Queer people can have a rough go of it when answering some pretty standard questions. For example:

Person A: What’s your name?

Person B: Er, well— there’s the one on my birth certificate, the one everyone calls me that I had to get switched on my driver's license, and then there’s the one I went by for a few months in 2008 that I switched to the one I have now but it was long enough so that one shows up on some pretty important documents so, uh, what was the question?

Person A: I’m just gonna put down “Smith.”

And while name can be a tough one, gender can be even tougher. Especially since it usually comes with two options to check off: either “man” or “woman."

Which, as we all know, is total bullshit. They don’t even give you room to elaborate! At the very least they could give you some wiggle room— ”Did you mean woman as in June Cleaver or woman as in Tank Girl?“ But even that wouldn’t be enough.

Gender is a spectrum, just like sexual orientation. And while there are some umbrellas to fall under within that spectrum (genderqueer, agender, two-spirit, etc.) sometimes you don’t want to give a sociology lecture every time you introduce yourself to someone.

In an ideal world the box that said "gender” would leave you a blank space to write in whatever you wanted. In case you ever encounter such a box, the following are some suggestions that might work better than the standard issue answers:

WHAT IS YOUR GENDER?

Tweed Velvet Wizard Velvet Wizard Bees Episode 406 of The X Files Excellent The sound of one hand clapping Mohawk The ‘86 Mets Candy Furby Wizard again Diamonds Hip-hop Death metal These aren’t the droids you’re looking for.

A friendly reminder that hey, your gender is your business and doesn’t need to fit into a check box. What word(s) or X-Files episodes best describe your gender?