beauty in ambiguity

[For the record, I didn't capitalize the title of this blog for a reason--genderfork.com]

I'm just going to put this out there right now--I'm an ignorant asshole. No really. I hardcore judge myself for it, too. When I see a person whose gender is not clearly definable, my mind inevitably wanders where I try to keep it from most...I wonder if they're a boy or girl.

Ass. Hole.

I guess what I'm trying to convey here is that despite all my women's studies training and my own personal values of basic human (excepting right-wing evangelicals) rights, the topic of transgenderism is uncomfortable for me. I want so badly to understand them and to make them feel comfortable, but the very fact that I'm categorizing them as a 'them' separate from myself is so anti-women's studies it makes my head spin. I want them to know that I support them, but I don't want to just support them for the sake of supporting them because I don't really know them. Them them them them them. I'm grouping them as thems rather than as the individuals that they really are. I can't even imagine the struggles they face--although I perform a feminine gender, I have the mouth of a sailor and other various traits culturally constructed as masculine, and I've gotten shit for it. If I get policed for violating my gender, I can't even fathom what they face daily. I don't want to be "that girl" that has to ask them a series of what I would feel are really personal questions about their gender identity if I don't know them. That would be like calling them out on their gender variance, and I'm not cool with doing that. And there I go with grouping them into a collective again--I feel like I'm being narrow-minded despite my desperate attempts not to be.

I just want to know more. And I feel like I'd be imposing if I just walked up to someone and was like "well hello, I'm awkwardly forward in conversations and I'd really love to know which third-person pronouns you prefer." So then, the academic nerd in me is like, "oh! I'll read books on them with personal narratives and the like!" And while I feel that knowledge and research is good, I feel like I'm being clinical (and very much patriarchal) in the way that I feel like they're so different from me that I have to check out a book to understand them. They're not fucking calculus. They're people.

I'm just really, really confused about this and I don't want to be an ignorant asshole anymore.