Naomii
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Naomii (was Names, potentially a subsystem gatekeeper of all the names we were called while growing up — there's a lot including school bullying)
- Vitals
- Distinguishing Traits
- Traumaholder, quiet, pained.
In addition to various names from family and family friends, we had many nicknames used and reused in grammar school by bullies as we grew up. We were called It, Skeevotz, and more. Neighborhood kids in our misfit group coined "Big Christine" just based on age not size as there was a "Little Christine" a year or so younger than us as well. Note our name is not and has never been "Christine".
We were called different names or nicknames in different homes, as well as different people just deciding on variations of our legal birthname to just additionally "personalize us" for their edification. There seems to be this pervasive culture that others can pick any nickname variation of your name, or any other name they want (sweetie, lady, etc.) out of a hat and randomly apply it to you sans permission. Placeholder names, terms of endearment, relationship labels ("son"), etc. without regard to what they may be contributing to fragmenting your identity or creating identity confusion, or shoring up traits and portions of identity while neglecting others.
One day around 2008 we were leaving a business meeting and an older gentleman called us "Chrissy" so we called him "Joey" and he said "point taken" and never did that to us again.
The allowance in society to change other people's identity on the fly is pervasive and can result in a lot of identity troubles for people. Misnaming, misgendering, deadnaming, infantilizing, can provoke a great deal of anxiety. Many people expend extra spoons to continually correct name issues, whether it's simply mistakes such as misspellings or mispronunciations, or deliberate attacks like deadnaming and other forms of bullying, aggression, and abuse.
Naomii is our cumulative traumaholder for all of these trials and stressors. We still end up having to defend Naomii, such as a fellow housing resident who recently muttered that Criss ("Chris") is a guy's name and that he would continue to insist our name is "Christine" and we've had to repeatedly confront and correct (gently, but firmly) several times. Our name has been Criss since age 13, and Chris was what our parental units called us growing up (which we will accept, even if it's twitchy, people can't tell the phonetic difference, we can). Calling us "Christina" is like "What did we do wrong?" and other variants of our name will likely get a firm glance at best if not an angry teen all up in someone's face.
It's all abuse, under the moniker of bullying. Anyone doing this deliberately is a deliberate abuser and vile. Mistakes are OK, but correction should be taken with grace and an apology, not excuses to continue undermining someone's identity.
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