After my last column, where I talked about how you shouldn’t ask trans people intimate questions as if it’s no big deal, I’ve been thinking a lot this week about this whole issue of intimacy and what questions are okay to ask. I’ve been thinking specifically about what I consider intimate information about me, in contrast to what I think most people who don’t know me would consider intimate information about me. So, for instance, I don’t think telling someone that I’m trans is intimate information. For me, it’s simply a part of my life that sometimes needs sharing, so that a story about being in an all girl’s group at camp makes more sense, for instance. Or it’s part of a conversation about origins of names, or my past as a softball player, or the fact that I wear rainbows sometimes despite dating women predominantly.

I sometimes wonder, though, whether people I talk to about being trans think it’s an intimate thing for me to share. How are they to know that I don’t particularly care who knows? How would they ever guess that I’ve had the Coming Out Conversation so many times that I could do it in my sleep? And how are they to intuit that, though at one point being trans was an incredibly salient part of my daily life, these days it’s a detail that sometimes matters and sometimes doesn’t?

As I was thinking all this, something became clear to me. I think that the questions I find so annoying (Tell me about your anatomy! Tell me about your parents!) are annoying because they feel too intimate. My relationship with my family was really rough for a long time, and even though it’s better now, still evokes a lot of emotion in me. And my relationship with my body is an ongoing struggle, which some days is more emotional than others.

I totally get it, now, though. I get why folks generally think it’s kosher to ask me about my family. If they perceived my coming out to them as an intimate act, then it makes sense for the conversation to remain in that intimate space. And what I’ve realized is that this is probably something I should find a way to address, because it’s not their fault that they read it that way. Truly, there is no way of knowing with a given trans person whether their disclosing about being trans is intimate to them.

One problem, though, is that I still don’t really know how to address it. There’s no quick way to explain to someone that I don’t consider what I’m telling them to be intimate, so they shouldn’t assume that I want to have a serious conversation about things that really are intimate. And by the same token, with my close friends, I’m perfectly happy to go in that direction, so I need to find a way to communicate that being trans isn’t intimate, but they should feel free to ask me questions if they have them.

Ah, human communication. How you stymie me.