posh.wiki

It's taken me a long time and many attempts to put this story into words that do it any sort of justice. It also hurts quite a bit to even try to tell it, so I figured I'd make a blog post so I don't have to put myself through it every time someone asks.

Many years ago, I started dating a guy from my school. Well, as much as a naïve high schooler is capable of dating someone while basically never seeing them. We'd been getting close for a few month, and I guess I found him cute and kinda sweet. I'd known I wasn't straight for a long time, and when he confessed his feelings for me, I thought, what the hell, I'll give it a chance.

For a good while, I was happy, and I'd like to think that he was too. In retrospect it definitely wasn't the healthiest thing for me from the start, for reasons I won't get into, but for quite a long time I had many joys and few problems. For those who aren't personally familiar with who I'm talking about, as you read this, I want you to keep in mind that I do have some good stories about our time together too, and I'm sure he tried his best to be good to me. People are complicated, and I'd like to believe that there's some good in everyone.

Over the years, though, our relationship soured. I don't like to go into detail on why, because to this day I don't think I can fairly portray the full picture, both in kindly voicing the issues I had with how I was treated, and in admitting to my own shortcomings in how I treated him. We haven't spoken in years now, but my feelings towards him are still very complex. I'll refer to him as simply "my ex" (though he's not the only one I have), because I feel it's only fair to dignify him with the privacy I ask of even my closest friends.

The story of how I got my name really starts with the comments he made about my voice. I speak with an accent that's widely considered more refined than is typical of the region where my family has lived for as many generations as are on record. My voice has also always exhibited some more feminine properties in terms of its pitch, weight, texture, and volume. He made a lot of comments about this, often in front of other people. In retrospect I can't say with any certainty whether they were intended as jokes, but I found them hurtful to the point that I began to avoid speaking, especially to him. A frequent favourite of his was portmanteauing my name with the word "Posh".

Over time, I came to gain more confidence and self-respect. The sound of my voice, if not how I used it, was one of the first things I learned to love about myself, to the point where today I have no desire to change it, not even to further align with how I want people to perceive my gender. I started leaning into the nickname, forcing it into a joke on my own terms. I changed my discord display name to the portmanteau, and eventually down to just "Posh". Since most of my friendships were online, that became more of my name than my given name. In true queer fashion, I took an insult and made it my own.

Another important thing about my ex is that he was both my first proper introduction to and biggest scare away from the furry community. I'd been an outside observer for a long time, enjoying the art I saw on Tumblr, but after I met him, I was very drawn in by how happy it made him. Seeing the difference between how nervous he was in person compared to how unashamedly happy and comfortable he was around other furries was kind of inspiring. This was the first time I'd seen beyond the art and into the real people of the fandom.

I was also uncomfortable at the time by the promiscuity which remains prevalent in the fandom. I still have my reservations about it today, simply as a matter of personal preference, but at the time my main problems stemmed from both my ex and the people with whom he was engaging in what I would consider "intimate activity" dismissing my concerns and insecurities as "it's just what furries do". No matter how many times I tried, I couldn't get an honest conversation with him about what the two of us wanted out of a monogamous relationship. From him and the crowds he moved with, I got the impression that the furry community had no place for a less openly intimate person such as myself.

When I eventually committed to calling myself a furry, many years after I parted ways with my ex and came to enjoy being a part of the furry community while still being true to myself, I decided that it made sense to stick with the name "Posh" to also refer to the fluffier representation of myself as well. In this aspect, I see it as an ode to both how I got into the fandom and the self-acceptance I wanted it to represent for me.

These days, even some of my IRL friends call me "Posh", be it because that's how they met me, because they want to use a less gendered option, or just because they can. It's really more than a nickname now. It's so intrinsically tied to who I am that I don't think of anything as my "one true name", but rather, that "Posh" is just one of a few widely available pointers to the span of memory that represents who I am.

A sidenote: You may sometimes see my name paired with "Crouton". That part is largely unrelated to this story, and is a bastardisation of my surname as misread by another friend. Far less emotional and meaningful, I just thought it was funny.