AND Helena when I'm feeling nostalgic AND Coreopsis who I've almost forgotten, it's been so long AND Jill who's Dan's favorite AND a thousand other yet unnamed people besides. | |
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MortDAmour | but i love all of you, 11-21-02 11:05pm I do love you, all of you, from the parts that want to kill me to the parts that love me holding you. I know you seperate parts of you into your other personalities love, and i knwo you think i have favorites fo thema ll, like Jill, but i really don't, i love you, all of you, from jill to tenar(spelling?) to everyother part of you
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| Anonymous | 11-22-02 8:44am yeah, the naming thing can be hard. i haven't had very many different names, and yet the tone of voice with which my birth name is said is what makes it different in different contexts. i love my name, i think it really fits me (it means "the wanderer") but i really don't like that people get ideas about my gender based on it. and i'm not so cool with the pressure i feel from the ftom community to change my name. i wish i could change instead the gendered connotations it has. i think that's why i like "wendito" so much, because it has a masculine (although little-kid-like) ending. anyhoo, time to stop ranting...
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