Apologies for the delay but here they are. As per usual, if your pronouns aren't in the list, please comment them here and I'll see that they get added.
UPDATE: “Undecided” and “None/Use Name” have now been added.
Apologies for the delay but here they are. As per usual, if your pronouns aren't in the list, please comment them here and I'll see that they get added.
UPDATE: “Undecided” and “None/Use Name” have now been added.
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yeah, the same way your name refers to you, pronouns do as well. both are also capable of gendering you. for example, I'm trans and I prefer to be gendered as a woman. same way, some NB people do in fact want to be gendered but as some gender that doesn't fit within our binary -- so there are no pronouns for them to use and they're forced to create new ones.
but really, this comes down to really basic respect for the identity and self-determination of another person. it ultimately does not matter why someone wishes to be referred to a certain way. would you balk at addressing someone by a particular name? what if they're parents gave it to them? what if it's a joke in your culture but serious in theirs? why do you get to be the arbiter of how someone else is referred to?
The only actual critique I can think of his is trying to use the pronounce "cat/girl" in a sentence will make it read very very weird??? Thats basically the only ilk I have with neopronouns
yeah, I'm worried about that one too. I don't want to normalize people not using people's flaired pronouns but at the same time I totally get the desire to err on the side of caution when it comes to not invalidating someone. easiest thing to do is practice.
doe/deer otoh is very easy because it sounds like other pronouns so it's more like learning a new meaning for a word (and dropping the old connotations) rather than something entirely fresh. in reality, both examples are the same but the similarity in sound helps for whatever reason.
its whatevs. It seems like the people actually using those flairs also have she/her or anypronoun marked as well so i will just use she/her or they
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how something is intended and how something is received are not the same thing. you might intend they/them to be heard as simply confirming the referent's gender but I, for example, will always feel like an alien when I'm called they. he makes me feel like I've been punched. she makes me feel happy. one of these is correct, the others are wrong.
the same thing is true of people with genders outside the binary. if they/them makes them feel weird, why would you insist on calling them that?
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yeah, that's the generally accepted social norm.
so you're assuming there is a single spectrum on which genders lie. the truth is that there are as many genders as there are people who have ever been or who ever will be. many cluster close enough to man and woman that they do for the majority. but for many others, their genders don't fall on a spectrum between man and woman.
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first, gender identity isn't something you prefer -- it's something that's innately part of you. if I could prefer not to be a woman, there's no way in hell I would have transitioned. second, pronouns are preferential when we're discussing how people label themselves but they aren't really preferential either. like I pointed out up thread, I don't exactly have a choice with my pronouns.
but yeah, generally when you're talking to someone and they tell you which pronouns they'd prefer (or their gender identity, though that's considerably more personal), you know none of: 1. their actual pronouns; 2. their gender identity; 3. very much about them at all except that at this moment in time they prefer these pronouns or that gender identity.
also, gender identity is not a person's whole identity by any stretch but it's certainly a very complicated and personal part of who they are. the only traits that make up gender identity are things internal to a person that you can't know from the outside. gender identity is at least as complicated as identity. "at least" because in many ways it's a social experience as well in a way that our identities are not (or, well, are not any more... that's kind of capitalism and alienation) -- I share my gender with other women and there's a collective experience in that, the same and different from your own experience of sharing masculinity with other men.
all I can say is that confusion about all this is very normal. understanding comes from experience and even with experience it's tough to make sense of. now imagine trying to figure all this out while trying to make yourself cis again and having continuous panic attacks about it and you've got a decent description of the trans experience, lol.
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The pronouns people want you to use are a preference, and that is why this situation is so confusing. The discussion is about people listing their prefered pronouns, which is only a related concept to gender identity. People are thinking of pronouns as a proxy for gender identity, which is only partially correct.
Now if you talk about "misgendering" someone, does that mean you assumed the wrong gender identity, or merely used the wrong pronouns? If someone is male-presenting and tells you their pronouns are he/him, but they identify as a nonbinary gender... if you call them he/him assuming they're a cis guy... have you "misgendered" them? Good question, I don't know the answer!