This month’s post for my monthly Unapologetic column on the Fearless Press deals with the concepts regarding the term Partner — the good, the bad, and the frustrating.
Sometimes, the English language just fails me. Aside from the ridiculous issue of pronouns (I mean, really, do we need to have masculine and feminine pronouns when we conjugate everything in neutrality anyways?), it’s so interesting trying to navigate in field of terminology to refer to people’s partners.
The other day, someone referred to my partner as my “wife.” Well, since both of us reject the concept of traditional marriage (versus our upcoming “Queer Celebration of Love”), it didn’t really fit, but even more so, it doesn’t fit because my partner doesn’t usually identify with either female or male identifies. My partner identifies as genderqueer, residing outside of that binary.
So the term girlfriend doesn’t really fit either. Moreover, as one of my straight friends revealed to me, calling her partner “boyfriend” after ten years of being together feels silly to her, and like she’s back in high school.
To read the rest, click here for Howdy There Partner.
This post, Use of the Term Partner, originally appeared on Shanna Katz M.Ed, ACS on May 27, 2011.