Question: Terms of Endearment.
Riley asks…
My girlfriend is confused and frustrated that I don’t really like being called her girl or boy. Being gender fluid and rejecting normal pronouns is straining our relationship. Any suggestions?
Please post your response in the comments below.
» Ask Genderfork «
Posted by Alice on September 9th, 2010 at 08:00 am
Category: questions 35 comments »
September 9th, 2010 at 8:34 am |
Special someone, Lover/s (since hopefully you two are in love ;D ), just keep it simple and true. Though I’m sure with some extra time I’ll think something cuter and queer. Hooray for Ambiguity.
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September 9th, 2010 at 8:48 am |
That’s so hard and so sad! Maybe try brainstorming some pet names with her and see if you like any of them. For instance, my girlfriend calls me her “little one” or just “my Steph” or “my Steph-friend” on those days when I’m feeling rather agendered. Also, check out some of the other posts dealing with gender-neutral pronouns or honoraries, because those are also rather helpful.
I’ve also heard of S.O. (Significant Other), that one seems to be popular amongst people of all genders.
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Anonymous replied:
September 9th, 2010 at 9:31 am
“Steph”? Where does that come from/what does it mean?:)
Also, I’m wondering what one could do in German where even for just saying “my lover” (mein Geliebter / meine Geliebte) or “my partner” you have to choose a gender… :(
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Meike replied:
September 9th, 2010 at 3:33 pm
Um, Steph is my actual name…I just prefer a screenname. It makes me feel anonymous and stuff.
And I’m glad you mentioned German, that’s one of my majors! German is ridiculously gender-strict, which I hate. A friend of mine took to calling me “das Stefchen”, because “das” is a neutral pronoun and words ending in “chen” (such as the flower “Stiefmutterchen”, or any term of endearment which ends in “chen”, etc.) is also a neutral word, because they all use “das” as their pronouns.
Kind of confusing, I know, but these things are hard to explain in writing. You could put “chen” on the end of their name, and thus make it a neutral name. That’s about the only thing I can think of though, since like I said German is VERY concerned with getting a person’s “gender” correct, even though it’s a horribly binary system.
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Jessica replied:
September 10th, 2010 at 8:19 am
Did you ever come across Mark Twain’s “The Awful German Language”? The “Tale of the Fishwife and Its Sad Fate” is a wonderful thing to read: http://goomba.com/www3/hwm/tagl.html Have fun.
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September 9th, 2010 at 9:16 am |
I’m a big fan of “partner”, at least in 3rd person situations. I’ve employed this ever since I was young, regardless of the gender of my partner. It’s always nice to catch people in their assumptions.
What’s a gender neutral version of boy or girl? “Kid”, I suppose.
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September 9th, 2010 at 11:01 am |
My girl and I both just use “partner” in social situations and have pet names at home. I find partner to be the easiest to use socially, no one ever questions what either of us mean by it. Depending on how serious you are you can use spouse. S.O. works as someone else said. Try to keep it simple. If you ask her to use something complex that is just going to make everyone who hears it say, “huh?” she will just be more frustrated.
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September 9th, 2010 at 11:52 am |
My lover calls me his partner, significant other, lover, and sometimes zude – neither dude nor dudette – when feeling silly.
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September 9th, 2010 at 12:05 pm |
I’m a big fan of the term “lover,” but some people think that sounds weird. “Partner” is a good one too, although Americans tend to think that sounds formal. “Significant other” is alright, kind of a mouthful though. I kind of like saying “other half” ’cause I’m a bit sappy I guess. Anyway I guess I’m just listing now, but try to find words you like, then bounce your ideas off of her until you find something you both like.
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September 9th, 2010 at 12:43 pm |
@Anonymous: How about mixing genders: “meine Geliebter” or “mein Geliebte”? My German isn’t amazing (I only know what I learned in high school), but it seems to me that the nice thing about German is that there are three genders; would “mein Geliebtes” be the way to say it in the neuter?
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Anonymous replied:
September 9th, 2010 at 3:05 pm
Well, “meine Geliebter” (or the other way around) just grates on my sense of grammar, it sounds like you just don’t know how to speak it;) But yes, in this case “mein Geliebtes” might actually work! (Does not work for pronouns though, “es” is just as bad as “it” in English.) Well at least it’s just abstract thinking for me at the moment ;P
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Meike replied:
September 9th, 2010 at 3:37 pm
It really does depend on how you use the neutral pronoun though. For instance, “das Mädchen” is the word for girl (as in little girl), but girls clearly are not an “it”. German has some weird idiosyncracies and exceptions to their own rules. So I tend to think of “das” as just gender-neutral and not as an “it”, but that’s a hard thing to get in the habit of doing. You could also just make up your own form of “Geliebter/in”, if you wanted.
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September 9th, 2010 at 1:02 pm |
I live partner, too, though most everyone will assume you’re gay. The hard part is when you’re preferring to your partner’s things – her car or his jeans. Sometimes you can get away with “We came in our car” but it gets really hard. If you use alternative pronouns, most people won’t know what you mean and I’m not a fan of saying “they or their” too much.
So mostly I just say “she” and “her” which just confirms people in thinking you’re gay, but I wouldn’t be ashamed of being gay, if I were, so I consider it their problem, if they have one, thinking me gay.
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September 9th, 2010 at 2:23 pm |
Would you be comfortable letting her alternate boy and girl friend? Would she be comfortable? For that matter, can’t a person have a male girlfriend, a female boyfriend, or an androgynous or genderfluid boyfriend or girlfriend?
I know how painful it can be to get nailed down by inaccurate pronouns and gendered words. I also know how painful it can be to lose someone you care about because of gender issues. If you’ve found someone who loves you for who you are, you may have to compromise a bit. Not a compromise of your gender identity, but a compromise in the relationship and how it’s defined. And if compromise isn’t possible, the relationship has bigger problems than finding the right word to use.
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Cat replied:
September 10th, 2010 at 12:47 pm
“For that matter, can’t a person have a male girlfriend, a female boyfriend, or an androgynous or genderfluid boyfriend or girlfriend?”
Yes! This! Ideally with us genderfluid folk (I’m one too) we’d have this telepathic thing with our partners to show them what gender we feel like today so they can refer to us accordingly—but the problem is that a lot of the time even /I/ don’t know what I am or what I feel most like. :P
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Anonymous replied:
September 10th, 2010 at 2:22 pm
This.
The most important thing is that she accepts you for who you are, even if she can’t figure out a word that really fits.
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September 9th, 2010 at 3:46 pm |
Terms of endearment I use with my gender fluid lover:
Sweetheart, honey, dearest, love, puddin’, gypsy-dream, sweet thang, extra-special-gender-rebel, lovely one, ay-bay-bee-how-you-doin’?
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Jay replied:
September 11th, 2010 at 5:34 pm
I giggled at the last one :) shall use it in future!
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September 9th, 2010 at 3:55 pm |
My lady and I use “terrence” sometimes. It was kind of an inside joke, because I was saying there was a slang word like “sheila”, meaning rather attractive person, that started with a T, and I couldn’t remember what it was. So she said terrence. So we call eachother “my terrence”.
She uses partner a lot nowadays, to people who know me as a “girl”, so that she doesn’t have to explain the whole thing. But then, I also told her that she can call me her girlfriend if I can call her my boyfriend, and we still use our preffered pronouns. ’cause then it just fucks with people a little bit. Fucks with them just enough to open their minds.
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September 10th, 2010 at 12:20 am |
I love being someone’s boi occasionally but why not just change your name to sookie and be theirs? I get bored of possessive crap but trueblood makes it so corny and sexy at all once…lover to me reminds me of cheesy 90s snl will ferrell in the tub…partner sounds like you own a law firm together or play doubles in tennis or something involving a bunsen burner…I have a cis straight couple who say “this is my heart” and I think thats adorable in small doses…Its difficult, I hope you find something suitable
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September 10th, 2010 at 5:04 am |
Since my SO and I were both into Doctor Who, we used “companion”. I’d also say things like “And this is … , the person I’m stepping out with.”
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anta replied:
September 12th, 2010 at 8:44 am
Ooh, “companion” could SO work as a TOS reference, since there’s one in the second-season episode Metamorphosis, but all that male-and-female-as-universal-constants stuff kind of takes the edge off it.
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September 10th, 2010 at 6:33 am |
As the girlfriend of a gender fluid person I too have struggled with communicating without the use of gender references. My biggest hurdle is when referring to something that belongs to my partner with using his or her.
Remember that your girlfriend is trying and try not to get so upset when she can’t change a lifetime of speech patterns without a good alternative. Its hard to create a new way of speaking!
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September 10th, 2010 at 7:58 am |
My S.O. refers to me as her “person.” I love it. It really makes me feel that she understands/appreciates/loves my neutrality,
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DG replied:
May 26th, 2013 at 5:17 am
My girlfriend does that too! Its the most adorable thing
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September 10th, 2010 at 2:48 pm |
My ex referred to me as ‘queerfriend’ to get around that…
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September 10th, 2010 at 6:08 pm |
I always referred to myself as my significant other’s brrrlfriend.
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September 11th, 2010 at 12:12 am |
@maximillian I have manyaqueerfriend but I’m not sleeping with any of them. I like it in theory but it wouldnt work for how I’d need it to.
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September 27th, 2010 at 12:45 pm |
The cutest term I’ve been given is “compatriot” (:
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Jessica replied:
September 27th, 2010 at 1:16 pm
When I read your post, the term “co-conspirator” came to mind. I don’t know what people would think if you introduced your S.O. as your accomplice.
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September 10th, 2012 at 5:47 pm |
zefriend
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April 10th, 2013 at 9:14 am |
I’m having trouble with this myself, with an added level of complexity – I’m polyamorous, and have multiple partners, as do a vast majority of my partners!
My husband uses partner for me, and that works really well – but for my other relationships, which are not currently life-partner sort of deals, partner doesn’t work in specific.
One of my girlfriends uses boifriend for me, and my domme calls me her creature, sub, or subbie, and I love both of those.
For my two newest relationships, though, none of these seem to work – partner is too serious, I’m not dedicated to a specific BDSM role with them (and our relationships lean more to the romance than the kink?). I personally lean towards boifriend, but that certainly leads to full blown conversation of trans* identities and whatnot ALL THE TIME, and I can appreciate not wanting to get involved in that every time they just want to introduce me to someone – especially since we usually have to explain poly at the same time as well!
maybe I could be their Bear, as that rhymes with my IRL name? Bearfriend? Kissingfriend? I don’t know. Basically any non-traditional label raises a lot of questions from a lot of people we don’t have the time, energy or want to explain trans* identities to.
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May 26th, 2013 at 5:14 am |
My girlfriend and I are both genderqueer. Shes more static and im more fluid, but she told me to call her whatever I wish. I tend to default to female but most of the time when i refer to her in other ways its male, like “drama king” or we watched braveheart last night and shes a history major and was explaining stuff to meso i called her “mister historian”…when i flip flop, im FAAB, so for all the people in my life that know and cooperate, i wear a specific bracelet to let people know its a boy day and to please use my male name and pronouns, and my girlfriend switches most of the time too.
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DG replied:
May 26th, 2013 at 5:18 am
And she also calls me her person when my brain cant decide on a gender XD
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May 29th, 2018 at 9:41 am |
I like the term Ooma it’s an acronym for the (Object Of My Affection ) as in “ this is my Ooma “ sweet, gender neutral affectionate it implys more than a friendship and works great because we’re poly too .
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