I was not sure whether to have the 5th panel being laugh sincerely, which works better, or sigh dismissively, which is more realistic. This way, however, is ambiguous, which leads to the other party uncertain if it had or had not been understood, and if not, if this topic should be tried again, and in the anxiety over the uncertainty, decide not to, which is yet more realistic.

I did have a few jubilant women of apparently similar age and appearance, unrelated to themselves or me, proclaim at me “you’re gonna be an uncle!” And first of all, if THEY know that, then I know that. Once the unit was out, I was alerted by an actual relation in the form of “you’re an uncle.” Not “your sister has given birth at last” or even “the danged thing is out,” since I knew whose it was. For whatever reason people want to present it in the form of me turning into some gendered word and permanently affixing it to the front of my name, even though had I been dead this process would have carried on unhindered. They mean it is a favor to me, surely, and there is no way to tell them I am discomforted by it without making it a bigger problem than it ought to be. Congratulating me is also upsetting, considering that I actually make things through my own effort that the same people routinely have no interest in or interest in having interest in. Things better than THIS one that you are reading, I mean!

This congratulation means as much as the Big Why supermarket congratulating me on successfully using my free Big Why card while paying for my purchases and receiving one of their weird plastic fake coins for it.

Or at&t uverse congratulating me on being found by their obnoxious automated email and its unnecessary creepy video with a robot voice saying my given legal name that I only gave it because it is legally my name, but not what I want anyone calling me if I have a choice. I bet it would call me UNCLE if it knew and could see two years into the future since undoubtedly it has ways of knowing. It would be easier and less discomforting, for me, to just be allowed to READ the instructions, but I am not allowed to argue with the robot. Human beings are thus going to have to deal with me.

I have probably said so before, but maybe not, since I have not convinced myself I am entitled to harbor the feeling, and in any event this can be taken as my official declaration: I do not consider myself, I am not emotionally comfortable with the idea of me being a “man.” I am a gender-indecisive being. I was born as one thing and did not like it, but I did not want to be the “opposite” either.

It would not be convincing and would require bizarre over-compensatory effort, that would likely result in some people unenthusiastically humoring my effort while others would simply be cruel.

Birdo isn’t even real, and lacks descriptive biology entirely, and still nobody accepts its choice. What chance would I have? Having a perpetually OH NO shaped mouth is fine, but don’t you dare pretend you never had a phallus that you never had.

My body barely works as it is; I do not want to mess with it and risk screwing up and having constant pain roundabout something I would prefer to pretend was not there at all. Though I feel like staying what I started as is lying to myself, trying to be the other would be lying to everyone else. I just want it not to matter. But oh how it insists on mattering.

Male is a statement that makes me uncomfortable. Female is a statement that would make others uncomfortable.

Ordinarily, I can privately not-acknowledge it, and keep me from making it anyone else’s hassle. This week’s matter forces that out and has presented some difficulty. I realize that my problem is not the primary concern of the pregnancy, but it is a concern I will have to deal with alone and without talking through entirely, since none of the exacerbators see it as anything but imaginary, unsatisfiable attention-grabbing. And I start to believe it IS because I always watch for that stuff in others, and am inclined to doubt myself. And thus I hate myself for a feeling that nonetheless occurs, and then hate myself for that.
But my sister Salgorpsponce is fine. The fluid and the tubes are out. There are middle-aged women waiting in line to empathize with her. I can imagine feeling worn out by all the attention. Raising a child is never easy or worry-free, but there is precedent for it. S does not need this website entry to be about that. I am therefore free to talk about my own weird issue.

Of the three siblings, I have been perhaps closest to this one. I knew the two brothers longer, but they became more distant, as they went and lived with/off others, developing disparate extreme political viewpoints, at one point refusing to speak to one another despite both independently concluding that a majority of international heads of state and subordinates should be brought before firing squads (and shot at). They are both comfortable calling themselves and me uncle. They do not know me well enough to have any idea that would irk me. Or perhaps they did but thought I would “get over it.” I am not an over-getter of it. Usually I get around things or go off in another direction. I can survive on private denial, if I may be left to it.
Should I show this to them? I would hate for anyone to read this entry FIRST. I almost hate for anyone to read this at all.

It is one thing to be called by a name. A name is usually more abstract than a word. It may be a man’s name, commonly, but I do not know men with the name. I will not call myself by the name, and will officially change it as soon as I become decisive enough for that, but I became accustomed to hearing it before I developed this specific gendereal issue, so said aloud by someone else (whom I have met already and who is not a condescending robot), it is mostly just a noise by this point. As long as I do not have to say it myself, I can live with it. “Uncle,” however, is very specific, gender-wise. It is like “mister” but more likely to occur outside of scumbagly “business” situations where I can hate the using party for additional reasons, such as including my middle initial, sending me credit card offers or requiring me to use a password that I cannot possibly remember, locking me out of my own account and then acting like that is done as a favor to me, and I ought to be grateful. People who were comfortable calling me an abstract name my whole life want now to put some man title in front of it. And people who only just met me want to do it also. People who barely know me are introducing me with man words to people I have never met at all.

And yet “uncle” is non-specific outside of the gender respect. Rather than a specific person, it is a man out of many men. One of the earlier people I spoke of wanted to use the vague man word in substitution of my name entirely. We do not have a gender-vague word for a parent’s sibling that does not sound like it came from a naive wishy-washy internet forum, because they do, and me insisting on one’s use would be just as dismissable to the people I am having difficulty with as asking for no word. I found advocacy of “pibling,” ostensibly a contraction of “parent’s sibling,” sounds like a little rainbow colored candy that tastes like Mr. Pibb soda. I certainly do not want anybody calling me Mr. Pibling. I might as well try and have people call me skittle or nerd, and I will at least deserve one of them.

It would be the same if we invented our own word, but I would rather have no word.

I know once the baby is in the house there will be other issues, and I will not be at risk of the baby calling me the word for some time, and by that point outside parties should be less excited about tossing it in where it does not belong, and I can ask the one person who matters to not call me that. And then I reckon I have until the age of 7 or so before the child realizes I am a complete loser who needs accommodations at every stage to keep from crumbling into a weeping heap, and starts using the word deliberately to annoy me. I was terrible to my own mother’s weird brother, but he fortunately never had an issue with the binary tree. Or if he did, it did not keep him from functioning.

The creators were able to procreate because they accepted what they were and acted on mutually functional biological impulses. What are my impulses? I have an impulse to create imps but it is not biological, hopefully.

I have been asked: “how’s it feel to be an uncle?” It does not feel like anything! Should it? I am worried at worst and indifferent at best. I suspect the asker did not really care about my answer, and thought it would be interpreted as an upgraded form of “how are you?,” the base level question askers do not want answers to. For them to fulfill a request to stop would be a challenge, since it seems to occur as a thoughtless reflex, just as my negative reaction does, though I am fated to dwell on my reflex afterward.
Clearly I am more affected by adults trying to re-frame my life in the context of this other person’s baby than anything the actual baby did in less than a week. I will admit that I find this baby less ugly than the “adorable” babies I am exposed to in trash media, but this one is usually asleep, with mouth shut and nothing leaking out. This baby would not be in a gross-out cartoon (id est: ANY cartoon) or used to sell products. I am glad to know someone with integrity.

‘Crotch-chops’ and ‘why’ do not mix.

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Why is it the mopey things that get stuck up here for longer than a week?