One of my art school students from my sex class this past term died in a very very tragic biking accident this past month, as I found out from an email sent out by the school to everyone.
I got her parents' address to send a note, but it was tough to write.
I think she was a lesbian who was experimenting with identity and was just beginning to explore trans* stuff, and she had very tentatively said the pronoun "they / them / theirs" when I asked for pronouns the first day of class, though she had a clearly female name...
All in all, it seemed like a first, gingerly step towards trying some of this genderqueer shit that's floating around nowadays.
Towards the end of class, though, she had a lightbulb go off from reading a primary source, how self-hating your gayness might make you go trans*, and I had wondered at the time where that realization would take her in life.
It was just a comment on a line in one primary source, but you could tell she really noticed herself in the text, and it seemed like some kind of breakthrough in the opposite direction from the pronoun experimentation.
Anyhow, as I wrote the card, I tried just to use her name and avoid pronouns altogether, but eventually that got too hard and I ended up just segueing into "she / her / her".
I honestly have no idea what pronouns she used with her parents, and if they'll call me out for not using "they / them / theirs" with their kid, or if on the other hand if I did that, would it be like a knife twisted in their heart, because this nice condolences card would always be a reminder of how the trans* cult took their daughter away.
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