[Hi there! I still love this post, because it captures a very specific snapshot of how much of myself I was willing to share with the world when I wrote it. However, it remains here for archival use only! Parts of this aren’t complete or accurate anymore—or they never quite were, but they were the closest I could comfortably get to actually telling the truth at the time. “Woman” isn’t part of how I talk about my gender at all anymore, and I’ve added some words like agenderflux and gendervague to my list of applicable identity terms. For a full, always-current list of terms and pronouns to use for me, please always refer to my FAQ page. Thanks!]

[Oh, and if you’re here because a troll sent you, thanks for the hate clicks. Fuck you.]

I have tried to write this post three times already.

On the one hand, it could have taken a lot longer to figure these words out—identity is a tricky thing—but on the other hand, most of my blogs have a single iteration. Drafts, sure, but throwing out a whole post and doing it again? Almost never.

I have tried to write this post three times. Enough to know that no amount of smooth introduction is going to do anything useful for me.

So, hi.

My name is [Eris] DeJarnett. Some of you already know me and love (/fear?) me. I’m a lot of things, and I could list them here, but today I’m just going to mention the ones that aren’t dependent on my art or my career: I’m a demigray genderfluid [nonbinary person] woman, but usually I just say I’m queer.

[I’m also pan, because of how my demisexuality informs the rest of my attraction; I hadn’t named that when I came out, so I’ve updated this to reflect this current reality. Like the rest of this, that isn’t particularly new, just a continuing discovery of more accurate terminology.]

Remember the end of Untouchable? When I said things were more complicated now? This is why. Because now, we’re not talking about sexism aimed at straight, cisgender women. (We haven’t really been for awhile, if you look closely—I’ve been sprinkling in more things over time—but I’m not going to keep pretending being assigned female at birth is the only part of the equation that applies to me.) Actually, the original version of Untouchable (which I lovingly called 5700) was going to dive into some of this. The post was going to end with me coming out. It was going to be an even bigger piece than it already was. Thankfully, one of my confidants on my review team pointed out that I owed my identity more than that. (thanks, Leila!)