Dionum

So my editor says to me, "I have trouble thinking of ways to depict your stuff with graphics." To which I replied "I have trouble thinking of ways to depict myself all the time!" Which is the whole purpose for writing about genderqueer issues in the first place. It's so difficult to explain being something other than what people know. When in conversation with someone unfamiliar with the term genderqueer, attempting to explain your gender or lack there of is akin to explaining life forms on other planets. Trying to get people to think outside that box is a challenge. It was challenge enough for me to understand it. For example,say you are speaking of temperature. You might refer to hold, cold, or something in between, maybe warm. Most of us can relate to that and comprehend it. Now try to explain something other than hot, cold or a combination. It doesn't exist in our vocabulary. You can make up a word, say, dionum, but that doesn't explain anything. Its is just a word. There are days when I can explain myself as hot, cold, or warm, but most days I am dionum. A word for something that just 'is', something different than what we know. I consider myself my own gender. I identify as both female and male and have the physical 'goodies' of a woman, but I use those terms because those are the ones I know, the ones we all know. But they don't really fit. I am OK with being a dionum, but I am not OK with being a dionum and being called a confused hot or cold, or maybe I am just a warm and don't know it. I embrace my genderqueerness. It fits me, it fits my wife, thats all that truly matters. But I will continue to try to explain to people that a marvelous world exits outside of what we concretely know, we just need to be open enough to recognize dionum when we see it.