Happy Pride Month ♥ This post was surprisingly hard to write

Tomorrow is the first day of Pride Month for 2021.

I’ve debating for a few days now whether I wanted to post this – it felt like the perfect time for it, but as the day got closer, it felt more and more like I was doing it too soon, before I’d really had the chance to figure things out for sure.

The thing is, though, I have always maintained that sexuality is a fluid and evolving thing, that there’s no harm or shame in changing the label you identify with over the course of your life. Ten years ago I’d never even HEARD the word “Asexuality” but now here I am, loud and proud on the internet. Throughout my life I’ve thought I was straight, gay, bi, pan – pretty much every word I heard, I thought that might fit better. So I think it’s time for me to take my own advice and identify the way I want to identify right now, without worrying that it might change in the future.

Not long ago, I called myself panromantic. For anyone who read my Ace Week fic last year, you might remember that Katsuki’s history was based almost word-for-word on my own childhood and teenage years. You may also remember a certain discussion which I felt it was really important to include, for my own sake.

I had a lot of trouble letting go of the bisexual label after I’d worn it for so long, but biromantic and asexual was a lot more comfortable than just dropping it entirely.

Changing labels and admitting he’d been wrong about himself for so long was… Weird. Uncomfortable, somehow. As much as he liked the new one, it was still hard to get rid of the old.

This won’t come as any surprise to most of the people close to me – or to anyone who barely knows me, I suppose, since you wouldn’t have known how exactly I identified – but over the past few months I’ve been thinking a lot about that label I was holding onto and whether it still fitted or not. I made a sneaky allusion to this a few weeks ago when those buddyquiz things were going around, but I’d like to make it public knowledge now that I identify as Aromantic, too. For a long time I thought I’d be happy in a relationship as long as it wasn’t sexual, but the fact is that I really don’t have any desire for romance or intimacy, either. I'd rather be just me, on my own, unattached.

Considering how little I talked about my romantic label publicly, I know anyone who has read this far is probably thinking “why did this warrant a whole post?” by now.

The thing is, this wasn’t the part that I wasn’t sure about posting.

Along with sexuality, I feel that gender identity is something fluid, too. Sometimes it takes a while for us all to figure out who we are, and sometimes... Sometimes it feels like we’ve known it for a long time, but we’re scared of the change. Because while I’ve never wished I was male, I’ve also never liked being female, either. And for most of my life I just figured I was stuck with it, because the alternative was worse, and even if I WANTED to change, it felt like it would be too difficult. There would be too many expectations of what I should do or be, or how I should look or act. It wasn’t until the past year or so, through these online communities I’ve come to love so much, that I learned there might be another option. Just like I learned that I didn’t have to like men or women, that none was a valid option, I’ve learned that maybe I don’t have to BE one or other, either.

A few months ago an online celebrity of sorts who I’ve followed for a long time began using they/them pronouns, and what struck me was that they didn’t feel the need to change in any way. They didn’t have to change the way they dressed, or the way they acted, they didn’t have to cut their hair off and try to look androgynous, they just got to continue being them. Because that IS them, and HAS BEEN them, regardless of expectations and stereotypes. I think that was the moment I started to think really seriously about all of this and to experiment with it – I’d already started listing both sets of pronouns in Discord servers and zines etc, but after that, I began to use only one. And I felt good about that decision, even though I never drew attention to it.

This is a really convoluted and roundabout way of saying that, at least for the time being, I would prefer for people to use gender-neutral pronouns when referring to me. Some of the people closest to me have heard me say that I always felt more respected when people used “they” when talking about me – those people probably saw this announcement coming a year ago lol – and I know people miss announcements or forget things or just get stuck in old habits, so I won’t be offended if people slip up, but as much as possible I would really appreciate it if people would start to use they/them instead.

I don’t think this will change very much for anyone, honestly, since people don’t exactly talk about me often lol, but in the spirit of pride month, this felt like the right time to speak up about who I am, or at least who I think I am, and to see if this fits me better like I think (and hope) it will.

This post is almost long enough to be a fic now, I didn’t expect it to get quite this long when I started. To anyone who managed to get this far, thank you for caring. For anyone skipping to the end, I suppose I should leave a tl;dr.

Hi, my name is Saysi. I’m a Kacchan-obsessed, cat-loving, Twitter-addicted fanfic writer who is proud to be Asexual, Aromantic, and now using they/them pronouns.

Happy Pride Month. Thank you all for letting me be myself ♥