Fashioning the Body: Versions of the Citizen, the Self, and the Subject

In important forms, I am "Katherine" and not Katie, regardless of the fact that the only connection i feel to this name is when, you know, I have to write it on forms. If forms, like the census, are supposed to mark my identity, the I guess my identity is confused, or perhaps the context of the form is, cuz I sure as hell wouldn't turn around if someone yelled "Katherine" at me. If I didn't feel like identitfying with, you know, a certain, say racial or gendered group in real life, it doesn't really matter on the form, I'm going to have to check that box anyway. So, no matter what, I'll always be Katherine M. Waldeck the SWF, even if sometimes I don't really feel like that person at all. So, I guess there's that fun nonbinary + nonlinear thinking I learn in college, but the only way it officially applies to me, in terms of Uncle Sam or whatever, is that I am studying this stuff in college, so I earn the identity of "college educated." And even if Kate Bornstein says that, you know, gender binaries make it impossible for anyone to fit the binary (myself, of course, included cuz I don't shave or wear make up or wear a bra, three huge markers of being a woman) doesn't mean that I get to apply this idea to the box I check on the form. This makes me think of My Gender Workbook by Bornstein, because a lot of it is checking boxes. I'd like to see the census folks look at that, that's for sure.