Trans Awareness Month, Day 2 - How did you choose your name?

(This is part 2 of my observance of Transgender Awareness Month, my answers to the 30 Day Trans-Challenge.)

I'm not doing very well with this whole "30 posts in 30 days" thing. Hopefully I'll be able to catch up over the weekend.

2) How did you choose your name, and what names were you thinking about using and why?

I've actually covered this one previously; here are the relevant bits:

I was a big Transformers fan as a kid... but it wasn't the violence itself that appealed to me: instead, it was the richness of the worlds that were created! Indeed, as I grew older, I became fascinated with science fiction and fantasy stories, to the exclusion of almost everything else — because it wasn't the conflict inherent in fiction that caught my attention, it was that ability to escape into a whole new world... where good would always stand up to evil in whatever form it took, and though sometimes there would be cliffhangers, good would always triumph in the end.

Anyway, that's way more analysis than I had intended to put into explaining my Transformers love, and it was all leading up introducing this particular Autobot. Meet Arcee:

That's right, Arcee is a Transformer. Originally the only female Transformer, to be exact. Eventually the creators added other female robots, but for that first generation of stories, she was the Autobot Smurfette. I never owned her toy, but nevertheless, I always knew of her, and she carries a special significance in my heart.

It also doesn't hurt that "Arcee" is a virtually unused name, so doesn't carry a lot of gender baggage. Which, as a nonbinary, appeals to me.

I must've been about 12 or 13 at the time... my gender issues were in full swing at this point, and thanks to the public library, I had a vague notion of what it meant to be transsexual. We were in the car, driving out to visit my grandparents, when out of the blue [my Mom] nonchalantly says to my sister and I: "You know, I used to be a man."

I was stunned!

Really?!?! My amazing mother was born a guy?!? I couldn't process this. These crazy transgender feelings I was dealing with? My Mom knew what they felt like...? This might change everything!

After a beat, though, clarity (I don't remember if she told us, or if it just occurred to us on our own): her maiden name is MANN! So Mom was born a girl, but before she got married and took my Dad's name, she was a Mann! Not a "man".

D'oh!

So this was just a corny joke, completely innocent on her part, and not at all what I had read into it. It certainly didn't help my dysphoria, but years later, it would make the perfect pseudonym: one that says something about who I am and what's important to me (i.e. my awesome family), while yet saying nothing at all. So now, you know.

So there's that. Hopefully I'll be able to get my next few posts up later this morning, before I get into the thick of the workday.