That thing with the pronouns

[grayestofghosts]

I have a basket full of pronoun pins with all different pronouns on them and someday when I'm feeling feisty I'm just going to put them all over my battle jacket to fuck with people.

I really, really wish we had just come up with a polite way to ask 'what gender are you' rather than how pronoun usage has become a stupid proxy for it in the stupid reality we live in. My pronouns are really, really not something I want to fuss with unless we're discussing editing actual copy, when I may have strong opinions but they're not going to be consistent over everything, so you'd better fucking ask. Otherwise, just leave me alone!

Comments

[fred_mouse]

Huh. I like 'what are your pronouns' for two reasons. The first is that my pronouns (they/them) are constant and my gender isn't (ish). The second is that within the community I would expect the nuanced understanding of gender that would make it a question worth answering (sometimes), but I don't expect that in the wider community, when it is still common to find online demographics collection forms with binary gender options.

Plus my pronouns don't exact state what my gender is because there are lots of they/them using gender variants.

I can see though, that if your pronouns vary and there isn't a bite sized explanation of what that means and why, or how to consistently apply them, that it would be a much more frustrating default.

ETA: which is kind of to say I hate that what has happened is that at a simplistic level we have moved from a gender binary to a gender trinary, and I only count as 'non-binary' because it is easier to explain, but I hate it, because it is Wrong. And the fact that it is so much better doesn't actually negate the 'we have so far to go with this before it even starts to make sense'.

[grayestofghosts]

I think the problem is more that I run into just enough “well-meaning” cis people who know just enough to parrot the language because they think it either makes you a good person or is enough to cover your ass without any actual understanding of what it means, and have therefore created a world where correct pronouns are not a polite stylistic issue and are actually an othering euphemism for people like me.

There was a quote by Leslie Feinberg when asked about pronouns and IIRC they said they didn’t care because they could tell when someone was using them to refer to them with respect, and that’s how I feel about them — it’s become a way to bypass any respect with adherence to technical correctness, it feels like.

[fred_mouse]

Oh! So, your feeling on pronouns and mine on non-binary are different facets of the same problem! I feel incredibly 'othered' when required to pick between male/female/non-binary, because it doesn't work like that! I actually loathe the 'what are your pronouns' going around a circle as part of an introduction, because I think it has a high chance of harm. Particularly when it was suddenly the trendy thing to do in universities, and many many gender questioning young adults were put on the spot.

I believe I've read that quote. There is a similar one that I've read somewhere recently that was approximately they would rather hear an outdated term said with respect (or possibly love?) than the up to the minute terminology with disdain.

[grayestofghosts]

Yeah the pronoun circle thing did feel like it was forcing people out early on for me, but on the other hand I can imagine feeling safe enough for once to try it -- but are all the places that do that actively trying to cultivate a safe space for people to explore? Noooooo, they are doing it because they think they're supposed to.

Like at work I just put he/him in my mail signature because my legal name is ambiguous and I'm not interested in sharing that much of me as a person at work. In places where there is a pronoun circles or whatever and aren't at work I just go with 'any,' usually. It's a test for them, a confrontation, really. I'm sure they don't really like that much but honestly the world can deal with it.

[fred_mouse]

Yeah, the only place I would do it now might be when running Ally training, and in a getting people to introduce themselves at the end, using any of the concepts that we have discussed, so that they have a safe space to experiment. Not sure about that -- it is some years since I was an Ally trainer in a uni, but as I've just applied to work at that university, there is a non-zero chance that I'll end up doing it again.

At work I alternated between preferred (they/them) and assumed (she/her), although if I were ever required to write about myself in third person I used they/them. But I also used they/them for everyone else, unless someone made an obvious statement somewhere that I'd seen (and remembered). But! and this is the complicated bit - I have significant guilt about not presenting as female in a male dominated field. I'm still unpacking that, and how it might inform my behaviour if I change career path again.

I love the idea of 'any'. I struggle with it though, because I have a lot of ingrained thoughts/behaviours about linguistic consistency, and changing pronouns hits against that. For similar (trained grammar) reasons I struggle with people who use 'it'. I love the theory, I'm not good at implementation