I am neuro-divergent. I struggle with remembering minutia that aren’t, coincidentally, just luckily the minutia that I glimpse, once, and never forget. I state this not as an excuse but as a statement of fact and I am terrible at remembering people’s pronouns. I cannot even remember people’s names. When I see people I know, I can remember who they are, what we have done together, where we have been, what we have seen and even the tone of voice they might use to exclaim at an occurrence or upon some eventuality but – yet – I often cannot remember their names. Pronouns are like parts of their names.
And, so, I tend to address everyone with “they” / “them”.
In my limited experience, this only tends to annoy the anti-woke conservative types who renounce the very concept of pronouns and believe that one should only ever be addressed as “he” / “him” – assuming that a penis hangs between their thighs – or “she” / “her” otherwise. (A musing: How do they know? Also, what if it’s cold? Or they’re upside down? Quandaries within quandaries!)
BUT… I am open minded and I can believe that others, too, might be offended by my cop-out, including open-minded, non-mysoginist, non-bigots who do understand why people elect to be addressed under non-Victorian pronouns.
I have recently had reason to pause and wonder about this. I struggle with pronouns but I do try my best and so, I’m asking: for which reasons might someone object? Tell me, LGBTQ+ community.
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Blaming your fellow queers for your oppression, that’s so incredibly lame.
I’m sure you are the perfect expression of queerness, and if every gay were like you, the bigots would stop hating us. /s
Like what are you even proposing? That in order to be an effective queer activist, you need to be okay with misgendering? I feel your rage, but please direct it towards the fascists taking away our rights instead of bashing other queers. This kind of community in-fighting in what the bigots want, we need queer solidarity right now.
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The amount of assumptions you’ve made about me in this one comment is insane. I’m not from the US (and I’ve never had as many rights as you Americans, so don’t police me on my lived experience with being oppressed as a queer person - you did not fight for any rights for me), and I’m not binary, so I have absolutely no problem with being called they/them. Queers in my country can’t get married and the path to legal transition is long and dehumanizing (and for nonbinary people legally impossible) - I assure you I have enough of “real fights” to fight. That doesn’t stop me from showing fellow trans people compassion and caring about their preferred pronouns.
I was telling OP why someone who’s LGBT might feel offended for being called gender neutral pronouns. You know, answering the question they asked. You, on the other hand, are being fucking weird and combative completely unprovoked. Get lost
I do not think it’s particularly nice to escalate and get mad at someone who is trying gently to educate you.
This comment was reported, please remember our only rule on this website and try to be nice in the future.