Mama Likey

As soon as another person addresses me as "you" I am instantly interpellated/hailed into an ideology, regardless of which one, I recognize myself as a subject. I got to thinking this weekend, not just about being called "you" but being called by one's name, often gendered, and what implications this name had for a person in thier life. I am a female and my name is Jordan. It's not too out there for a girl's name but is still considered prominently a boy's name. In junior high, I always got put in the boy's gym class, when I'd call a cab, the driver wouldn't believe that it was really for me, and one time I had a necklace with my name on it and apparently it was my boyfriends name I was wearing around my neck. I hated my name when I was little, it just didn't sound feminine, and it didn't have an 'A' at the end. Amand-a, Cassandr-a, Lis-a. When people heard my name, they used this gender ideology and came to the conclusion that i was a boy, therefore male. When on the otherhand, when people called me by my name, I was hailed into a female-girl ideology regardless of the gender attatched to my name. Contradiction. A crack. A fissure. A slippery space for subordinate action. I really like my name now, and I'm proud of my mama for wanting to name her kid Jordan no matter what the sex. Could a whole generation of unisex named babies start a revolution? Probably not, but I'd consider it a little bit more than just provisional.