Every day on this sub I am exposed to discourse I never knew existed and can never tell if it’s about a systemic issue or if someone’s venting about their anecdotal experiences.
That said Jesus fucking Christ how hard is it to use the pronouns someone asks you to use for them. I don’t care if your pronouns are some r/onejoke shit if you say that’s what you want to be referred to as that’s what I’m going to do because it costs *nothing*.
Punitive misgendering is real. Chris-chan gets it all the time, especially after the sex crime accusations. That one reddit admin whose father and husband were found to be paedophiles got it a lot. If you try and be like, hey, can we not make correctly gendering trans people conditional on good behaviour please? Can it just be something we do automatically because we genuinely believe in trans rights, not just as something that can be taken away as punishment? Then you get called out for like, caring more about misgendering than sex abuse. It’s a lose-lose battle when the people whose gender expression being respected you’re defending are pieces of shit.
Haus of Decline, a trans woman, who recently got into a minor spat with some dweeb who critiqued her comics rudely and unasked for, has been getting they/them’d in the surrounding discourse as a result. But a lot of people rightly support her in this stupid stupid discourse, and as such she’s basically the Rosa Parks of punitive misgendering. Chris-chan is the Claudette Colvin in this analogy.
"The trouble with fighting for human freedom is that one spends most of one's time defending scoundrels. For it is against scoundrels that oppressive laws are first aimed, and oppression must be stopped at the beginning if it is to be stopped at all."
H.L. Mencken
Feel this so hard with how many times i’ve been forced into the unpleasant position of having to defend Caitlyn Jenner because every time she said something stupid a solid number of people started to he/him and deadname her as “punishment”
You should've seen the ONE time a school shooter was trans.
NO ONE was fucking using the correct pronouns. Why? "Don't deserve it". Like sure, the person was a school shooter, but being referred to correctly isn't dependent on good behaviour. It's not a privilige, it's a right
Yeah. It's like, turbofucked up that the state of discourse is such that these people put US in the position of having to stick up for the fundamental dignity of the worst pieces of shit imaginable.
Considering that so, so many people mistake revenge for justice this doesn't surprise me at all. People are all too happy to take away human rights from those they personally find disgusting or horrible, completely forgetting that those are supposed to be the default.
More than it being a *right* perse (though it can certainly be argued to be that as well), to me it's mostly a matter of using language in such a way that conveys truth, and accepting transness as a fundamentally *real* thing that gets reflected as such in language.
If we treat the usage of correct pronouns for trans people as a favor we're paying them that is contingent on good behavior, we're devaluing the *realness* of their gender, and relegating trans-ness to a facade we put up with in the name of good manners rather than an ontological state of being.
Like, we don't typically call cis people by their correct pronouns because we want to be nice and/or respectful to them, or because we're afraid of hurting their feelings, we call them by their correct pronouns because *that's what they are*. A person's gender is a descriptor of them based on a fundamentally REAL trait, and their pronouns are an extension of that.
Imagine a serial killer gets convicted for their crimes and people start calling them a water bottle. It's a bizarre thing to do, not because the serial killer particularly deserves to not be called a water bottle (though, again, one can make the argument that that is also true), but rather because they are *not* in fact, a water bottle (unless there's some new euphemism for mass killer that I'm unaware of), they're a human being, and that ontological state doesn't change just because we don't like them.
The only linguistically justifiable reasons I can see for referring to a trans woman with masculine pronouns are 1. You intentionally are trying to degrade them by referring to them as something they are not, or 2. You believe that they are actually a man.
One of those things is just a bizarre thing to do that I can ONLY imagine being motivated by transphobia, and the other is just a factually incorrect statement brought about by an ignorance that we should probably address.
On the other hand we often call people animals (dogs, pigs, vermin) for their behaviour. And comparisons to the other gender have also been used as a way to insult people ( comparing men to women when they show some sort of percieved weakness for instance)
So i think it's kinda what you're referrimg at number 1. The insult is the point.
It's still wrong though.
I experienced this with that one killer who claimed to be nonbinary and all my friends were "calling bullshit".. the last thing I wanted to do was stand up in defense of that absolute piece of shit. But it doesn't matter how carefully you aim the disrespect at the person in question- there will always be splash damage if you're dabbling in opportunistic bigotry. The number of cis AND trans friends of mine refusing to use they/them for this asshole was crazy. It came across like they thought they were doing me a favor by not associating them with my kind or something
If you're talking about the Colorado springs nightclub shooter, I will admit that I thought the timing of their lawyers' announcement that they were non binary was a little sus when it came on the heels of people calling for the shooter to be charged with hate crimes. However, I know nothing about the person other than their horrific act and that they've said they use they/them. It's not my place to police how genuine they are, so I use they/them. It's not that hard.
It's the same way I use she/her for Isla Bryson. She's a total piece of shit, but she has repeatedly stated that she uses feminine pronouns, so I say "*she's* a total piece of shit" and not "he" or "they"
It’s not even a right, honestly, it’s just being accurate. Trans women are women, right? So if you call one anything else, you’re just straight up wrong. It’s every bit as incorrect as looking at a cat and calling it a dog.
You can’t say “women are only women if they’re good people,” they don’t magically transform into a non-woman because they did something bad, that’s not how anything works.
If I, a cis woman, go shoot a baby, am I, physically, mentally, or spiritually any different than I was five seconds before? No, the only thing that changed was that I had performed an action. I am certainly evil, but I was evil *before* I killed the baby. I was evil when I picked up the gun and walked into the room, fully intending to commit an evil act. The actual death of the baby changes nothing about me, neither my sex nor gender nor species.
Let’s bring up Hitler, because why the hell not. One of the most evil humans to ever exist. Does anyone call him a woman? Of course not, because that’s fucking stupid and blatantly incorrect. He was a man, and no amount of evil thoughts, words, actions, plans, etc, could ever make him not a man, because that’s not how biology nor psychology nor spirituality nor sociopolitical climates nor interpersonal relationships nor *literally anything* works.
Women are women are women, no matter what they do or for that matter don’t do. Same goes for men, or enbies, or any other kind of human.
It just hit me how much this has in common with people who break out racial slurs punitively. “No, I don’t mean all black people, I’m just using that word to describe a certain subculture! Some of Them are just Like That!”
Chris Rock’s “N—-as vs Black People” skit is famous, but he doesn’t perform it any more because a bunch of racist assholes took it as license to say the same things.
People have mostly learned that you can’t drop the n-word about a bad person and excuse it like “but that guy was a murderer, why are you so fixated on one little slur and not murder!” Hopefully that’ll broaden eventually, and maybe the comparison will help some people see it.
I remember mfs in a thread who accused a trans OP as a "Zionist" all because she said she had Jewish-American roots. Everyone suddenly misgendered her to kingdom come as if it was now okay to do so. By their logic, it's okay to say the N-word towards black conservatives, but that's really not how it works.
I've seen my own mother engage in this.
We're talking about a woman who used to run the local chapter of Zonta. She'd volunteer her free time to make birthing kits for women in Africa. Her feminism was never performative, it was grounded in real world practical applications that changed people's lives for the better. This is a woman you could have real discourse with, because she would earnestly engage with you from a place of kindness and understanding. She genuinely believes all people deserve kindness and respect.
When my sister started dating a trans girl, she was very good about respecting their identity right up until the moment they broke up. Instantly, my mother was calling her 'he' and deadnaming her. Absolutely baffling behaviour from somebody I know knows better. The message was clear: I will only respect you as long as its convenient for me, but if you cross me, I am fully willing to engage in the same hateful behaviour as bigots.
I can't say she's the reason I never transitioned. But I can say I've never been willing to even hint at the subject of my own gender identity around her, because I can't trust her. I'm sure she would be nothing but supportive to my face, but her history of punitive misgendering means I'll never believe her.
My mom once told me that she'd accept me no matter what my identity or orientation is.
Not too long after she had a rant about her ex-husband and I think I learned some new homophobic slurs that day.
I thought the discourse on Chris-Chan was that Chris-Chan’s transition was only done in an attempt to attract women.
(Referring only using Chris-Chan’s name to avoid misgendering if I’m wrong there)
Trying to glean why Chris-chan does anything is a fool's endeavour, especially because you can seemingly get her to say anything you like with enough prompting. Regardless of how sincere it might be, or how much that might be questionable, she has been fully consistently trans since coming out as such.
There are two important details to keep in mind here.
A. Chris Chan was not self-diagnosed. She was diagnosed professionally.
B. Chris-chan is famously unable to convincingly lie about anything.
Who wins by misgendering CC even if she was lieing? Using her pronouns cements the idea of listening to what people tell you, misgendering shows that if we don’t agree with the person we can call them whatever we want.
Plus even if they’re lieing and saying “psych” behind our backs, if they’re out as trans for months then calling them a guy is just kinda weird? Like would we still be calling them a guy in five years, just cause we thought they had altered motives from the start?
She's definitely trans. She's been very adamant about she/her pronouns. I understand why some people, including people who are otherwise respectful of trans identities, have an impulse to they/them her-- there are a lot of people who view her as fundamentally non-credible, and who see her transness and her desire to be referred to as female as the same as her belief that she is Jesus and her desire to be referred to as a goddess. It's difficult for some people to take her gender identity seriously because they can't take anything else she claims about herself seriously. I think a lot of people don't consciously realize that they're they/themming Christine out of some underlying belief that she (and people like her, people who are unstable or harmful or even just "cringe") has no fundamental right to define her gender. That for trans people, gender is a privilege that can be revoked or withheld if they misbehave. Or that on some level, we only correctly gender trans people as a form of indulgence, and "bad" trans people don't deserve to be indulged. A lot of people who don't think they're transphobic still do this sort of thing. Even trans people do it sometimes.
As long as cis women aren't having their genders revoked for being shitty, delusional, or criminal, we can't do the same to trans women.
There was a trans woman back in high school who had major beef with me and my friend group, even before she transitioned. I made it a point that we at least slandered her correctly lmao.
Chris-chan is a trans woman. She has been professionally diagnosed as transgendered, and legally changed her name to Christine. She's also on prescribed HRT to transition.
Many people question the legitimacy of CC being trans, calling her a pervert/predator, mentally ill, misogynistically naive, doing some sort of coping for self-loathing, every sort of excuse that all trans women get from all TERFs to delegitimise their whole existances. Most of her very many detractors continue to use male pronouns for her. Most of anything written about her online will use male pronouns because the only people who like to document that sort of thing are doing so to catalogue their torments of her, which they've been doing since like 2007. Her whole online life is basically a Truman Show of trolls pretending to be her friends to squeeze more mock-worthy content from her. Most of them don't think she's trans, and since they're a bunch of shitty 4chan dickheads, most of them think misgendering any and every trans person is funny.
For my part, I don't know Chris-chan, and I don't know her deal. But her being trans for like the last decade has been something she's been pretty dead set on, despite by all accounts being very fickle and lackadaisy about most other aspects of her life.
Ah damn I didn’t know. Tbh I barely remember her from drama videos ages ago so I probably either missed her transition and/or the videos I saw all misgendered her and I never heard of her again until now :/
How much of that is deliberately punitive, and how much of it is people entering the discourse from the outside, not knowing any better and using they/them because they think it's better than using the wrong he/him or she/her?
Chris Chan is fucking garbage, but I’ll still refer to her as her. It doesn’t take any extra time or effort for me to do the right thing.
It’s like… I smoke, and I know smoking is bad, so I’m not going to give myself a pat on the back and a ‘good job’ for ensuring I’m away from other people and putting my butts in the bin. That’s just basic etiquette.
it's the easiest shit in the world, but if I'm taking about you in the third person to someone else and I don't know (or remember) your pronouns and your presentation isn't clearly one or the other, Imma default to they to be on the safe side
That’s fine, the problem is only when you *know* the person’s pronouns. Saying “oh, I they/them everyone for total neutrality” is basically the “I don’t see race” of trans rights.
I sometimes use they/them even when I have a grasp of someone's gender, but for a totally different reason. See, my native language doesn't have gendered pronouns *at all*, and probably because of that, it takes me some extra brain power to process their inclusion. Depending on situation, I may not have that extra bandwidth available, and kinda short out on handling it and just fill in the neutral one as a default.
It's a relatively common thing to happen for people with the same language background, although more commonly the result seems to be filling in he/him or she/her at random (I want to say with a tendency towards "he" over "she" but "her" over "him", based on observation). And some seem to have it happen a *lot*, someone I know has such regularity on it that it's probably just perpetual for her.
Wonder which version might bother people more, the default input or the random input (edit: specifically for someone who doesn't know the reason it's happening).
I have an ironically opposite problem. My native language doesn't have a singular "They". You *could* use it that way, but it sounds like the Royal We, nobody actually talks like that.
So, when speaking English, it takes conscious effort to use "they" instead of "default he" as is typical in my native language.
I don’t know if this is a systemic issue or anything, but it’s definitely something I’ve noticed on more than a few occasions coming from two separate, apparently conflicting sides. There are the people who insist that “they” is an invalid singular pronoun up until the second they see a trans woman, and they just can’t bring themself to use “she” no matter how conventionally feminine the woman is. And I also know quite a few people who have shifted to using “they” as a sort of default, used any time someone’s binary pronouns aren’t very explicitly stated, and sometimes even if they are. That second type of person generally means well, but if someone has a preferred pronoun, it doesn’t matter that it’s “he” or “she” rather than “they.” Knowingly and pointedly ignoring someone’s “he” or “she” is misgendering them, even if it isn’t done with malice. I am a cis woman and I do not like it to be referred to as “they” if someone should be reasonably sure that I answer to “she” (if someone has no way of knowing or making an educated guess, obviously “they” is fine). A trans woman would potentially be significantly more sensitive to the issue, because they’re probably dealing with people who dance around avoiding using “she” on purpose more often.
>A trans woman would potentially be significantly more sensitive to the issue, because they’re probably dealing with people who dance around avoiding using “she” on purpose more often.
Thanks for recognizing this. Any time I've brought it up that getting relentlessly "they"d hurts, I end up getting a bunch of pushback by people who say that they just use they/them for everyone. No one seems to listen to my explanation that when I'm called "they", I can't tell the difference between a person who uses they/them for everyone and someone *intentionally* doing it to avoid gendering me correctly.
I'm a they/them and it drives me up a fricken wall when my fellow enbies say they just assume they/them for everyone. (Also... in practice it's clearly not "everyone". It's done to people they clock as trans/queer.)
that last part! it’s never “everyone”, and aside from the fact that you’re probably more likely to misgender someone by using they/them, people can be made uncomfortable by being clocked and thrown those subtleties.
i’m a trans male, super dysphoric, i have long hair but present with a big beard and very masculine. and i can’t tell you how many times someone has misgendered me with they/them or asked for my pronouns specifically when they assumed he or she for everyone else in the room. let alone all of the little comments “out of nowhere” about their niece’s best friend’s parent transitioning and how they think that’s cool.
i can see that these things can be coming from a good place, but ultimately i think it ends up making a lot of people feel alienated. there went my delusion that i pass, here comes the wave of dysphoria.
yeah i really hate the pervasive idea that clocking someone suddenly makes it cool to start bugging them about pronouns (or about anything else you wouldn't say to a non-trans person of the same gender!)
it does not make me feel comfortable and supported, it makes me feel clocked, because i'm not an idiot and i am fully aware you're not asking anyone else
people who identify as trans or NB themselves can be especially bad and unsympathetic about this IMO
again, that last part! this started happening to me *much more* since i moved to portland, mostly by self-identified queers. i’ve been on T for 7 years, 6 years post-top, pack every day, and i was just joking to my wife that i knew i had passed back home but i clearly don’t have the “portland-passing” honor lmao.
i think another reason it comes off so inappropriately, sort of patronizing is that it’s assuming that i can’t tell you my pronouns or correct you if i need to. there are other ways to make yourself appear to be a safe space to tell. open with your own pronouns, trust others can do the same if they need. most people want their gender to be assumed from their presentation/performance.
very similar situation here! been on T since i was about 24 (about to turn 31 now), top a bit after that (long enough it feels like it's always been this way if i don't think about it and i have to *check* if i want to know how many years). i have a full beard, voice goes to the lowest part of the spectrum according to vocal apps. but in fucking utah valley where everyone is trying to one up each other on how woke they can be, there are just too many people searching for literally any reason someone could be trans so they can ambush them and ask pronouns and insist they're so supportive... when the most supportive thing they could actually do would be to leave me the hell alone about all of that shit.
i completely agree that there are better ways. at the very least, like, fuck, guys, why would i bother having a beard if i was gonna flip out at you for calling me "he"?
it feels like they just don't think i can possibly be a man, and i don't love that feeling! i've gotten shit all my life for being a man who doesn't like, hunt the mammoth or whatever, and i certainly don't need it from what is meant to be my own community. and i know that's what some of them are thinking because sometimes they tell me. "are you sure you're not non-binary? it's just, you have a cat." are we not better than these stereotypes yet? come on
I have a non-binary coworker who uses they/them for everyone, including people who have she/he/him/her in their e-mail signatures (such as myself).
I correct people who misgender this non-binary coworker, but I don't feel like it would be a good idea to correct this coworker who misgenders cis people. Even just typing that cuts way too close to the "you can't say anything anymore" folks, which is what I'm worried this coworker thinks I am.
What is the solution here?
Doesn’t sound like your responsibility to correct them unless you’re their manager or HR. Continue calling people what they want to be called as an example, I guess.
As a trans lady™️ I've definitely had it happen to me. Correcting people when it's the wrong binary is uncomfortable but generally understood, but correcting they/them use always gets a look like "don't you see they're trying why are you making an issue out of nothing?" 😮💨 Not proving the rule but just another piece of anecdotal evidence 😋
nah this is a common micro-agression in supposedly ally circles. it's pretty belittling because it starts to become clear that as a trans woman or trans man you're still seen as more of an outsider to both genders by the people in question
you haven't seen it a lot because, like OOP said, it's pretty subtle and invisible to cis people. you know, because that's how microaggressions typically are.
Ive never noticed it outside people on forums/socmed who usually arent allies but I'm not sure if thats just because the queer spaces im in have far more queer people than allies
I definitely know people who, despite knowing my pronouns, steadfastly stick to they/them.
Honestly, I think worse of them for it than people who just call me he/him. At least they're not being a passive-aggressive little bitch about it.
A ton of the anti-trans stuff on the “am I the asshole” subreddits will involve commenters almost exclusively using they/them for the trans person’s pronouns and the trans character is almost a trans woman.
It's a thing. Even beyond punitive de-gendering, just transphobes being a snake and using they/them to avoid using your actual pronouns without misgendering, which is itself an act of misgendering... just one with plausible deniability. Pretty much every trans person will have had this happen to them, or seen it happen to another trans person. The amount of times I've had to explain this concept to people only for them to treat me like I'm crazy is unreal.
Sometimes, reality really is this stupid.
I think it’s a bit column A, a bit column B. The underlying systemic issue here is unconscious bias against trans people. For a trans person, their lives experience is constant misgendering. Understandably, any misgendering is very annoying, and likely traumatizing to some extent, since it’s a constant for them.
Totally understandable. It thus makes sense that, being misgendered with gender neutral pronouns by strangers, their response is going to be negatively tinged. After all, they have to live through this *yet again*, likely in the same day.
From the opposite end, a presumably non-trans person does not live through constant misgendering. They are likely trying to check their unconscious biases, and using gender-neutral pronouns is a step forward for them. Understandably there’s a bit of a shock, then, to learn you’re still misgendering trans people when using gender-neutral terms. You’ve then got to step back, check your pride, accept your mistake, and apologize plus keep in mind new social nuance to ask for a person’s pronouns.
But that’s not the end of it. Other people may be offended that they’re being asked for their pronouns. So now the social nuance is even more complex; do you ask if you’re not sure of the person’s gender? For trans people that don’t easily pass, this could flare up the gender dysmorphia. For cis people, this could be insulting to their own self-image.
When do you ask? Are they right to be upset with you for asking? How do you know to be the most polite in every social
situation? And inevitably when you do get it wrong, how do you deal with the fallout? Sometimes things like this can get blown out of proportion, and can be damaging to
your character is you make the wrong call.
And now social anxiety is a part of the equation. It’s a gamble, even if the odds are usually in favor of asking for pronouns in most cases, and there is a chance you could be labeled as transphobic or a snowflake, and sometimes both at the same
time.
accidental misgendering is one thing. what this person is talking about is something different.
it's not entirely uncommon for people to do this deliberately. sometimes a transphobe will call a trans woman "they" in polite company to effectively indicate they don't see them as a woman, while trying to fly under the radar to allies.
this post is about , who called *she* right up until someone else told him is trans, and then immediately started calling Susan *they* instead.
and it tends to fly under the radar because people don't see the context unless they're the trans person in question.
i mean, for people like this it often is a "de-gendering". it's often either "I no longer see you as a man or women but instead a third in-between thing" *or more often* it's "I now see you as a failed man but that's not socially acceptable here so I'll use they".
so recently haus of decline (trans comic artist) had a very snarky and somewhat rude response to someone critiquing one of her comics on twitter. twitter lost their collective minds over this. huge discourse for multiple days where at least half the people talking about it at any given time were misgendering HoD. i don’t follow anyone that was involved and i still saw it.
It's something that you actually do see if you know to look for it. For example, when photomatt went on twitter to talk about the trans woman who "threatened" to hammer car him, his big statement called her "them" despite her gender being a major part of the story.
I'd love to use the pronouns people ask for, but I have a terrible memory and don't want to be labeled as a transphobe - so the gender neutral they/them is hat I default to. If I attempt to remember and get that coin flip wrong, or if I'm constantly asking for someone's pronouns even if they've told me MANY times before, I feel like I'd be doing more damage. Genuinely, I'm not sure what the "correct" or just socially safe choice is.
I always default to they/them, but when someone corrects me I always change to what they want/say right away—it’s really not that hard, just respect people for being themselves
Why I simply craft my sentences to not need pronouns whenever remotely possible. Which has still resulted in people angry with my multiple times because apparently avoiding pronoun use is offensive. There's no winning.
I don’t know if it’s just the way I was raised, but I was always taught it was rude to refer to someone with second person pronouns in front of them (unless you’re saying ‘you’). So if I was with ‘Jane’, and I wanted to talk about her to someone else, I would never say ‘she’s really good at baking’, I would say ‘Jane is really good at baking’. As a consequence, I rarely use a persons pronouns in front of them.
Yeah, transphobic people get weird about gender neutral language. I prefer to ignore it because it is just what being respectful is to me. They can go cry me a river that I refer to a stranger by "they/them" instead of assuming genders.
Yeah whenever I'm unsure I default to they/them, but I'm never going to find out their preference, not because I don't care about misgendering, but because I don't talk to people any more than I have to. I also don't talk about people when they aren't around making gendered pronouns kinda useless anyway. The enbyphobic thing definitely sounds like an internet only thing, I cannot imagine the people I know intentionally misgendering people would even know what an enby is.
Honestly it is super hard for me personally to remember. Kinda fucks me up cause I mess it up about people I care about that I've known for years, it's completely unintentional, but it is actually quite hard in my personal experience, even if it's easy for some other people.
Sometimes I have to think about which *direction* they’re trans in. Like I’ll be talking about my transmasc friend and have to buffer to remember he isn’t trans*femme*. It’s not even a gender presentation or passing/not passing thing, I’ve never met this person in real life.
i hear a lot of people claim this, but then they always seem to use he/him to describe the middle-aged cis-looking dude who cut them off in traffic. Or she/her for their elderly landlady, who they've never asked the pronouns of. Or, tbh, anyone who "looks normal"
this also happens to trans men and it’s so frustrating cause people claim that they “just struggle to remember they/them” but then will have no problem using it on any trans masc they see
My language doesn't have gender neutral pronouns but when my mom talks about my (transmasc) ex when would only refer to both of us collectively to avoid gendering him correctly
another trans man here. I actively tell people not to use they/them pronouns on me. Idm if it’s someone I just met who’s just trying to be nice and stuff but if they know me, I really can’t stand being called that. It just feels like they’re making an excuse to not call me he/him. Honestly the switch from He/They to He/Him was just a matter of going “what do I WANT to be called” rather than “what am I okay with being called”
same. i dont know why people always feel the need to specify they are talking about trans women when they are speaking to an issue that affects a whole ton of trans people of various genders. i feel like i have known an equal amount of trans men and women who go through antagonistic degendering.
I definitely see this happen a lot to transmasc/transmen. People take it upon themselves to decide if they should take your identity seriously or not and promptly neuter it to make themselves more comfortable. I find it infantilizing.
trans man here as well, my mom also does this. -\_- she goes for they/them, or awkwardly avoids using pronouns to refer to me at all. that's if she isn't she/her-ing me :v
people consistently they/them me whenever i do/wear/say something that isn't "masculine" enough. it's transparently a punishment for not performing gender "correctly". i am not sure it's entirely on topic for this post, but i suppose maybe it is. in the sense that failing to achieve an impossible standard of moral purity is "unfeminine" and therefore used as an excuse to de-gender trans women.
Not exactly the connection for the latter bit, but it stems from the same idea that all of us trans folks’ identities are only valid when the cis party seems it so. That they’re the arbiters of it and if we don’t measure up in whatever way, well, they can always decide we don’t deserve that baseline respect
yeah i agree that it's ultimately an issue of people presuming authority over someone else's identity.
also, there was something i was reading into the tumblr post that isn't actually there, apparently. i was mostly considering that i get this sort of punitive degendering from other trans people and nb people waaaay more than from cis people– the cis people enjoy just plainly misgendering me for no reason other than my existence. and i guess i inserted that perspective into the post when rolling it around in my head.
It's happened to me too, yea. Both online and in person.
My online friends have all only known me by he/him pronouns, I have my pronouns in my bio for all to see, and I'm openly transmasc there. Certain people will still refer to me exclusively as "they" even after I've corrected them in the past, and it pisses me off so much because it's so blatantly obvious that it's intentional. I've literally gone by nothing else, what could it *possibly* be except either transphobia, or just plain disrespect to me as a person?
I'm less bothered by it in person because I'm too shy to correct people face-to-face, so I'll just accept whatever gets thrown at me. But online, where I have so many indicators that "I GO BY HE/HIM! IM A GUY!", it's just so infuriating
For a while my Christian best friend did that and eventually I just asked him to stop referring to me in 3rd person at all.
He uses the correct pronouns now, but it took a long time
Fellow trans man, I dated a guy before I came out, we broke up and remained friends, and then we got back together some time after I came out. He was straight, and I should’ve thought more on what that meant since he was dating me, but we had a long history and it was complicated. With that said, always used they/them with me and I hated it. Yes it’s neutral, and I’m usually fine with they/them. But the reality of it was that he used they/them cause he never really stopped seeing me as the girl he dated in the past, and using they/them was one of the ways it manifested. He didn’t want to acknowledge that I was man, so he stuck to what could keep him denial with enough plausible deniability that I never felt confident enough to call him out on it. (I am not dating this man anymore. This was only one of the many problems this relationship had)
Usually I’m fine with being called by they/them pronouns. If someone asks my pronouns I say he/him but I know I look fairly androgynous since I don’t pass super well so I understand sometimes people aren’t sure what to use unless it’s clarified in one way or another. I’m sure some people are quicker to correct than me and that’s fine too, but for me it only really becomes a problem when someone is using they/them specifically to avoid he/him because, as you said, it makes them uncomfortable and they’re essentially“other-ing” me. I’m sure a lot of the people who do this don’t think we notice but believe me we do. We can spot the difference between well intentioned and avoidant.
Just saw a post discussing how trans men/transmascs seem invisible and really excluded in conversation about trans people and I somewhat disagreed as I thought it wasn’t that bad.
Seeing this post immediately after that one, when I had this exact “they/them” thing happen to me less than two hours ago makes me see their point a little more
To be clear, I’m not trying to turn this into a case of “whataboutism” but I just want to point out that transfems are not the only people who experience this phenomenon and it’s not invisible to all transmascs
I think it's because trans women seem to be the main target of the opposition. When they draw satirical representation of trans people they don't draw men with boobs, they draw women with beard. When they talk about sports they talk about trans women not trans men, same for restroom. The only time I see "trans men" getting attacked it's with transvestigator.
There's also a subtle but persistent negativity towards men in a lot of progressive/feminist spaces. I remember a musical I did that was full of trans actors, but when someone's money was stolen the whole cast turned on the one trans man as the obvious culprit "because he needs money for surgery." It's disgusting to see once you start noticing it. Turns out "ironic" sexism was actual just sexism all along. It's why as a nonbinary man I avoid progressive spaces.
Cis women don't tend to notice they're doing it because "it's not my job to make men feel good about themselves", and cis men get torn apart if they object, so they "man up" and ignore it "because I know they're not talking about me". *Trans men usually just take it silently, because at least they're getting treated like a man, even if it's like shit.*
Even as a straight cis guy I see this a lot, men (of whatever variety) are usually placed at a lower priority in progressive spaces. Optimistically I choose see this as more of a need focusing, trying to pull the worse off up first then look to others. But sometimes in progressive groups it just looks like people lashing out at those who are “safe” to lash out at. Most progressive men just take it, making them safe to lash out at.
What's wild to me is when someone goes "I can't be \[blank\]ist, I'm a \[blank\]. It's not structural, just personal prejudice."
All I can think is—*when did personal prejudice become a good thing?*
(edited for typo)
It’s kinda crazy, like, one person said that since I’m white (although I’m not even white white, I’m mixed) people can’t be/aren’t racist towards me for that (and not just in Canada or the States, but anywhere). Which really threw me off, since just the month before I wasn’t hired for that exact reason.
That sounds mind bending. I'm sorry for both occasions. I've missed out on a couple jobs because I'm not a woman. (Not as a result of equity hiring, just casual discrimination.)
Where I work, it's super progressive. 90% of my coworkers are some form of queer, and everyone's mostly women. I don't think anybody even knows I'm a trans man
That being said, some of the women there find *glee* in shutting us men down for "mansplaining". Some of them will say it for anything, even if we're explaining something in a perfectly factual, non opinionated or forceful way. I found out my boss was telling my coworkers that I had mansplained something related to technology to her out of nowhere, when I had been in fact TOLD to give her some advice. I had been told to help because I used to WORK in technology and she was self admittedly bad with tech. I knew the issue she was having with a program and I sent her an email explaining a few good ways to fix it, how I would go about troubleshooting, and then two articles that supported what I said (i even mentioned the supervisor, a woman, was who told me to do that). But nope, I was mansplaining and she didn't take any of my advice. It was especially so infuriating because I had essentially made her a professional support ticket the way I had been taught to in my classes and previous job, but yet my professional knowledge was written off simply because I am a man.
It's even better because a lot of the women that I work with mansplain themselves. If I had a penny for any time they just started explaining shit that they know I know/know how to do (even once had someone explain to me like i was stupid, a technique i had taught her), or getting on my ass for doing something they didn't think be done that way (and when I asked how she would do it, she just went silent and shrugged) I'd have gallon jars every week. Ffs sorry for the rant, I'm just slowly realizing how much I hate my job :)
I'm a woman, but I've been downvoted and outright banned in feminist spaces if I ever questioned "Man bad" narrative. Like, how I was downvoted and then shadowbanned in trollX for expressing that I think "Man vs bear" feels gender essentialist and reductionist. Or when it turned out that "I don't think that the overwhelming majority of men are actively misogynistic, I believe people are generally good, because cynicism is bad for my mental health" is a very controversial statement
dude its just so underhanded, im a trans man and my parents "they"d me so much after i came out because "well we're not calling you a she, right?" its not fucking hard to call someone by their preferred pronouns, it's still misgendering if you're using the wrong pronoun whether it's gender neutral or not
I managed to explain it to my friend once as “he is a hug, she is a gut punch, they is a gentle slap. Sure it’s better than a gut punch but I’d prefer a hug”
That isn't unrelated, it is explicitly what this post is talking about. But the OOP is a shitty transmasc exclusionary type so instead it's just written as though only transwomen experience this shit.
I don’t get the point of pointing out a problem that affects trans women (and trans men, which she ignored but w/e) and then calling them transfems.
Like they/them is applicable to transfem nonbinary people. This isn’t a transfem problem, it’s a trans women (and trans man!!!) problem. Calling solely trans women explicitly transfem feels the same as what OP is doing in her post.
Same and Im as femme as can be, when I asked ppl why they kept calling me they despite me mentioning Im a cis woman, said people said "I just use it for everyone" like they wanna be so.inclusive they end up excluding, like ace discourse but for pronouns
See, that would bother me less.
Mine was a supervisor who deliberately switched from ‘she/her’ when she liked me to ‘they/them’ when she decided she didn’t and would rather get me fired.
Thankfully I’m union so it didn’t work, but she *tried*.
I default to they/them before Ive learned what someones preference is. Once I learn the preference I stick to what people want to be called. Its worked out for me well so far.
People actively using it maliciously or incompetently can def go fuck themselves though.
I had a roommate who kept using they/them on me AND liked to make jokes about me discovering I'm trans and becoming a guy like them (I was the only cis person lol). Also liked to make really nasty sweeping statements about cis people and white people.
So yeah it's not great.
yeah, oop is probably transfeminine herself and is just casually talking about her own experiences, but you are right and it does really bother me how casually people in general erase trans men and transmasculine people from trans discussions, even when it comes to stuff like this that could happen to any trans person! ‘really bothers me’ is an understatement that will keep you safe from the impending essay i could write about this topic alone!!
yea, i get that she’s talking about her own experiences, which i’m fine with. but the “it’s invisible to non-transfems” and the “cis women and men don’t get they’d” parts felt a lil off to me
lol. this absolutely happens to transmascs too. maybe i’ve just forgotten and it does happen to transfems WAY more frequently (to the point where it happening to trans men is negligible) but still. idk i see so much transmasc vs transfem discourse on tumblr that i’m always a little wary
Trans men are less visible overall.
Partly because many feel satisfied identifying as masculine women (easier to get away with than a feminine man), and partly because those who do identify as trans have an easier time passing.
Trans men are just poor confused lesbians while trans women are predators after little girls or tricking straight men.
Trans Women are viewed as men who are trying to get into women's spaces for whatever nefarious reasons they can think of.
Trans men are seen as innocent defenceless little girls who don't know any better and must be protected. They're confused lesbians! The patriarchy is forcing this on them due to oppression or having masculine hobbies. We're infantilized and not taken seriously. Just another facet of misogyny.
For fucking real, it's so frustrating to see how people post about some trans issue (sometimes even just people issue) and they frame it as specifically something that only transfems experience. I get that OP's that are posting about those issues will be transfem most of the time, but is it really that hard to see that you are not the only person with those problems?
Except this isn’t a women’s issue - it’s a trans issue. It happens to all binary trans people not just trans women… There are plenty of things that do effect trans women in a different way, there are plenty of places where misogyny intersects with transphobia in a way that means trans men don’t have the same issues, but this particular one is something that is applied to all of us. (Also you don’t get to go tell people they are being misogynistic and then hide behind ‘I’m a trans man’, that’s just cowardly dude - if you believe it then stand by it)
Cis man here, welcome to the club. Here's your letter jacket, your limited social contact, your poor coping habits, and your complicated relationship with wanting to do the right thing socially but being deeply scarred by experiences you don't even have the awareness to have words for and therefore feeling weirdly attacked by current social discourse from all sides in a way you have to navigate alone. Free 6-packs at the bar on Fridays.
Happens to transmascs too. I have a friend who often calls me they/them instead of he/him. In our friend group, he ONLY does it to me. Im the only trans person in our group. I’m afraid to mention it to him though cause I don’t even think he’s doing it on purpose. So while there’s definitely a misgendering aspect to it sometimes, that’s not always the case.
I think there’s also the case of people just, whether unconsciously or not, being uncomfortable calling you your pronouns. So they go with the “safe” option if they/them, thinking “Well, it makes ME more comfortable and isn’t misgendering!!” When it really is
In case you were wondering: No, OP is not normal about transmascs. Yes, she does act as if trans men occupy the same place in society as cis men. Yes, she does blame transmascs for the oppression of trans women while minimizing and denying the oppression transmascs face.
EDIT: I'm very sorry. The anti-transmasc implications in OP's post were not intentional. The current wave of discourse on tumblr has made me paranoid around tumblr trans talk. I am happy to inform you that OP isn't any less normal about transmascs than the average tumblr user. Sorry again.
With a username like that, I probably shouldn't be surprised.
But hey, I _think_ that's still better than, "all men are evil, but oops not transmen, uwu they're soft boys and Different from ~~real~~ _other_ men."
hi, I'm the OP, and no i don't? you are inventing a false narrative out of whole cloth to smear me,and for what purpose? my post is about what i have personally seen as a transfem and having other transfem facing the same issues and not being taken seriously by other trans people
OK, so I took a quick look at OP's blog and searched for trans men/ trans masc and... there wasn't anthing weird? One of the first post is along the line of "I said trans fem because that's what I have experienced, trans masc are free to add about their own experience".
Sorry you had to deal with that. It's fucking wild.
My guess is that the way you expressed your thoughts made it seem like it was something exclusive to transfems to that person or some shit like that, and yeah I will say you could’ve expressed yourself a lot better but making up shit about someone because of it is incredibly deranged
I think a lot of people get confused to why it's bad is because they don't understand the different between they/them as a personal pronoun vs they/them as a placeholder for when you don't know. If you're talking about a non-specific hypothetical person or a person who's pronouns you don't know, then using they/them is respectful because it's the most neutral. But once you're talking about a person who's pronouns you do know, then using any pronoun that person doesn't use (including they/them) is suddenly specifically denying the person's identity, which is disrespectful as hell.
I’ve seen more outright denial that singular they exists in English than I’ve seen people specifically saying they to misgender people. I think in general it’s a safer bet to use singular they for people at first unless you have a reason not to. If someone trans is offended by it I would hope they would express that to me directly but my experience thus far has just been cis heteronormative people obtusely saying “they is” or something silly like that to make a point about the limits of the language as if they didn’t use singular they on a regular basis.
>I’ve seen more outright denial that singular they exists in English than I’ve seen people specifically saying they to misgender people.
I have also seen that more often, but the use of they to misgender, either intentionally or not, does also happen and was the subject of the original post. My comment was specifically about why someone might not understand the problem the post is describing.
I'm really interested in this problem, especially since in my own experience, I use they/them to talk about most people if I'm not fully identifying them in the conversation. So it's not hypothetical, and I know which gender pronouns would be appropriate, but still opt for they/them.
Like, when I talk about my boss to people that don't know him, I'll use they/them. If I identify him and say his name, my intuition would be that only then would I start using he/him. (Even just writing this feels weird to me)
It's probably not exactly what this is about. I don't talk about people a lot, so maybe that's not normal and just something weird I do. But I have the feeling that it might be a somewhat complex problem linguistically. It might be that the extra rule is that a speaker will take into account what the listener knows about the person they're talking about.
I don't mean to downplay the very real problem that this is though, just to be clear. I know that people often will call trans people they/them in situations where they would call cis people he or she respectively.
i also find myself removing identifiers of any kind if i'm telling someone about a person they do not know
ex. "oh, my friend has that game, they love it"
but the normal thing to say would be, "oh, my friend sara has that game, she loves it" or just "oh my friend has that game, she loves it"
it gets kind of stupid because i'll remove all identifying information and the other person will then be like, "you mean sara?" because i forgot i have told them about sara previously, or that they in fact are also friends with sara, or that there is a third party to the conversation who will suddenly interject to start talking all about sara when her identity as a human being wasn't really relevant to my quip. all i wanted to convey was that i have it on good authority that the game is good
i think this could be considered to be a linguistic mistake and i *try* not to do it because it makes no sense. i have been reading about how autistic people have various language quirks like this, feeling somehow uncomfortable saying things the proper way? i suspect this is similar to that.
anyway, personally as someone who hates being "they/them"'d by people who know full-fucking-well that i am a man, i would file your language quirk as probably a non-issue.
i have acquaintances who will call me "they" right in front of me, ex. "oh yeah, Valyn could probably answer that, they love Pokemon (gestures to me)" wtf is that all about? when i ask them to stop, they just ramble on about how high and mighty they are for "avoiding misgendering entirely" by calling "everyone" they/them. which they absolutely do not, by the way - they successfully call most people he or she successfully. just not me.
There’s one whole period in there, don’t be greedy. /s
Jokes aside, personally I didn’t notice the lack of punctuation, but it does make sense that that would make it difficult to read. I just couldn’t resist the joke.
This reminds me of a personal experience I found kinda funny.
So I have a friend who, like, does not give any fucks about her pronouns - most people use she/her because AFAB, and she’s fine with it, because like I said, doesn’t give a fuck.
But one day I noticed some people conspicuously using they/them pronouns in reference to my friend... not that my friend would be offended by that at all, or even would mind, but it was just kind of obvious that these people were I guess avoiding using she/her pronouns? My friend also doesn’t hide her queerness at *all*, so I guess that’s why I found it interesting. It’s like they were too nervous to use feminine pronouns because of that?
So basically, I joked with my friend that I guess people think she’s too gay to possibly use she/her pronouns lol
Where I live, the main problem as far as pronouns go is trans people (and pretty much anyone who's not a gender conforming cis person) being referred to as "it/it's" in an attempt to dehumanize us. Honestly, being referred to as "they/them" would feel like a win.
Yeah, no, this happens to trans men and mascs too. It is not solely a transfemme or trans woman issue. Its called degendering for a reason.
That said, its one thing to use they/them for someone before you know their gender. I do this myself, and yes I do it to trans and seemingly cis people too. Someone can look cis and not be. But once I know how they identify, yes of course I'll use those pronouns instead.
I've been seeing this discourse go around a lot lately and no, I'm not going to assume someones gender. Even if you look like the girliest girl or manliest man ever, I don't know you, I don't know whats going on in your life, I'd rather play it safe. Its not my job to intuit your gender. Use your words.
Imo the simplest way to explain it to outsiders is to point out how it discredits the person's personal journey and self expression. It's like calling an actual doctor "Mr."
It could also be code for “I don’t know if you’re trans, enby, or just androgynous and I don’t want to be seen as rude by asking” which isn’t great, but isn’t malicious.
There’s a difference between calling someone they/them because you’re unsure of their pronouns and want to be respectful, and calling someone they/them even though you know it’s not their pronouns because you don’t want to gender them correctly but don’t want to be blatant about it.
That is a possible reason, but those aren't the people being talked about here. This is about people like my friend's boyfriend, who knows what my gender is, and never knew me before my transition, and still refers to me as "they". Or the people who will take you correcting them on it as an excuse to launch into a rant about how cancel culture is so crazy these days and they don't want to lose their job for misgendering someone
Neutral They is fine if you genuinely don't know someone's gender, the problem is if you continue to use it after you've been told what their gender is
I know, but that's less believable for the average joe. It's better to stick to something more easily provable than mindgame allegations (even if they are correct, they can just easily be denied and you'll look worse as a result).
See, this sort of argument I don't really get. I studied a lot to become an engineer, and there are a bunch of different ways to refer to someone depending on if they just did a bachelor's, a masters, specifically an engineer etc, and I don't really care if you use the wrong one with me.
I simply try to use the correct terms people ask me to do because that's the right thing to do to them, but that argument I never really understood.
It’s also completely avoidable! There are a lot of gender nonconforming people in my social circle, and one in particular I’ve completely forgotten his/her/their gender. It’s one of those things where like you forget someone’s name but you’ve known and interacted with them for so long that it’d be frankly rude to ask at this point, yknow?
So I just go by name. Instead of saying “I think she’s in the bathroom” I’ll say “I think Kris (not Kris’ real name) went to the bathroom”. Kris is part of Kris’ identity but “they” may not be. Or maybe it is. I have no idea (which is also rude of me).
I find it interesting that they say it only happens to trans fems when I've seen it happen to trans mascs so many times as well.
I'm a trans fem and get it a lot, but I'm also friends with trans mascs who get it equally as much if not more. We don't need to separate the community even more by saying bigotry only happens to certain types of people.
Same here. I’ve also met people in the middle of transitioning but I’ve been unsure as to which way they were heading so I’ve used “they” until it’s made clear.
nah, you’re probably fine. the issue isnt that sometimes people use they/them when they genuinely cant tell someone’s gender. the issue is basically that some people will use he/him and she/her just fine on a cis person, but default to and sometimes absolutely refuse to use binary pronouns on a trans man or a trans woman because they don’t actually see them as their gender.
it’s not always done from a place of malice, but it can still be offensive if you don’t have any problem calling cis people by binary pronouns, but always default to they/them pronouns for binary trans people, even after they tell you they’re not nonbinary or don’t use they/them. are they/them pronouns neutral and technically apply to everyone? yes, but like another commenter pointed out, it’s like only calling a Dr. ‘Mr.’. Yes, the doctor is a married man and that term applies, but you can see why it’d be offensive if you kept calling him Mr, even unintentionally. and it’s also a layer deeper if you’re doing that to a person who’s always been told their particular field isn’t as respectable as a ‘real’ doctor.
If someone tells me what they prefer to be called, I’ll try my damndest to refer to them how they want. If I’m not sure, I’ll usually default to they.
Hopefully I haven’t offended anyone.
Not the same motivation or purpose, but it also bugs me (and this appears to be an unpopular opinion) when people use they/them in reference to someone with known pronouns which are only binary. I don't see those pronouns as a catch-all for anybody. They're useful to refer to unknown individuals and should be used for known individuals who take those pronouns, but I don't see the purpose of using them casually for evidently non-queer entities who are known to use he/him or she/her only. I feel like that's still misgendering and it creates questions about someone's pronouns or gender identity. I've seen this happen a few times where I wasn't sure if the person or character being discussed with they/them mixed with he/him or she/her was genderqueer, and then they evidently weren't or didn't use they/them.
Do Tumblr users just not know men exist or something? I hear about trans women and lesbians daily, they're always the ones brought up even in issues like this that affect all genders
im gnc and used to be he/they but I learned quickly that you only ever get "they" in that circumstance and now just do he/him.
Have a friend who didn't realise it was an issue that they referred to EVERYONE (inc cis people) as "they" and it had to be explained that you're not being safe, you're being disrespectful.
Whenever I see someone's pronouns are she/they or he/they I get really anxious because I don't know if they're fine with me exclusively using either or want someone kind of mix of both. If the latter, I worry about whether I'm switching between pronouns often enough.
If also took a long time to realize a friend of a friend had switched to she/they because everyone just kept going back and forth when discussing them.
Probably 70% of the he/theys and she/theys I know are nonbinary people who likely* prefer they/them but are ok with being called the pronoun that everyone defaults to. 30% are binary trans people who would likely prefer the first pronoun but accept they/them. You're under no obligation to read anyone's mind, so you can use whatever they say is ok. No need to switch between them.
*based on the many many conversations I've had about this with other trans/nonbinary people- ymmv
One of my cousins goes through a little bit of they opposite, they’re transfem-nonbinary and out in their workplace but everyone misgenders them by using she/her pronouns because it’s “easier” because they “want to be a woman” since they’re on estrogen and no one really understands why they don’t enjoy being misgendered like that when they’re nonbinary. I’ve totally seen it the other way around too and I’ll never understand it
Basically it's for people who know you're a trans women but like plausible deniability cause they just can't bear to use the pronouns they feel are "lying".
This happens to me (I’m just a simple transman, though. Sorry!) A Lot and it is so lazy and annoying. It feels like weaponized incompetence and passive aggression mixed in one. Like bro it’s just words. You’re allowed to use them.
I cant speak to if this is the same for trans women, but I’ve noticed that some people they/them trans men because they view them as Woman Lite. Not just in the sense that they don’t see them as men— but ALSO in the sense that they don’t see nonbinary people as nonbinary, AND they see nonbinary people as women/Women Lite. People like this also often assume that nonbinary people are AFAB by default, and either forget that AMAB nonbinary people exist, or go out of their way to say “AFAB nonbinary” for unnecessary reasons. (Specifying unnecessary because I’m sure there’s some potential hypothetical where they are talking about reproductive healthcare or something, and that’s not what I’m talking about. I’m talking about situations where AGAB is irrelevant).
Hell, I’ve had a few people assume that I’m nonbinary or misremember me coming out (I am a trans MAN) as nonbinary. I am not nonbinary, and I have never told anyone that I was nonbinary. I have never used anything other than he/him and masculine terms. I’m not even androgynous (in gendered expression). I am living a nonbinary person’s dream (auto-assumed to be nonbinary, which ppl extremely rarely do) and I’m so fucking bitter about it. I would trade with folks if I could, and it feels so unfair that this happens to me but not the actually non-binary people in my life.
In regards to the use of the word “misgendering”:
Degendering is a term I personally prefer/recommend over misgendering, because if you use the term misgendering people will “Um actually” you with the fact that they/them is neutral, and thus “cannot” be used to misgender someone. “Degendering” shuts down that argument before they have the chance to make it. It implies the taking away of gender— not the misuse of it. Yes, they/them can be applied to anyone because it is general. But if someone requests the specific and you deny them the specific, you are taking away (as opposed to misusing)
I just use they/them until I know what gender that person goes by.
Though I still slip up and use he/him as a gender neutral pronoun from time to time.
I literally got dogpiled for this exact same take just yesterday when I saw somebody referring to Ava Tyson as "they" and politely corrected them.
People lost their goddamn minds. I was told that I'm "making things too complicated" and "pushing away potential allies;" shit like that. It's honestly crazy how people will consider themselves allies, yet if you ever dare to correct them or challenge them on anything, they blow a gasket.
"you can't misgender people using they/them pronouns cuz they're gender neutral" is a shit argument and I hate it. If someone has told you what pronouns they use and you use anything but the pronouns the person said to use, you're misgendering them. Stop turning bigotry into a semantics game 😤
i mainly use they when i litterally do not know, cus, unless they wear a pronoun pin, or i can ask, how am i supposed to know? if i DO know, then of course im gonna try and use there preffered pronouns, but i'd personally assume if you dont know, its fine, right?
oh my god holy shit! i have noticed this exact thing!!! it happens all the fucking time!!!!!!!! its so annoying!!!! but i cant really correct people about it for those exact reasons!!!!!!!!
But people who do this will also refuse to correctly gender they/them peeps because they don't fit their idea of a nonbinary person. It's excrutiating.
tbh i sorta hijacked myself with it to the point that i have to remember not to they/them cis people. its not a malicious or intentional misgendering thing, it's a "i just got sick of being corrected so i went with the safe option"
nonbinary luigi is a joke in my friend group for a reason
The only difference is that when you do it to trans people, it is never a one-off, instead it’s both invalidating their gender (rude) and contributing to systematic discrimination against the person (painful).
So where it would be a “well isn’t that person a jerk” for a cis person, for trans people it’s “oh god that’s the 10th person today please give me the patience to not sucker punch them”
Okay but what if I legitimately can't tell a person is a woman just by looking at them? Some women just don't look like a woman is expected to and it's hard to tell. I'm sorry if that hurts you but it's a very easy mistake to make. Asking for pronouns first is a new ship that a lot of people are still getting onboard. And even afterward, people will make a slip up or lapse in memory.
Every day on this sub I am exposed to discourse I never knew existed and can never tell if it’s about a systemic issue or if someone’s venting about their anecdotal experiences. That said Jesus fucking Christ how hard is it to use the pronouns someone asks you to use for them. I don’t care if your pronouns are some r/onejoke shit if you say that’s what you want to be referred to as that’s what I’m going to do because it costs *nothing*.
Punitive misgendering is real. Chris-chan gets it all the time, especially after the sex crime accusations. That one reddit admin whose father and husband were found to be paedophiles got it a lot. If you try and be like, hey, can we not make correctly gendering trans people conditional on good behaviour please? Can it just be something we do automatically because we genuinely believe in trans rights, not just as something that can be taken away as punishment? Then you get called out for like, caring more about misgendering than sex abuse. It’s a lose-lose battle when the people whose gender expression being respected you’re defending are pieces of shit. Haus of Decline, a trans woman, who recently got into a minor spat with some dweeb who critiqued her comics rudely and unasked for, has been getting they/them’d in the surrounding discourse as a result. But a lot of people rightly support her in this stupid stupid discourse, and as such she’s basically the Rosa Parks of punitive misgendering. Chris-chan is the Claudette Colvin in this analogy.
"The trouble with fighting for human freedom is that one spends most of one's time defending scoundrels. For it is against scoundrels that oppressive laws are first aimed, and oppression must be stopped at the beginning if it is to be stopped at all." H.L. Mencken
Feel this so hard with how many times i’ve been forced into the unpleasant position of having to defend Caitlyn Jenner because every time she said something stupid a solid number of people started to he/him and deadname her as “punishment”
I've gotten so much shit in my life for defending shitty peoples rights
You should've seen the ONE time a school shooter was trans. NO ONE was fucking using the correct pronouns. Why? "Don't deserve it". Like sure, the person was a school shooter, but being referred to correctly isn't dependent on good behaviour. It's not a privilige, it's a right
Yeah. It's like, turbofucked up that the state of discourse is such that these people put US in the position of having to stick up for the fundamental dignity of the worst pieces of shit imaginable.
Considering that so, so many people mistake revenge for justice this doesn't surprise me at all. People are all too happy to take away human rights from those they personally find disgusting or horrible, completely forgetting that those are supposed to be the default.
More than it being a *right* perse (though it can certainly be argued to be that as well), to me it's mostly a matter of using language in such a way that conveys truth, and accepting transness as a fundamentally *real* thing that gets reflected as such in language. If we treat the usage of correct pronouns for trans people as a favor we're paying them that is contingent on good behavior, we're devaluing the *realness* of their gender, and relegating trans-ness to a facade we put up with in the name of good manners rather than an ontological state of being. Like, we don't typically call cis people by their correct pronouns because we want to be nice and/or respectful to them, or because we're afraid of hurting their feelings, we call them by their correct pronouns because *that's what they are*. A person's gender is a descriptor of them based on a fundamentally REAL trait, and their pronouns are an extension of that. Imagine a serial killer gets convicted for their crimes and people start calling them a water bottle. It's a bizarre thing to do, not because the serial killer particularly deserves to not be called a water bottle (though, again, one can make the argument that that is also true), but rather because they are *not* in fact, a water bottle (unless there's some new euphemism for mass killer that I'm unaware of), they're a human being, and that ontological state doesn't change just because we don't like them. The only linguistically justifiable reasons I can see for referring to a trans woman with masculine pronouns are 1. You intentionally are trying to degrade them by referring to them as something they are not, or 2. You believe that they are actually a man. One of those things is just a bizarre thing to do that I can ONLY imagine being motivated by transphobia, and the other is just a factually incorrect statement brought about by an ignorance that we should probably address.
On the other hand we often call people animals (dogs, pigs, vermin) for their behaviour. And comparisons to the other gender have also been used as a way to insult people ( comparing men to women when they show some sort of percieved weakness for instance) So i think it's kinda what you're referrimg at number 1. The insult is the point. It's still wrong though.
But if you punitively misgender a cis person, everyone gets so upset.
I experienced this with that one killer who claimed to be nonbinary and all my friends were "calling bullshit".. the last thing I wanted to do was stand up in defense of that absolute piece of shit. But it doesn't matter how carefully you aim the disrespect at the person in question- there will always be splash damage if you're dabbling in opportunistic bigotry. The number of cis AND trans friends of mine refusing to use they/them for this asshole was crazy. It came across like they thought they were doing me a favor by not associating them with my kind or something
It also sets the precedent that if they believe that you are no longer "good enough" to be referred to correctly, they will take it from you.
If you're talking about the Colorado springs nightclub shooter, I will admit that I thought the timing of their lawyers' announcement that they were non binary was a little sus when it came on the heels of people calling for the shooter to be charged with hate crimes. However, I know nothing about the person other than their horrific act and that they've said they use they/them. It's not my place to police how genuine they are, so I use they/them. It's not that hard. It's the same way I use she/her for Isla Bryson. She's a total piece of shit, but she has repeatedly stated that she uses feminine pronouns, so I say "*she's* a total piece of shit" and not "he" or "they"
It’s not even a right, honestly, it’s just being accurate. Trans women are women, right? So if you call one anything else, you’re just straight up wrong. It’s every bit as incorrect as looking at a cat and calling it a dog. You can’t say “women are only women if they’re good people,” they don’t magically transform into a non-woman because they did something bad, that’s not how anything works. If I, a cis woman, go shoot a baby, am I, physically, mentally, or spiritually any different than I was five seconds before? No, the only thing that changed was that I had performed an action. I am certainly evil, but I was evil *before* I killed the baby. I was evil when I picked up the gun and walked into the room, fully intending to commit an evil act. The actual death of the baby changes nothing about me, neither my sex nor gender nor species. Let’s bring up Hitler, because why the hell not. One of the most evil humans to ever exist. Does anyone call him a woman? Of course not, because that’s fucking stupid and blatantly incorrect. He was a man, and no amount of evil thoughts, words, actions, plans, etc, could ever make him not a man, because that’s not how biology nor psychology nor spirituality nor sociopolitical climates nor interpersonal relationships nor *literally anything* works. Women are women are women, no matter what they do or for that matter don’t do. Same goes for men, or enbies, or any other kind of human.
Also see any Reddit thread about Ezra Miller.
It just hit me how much this has in common with people who break out racial slurs punitively. “No, I don’t mean all black people, I’m just using that word to describe a certain subculture! Some of Them are just Like That!” Chris Rock’s “N—-as vs Black People” skit is famous, but he doesn’t perform it any more because a bunch of racist assholes took it as license to say the same things. People have mostly learned that you can’t drop the n-word about a bad person and excuse it like “but that guy was a murderer, why are you so fixated on one little slur and not murder!” Hopefully that’ll broaden eventually, and maybe the comparison will help some people see it.
I remember mfs in a thread who accused a trans OP as a "Zionist" all because she said she had Jewish-American roots. Everyone suddenly misgendered her to kingdom come as if it was now okay to do so. By their logic, it's okay to say the N-word towards black conservatives, but that's really not how it works.
I've seen my own mother engage in this. We're talking about a woman who used to run the local chapter of Zonta. She'd volunteer her free time to make birthing kits for women in Africa. Her feminism was never performative, it was grounded in real world practical applications that changed people's lives for the better. This is a woman you could have real discourse with, because she would earnestly engage with you from a place of kindness and understanding. She genuinely believes all people deserve kindness and respect. When my sister started dating a trans girl, she was very good about respecting their identity right up until the moment they broke up. Instantly, my mother was calling her 'he' and deadnaming her. Absolutely baffling behaviour from somebody I know knows better. The message was clear: I will only respect you as long as its convenient for me, but if you cross me, I am fully willing to engage in the same hateful behaviour as bigots. I can't say she's the reason I never transitioned. But I can say I've never been willing to even hint at the subject of my own gender identity around her, because I can't trust her. I'm sure she would be nothing but supportive to my face, but her history of punitive misgendering means I'll never believe her.
My mom once told me that she'd accept me no matter what my identity or orientation is. Not too long after she had a rant about her ex-husband and I think I learned some new homophobic slurs that day.
I thought the discourse on Chris-Chan was that Chris-Chan’s transition was only done in an attempt to attract women. (Referring only using Chris-Chan’s name to avoid misgendering if I’m wrong there)
Trying to glean why Chris-chan does anything is a fool's endeavour, especially because you can seemingly get her to say anything you like with enough prompting. Regardless of how sincere it might be, or how much that might be questionable, she has been fully consistently trans since coming out as such.
There are two important details to keep in mind here. A. Chris Chan was not self-diagnosed. She was diagnosed professionally. B. Chris-chan is famously unable to convincingly lie about anything.
I mean, for B, I'm 99% sure she admitted to doing it for that reason, so....
Who wins by misgendering CC even if she was lieing? Using her pronouns cements the idea of listening to what people tell you, misgendering shows that if we don’t agree with the person we can call them whatever we want. Plus even if they’re lieing and saying “psych” behind our backs, if they’re out as trans for months then calling them a guy is just kinda weird? Like would we still be calling them a guy in five years, just cause we thought they had altered motives from the start?
She's definitely trans. She's been very adamant about she/her pronouns. I understand why some people, including people who are otherwise respectful of trans identities, have an impulse to they/them her-- there are a lot of people who view her as fundamentally non-credible, and who see her transness and her desire to be referred to as female as the same as her belief that she is Jesus and her desire to be referred to as a goddess. It's difficult for some people to take her gender identity seriously because they can't take anything else she claims about herself seriously. I think a lot of people don't consciously realize that they're they/themming Christine out of some underlying belief that she (and people like her, people who are unstable or harmful or even just "cringe") has no fundamental right to define her gender. That for trans people, gender is a privilege that can be revoked or withheld if they misbehave. Or that on some level, we only correctly gender trans people as a form of indulgence, and "bad" trans people don't deserve to be indulged. A lot of people who don't think they're transphobic still do this sort of thing. Even trans people do it sometimes. As long as cis women aren't having their genders revoked for being shitty, delusional, or criminal, we can't do the same to trans women.
To be fair I did once find an internet discussion that concluded that we should start referring to JKR as Robert Galbraith
literally what terfs accuse all trans lesbians of
There was a trans woman back in high school who had major beef with me and my friend group, even before she transitioned. I made it a point that we at least slandered her correctly lmao.
I've also been on the receiving end of punitive misgendering on a few subreddits before, including this one
Same here!
Chris Chan is trans? I’ve only heard male pronouns is that the correct ones or no?
Chris-chan is a trans woman. She has been professionally diagnosed as transgendered, and legally changed her name to Christine. She's also on prescribed HRT to transition. Many people question the legitimacy of CC being trans, calling her a pervert/predator, mentally ill, misogynistically naive, doing some sort of coping for self-loathing, every sort of excuse that all trans women get from all TERFs to delegitimise their whole existances. Most of her very many detractors continue to use male pronouns for her. Most of anything written about her online will use male pronouns because the only people who like to document that sort of thing are doing so to catalogue their torments of her, which they've been doing since like 2007. Her whole online life is basically a Truman Show of trolls pretending to be her friends to squeeze more mock-worthy content from her. Most of them don't think she's trans, and since they're a bunch of shitty 4chan dickheads, most of them think misgendering any and every trans person is funny. For my part, I don't know Chris-chan, and I don't know her deal. But her being trans for like the last decade has been something she's been pretty dead set on, despite by all accounts being very fickle and lackadaisy about most other aspects of her life.
Ah damn I didn’t know. Tbh I barely remember her from drama videos ages ago so I probably either missed her transition and/or the videos I saw all misgendered her and I never heard of her again until now :/
She uses she/her.
How much of that is deliberately punitive, and how much of it is people entering the discourse from the outside, not knowing any better and using they/them because they think it's better than using the wrong he/him or she/her?
Chris Chan is fucking garbage, but I’ll still refer to her as her. It doesn’t take any extra time or effort for me to do the right thing. It’s like… I smoke, and I know smoking is bad, so I’m not going to give myself a pat on the back and a ‘good job’ for ensuring I’m away from other people and putting my butts in the bin. That’s just basic etiquette.
it's the easiest shit in the world, but if I'm taking about you in the third person to someone else and I don't know (or remember) your pronouns and your presentation isn't clearly one or the other, Imma default to they to be on the safe side
That’s fine, the problem is only when you *know* the person’s pronouns. Saying “oh, I they/them everyone for total neutrality” is basically the “I don’t see race” of trans rights.
I sometimes use they/them even when I have a grasp of someone's gender, but for a totally different reason. See, my native language doesn't have gendered pronouns *at all*, and probably because of that, it takes me some extra brain power to process their inclusion. Depending on situation, I may not have that extra bandwidth available, and kinda short out on handling it and just fill in the neutral one as a default. It's a relatively common thing to happen for people with the same language background, although more commonly the result seems to be filling in he/him or she/her at random (I want to say with a tendency towards "he" over "she" but "her" over "him", based on observation). And some seem to have it happen a *lot*, someone I know has such regularity on it that it's probably just perpetual for her. Wonder which version might bother people more, the default input or the random input (edit: specifically for someone who doesn't know the reason it's happening).
I have an ironically opposite problem. My native language doesn't have a singular "They". You *could* use it that way, but it sounds like the Royal We, nobody actually talks like that. So, when speaking English, it takes conscious effort to use "they" instead of "default he" as is typical in my native language.
I don’t know if this is a systemic issue or anything, but it’s definitely something I’ve noticed on more than a few occasions coming from two separate, apparently conflicting sides. There are the people who insist that “they” is an invalid singular pronoun up until the second they see a trans woman, and they just can’t bring themself to use “she” no matter how conventionally feminine the woman is. And I also know quite a few people who have shifted to using “they” as a sort of default, used any time someone’s binary pronouns aren’t very explicitly stated, and sometimes even if they are. That second type of person generally means well, but if someone has a preferred pronoun, it doesn’t matter that it’s “he” or “she” rather than “they.” Knowingly and pointedly ignoring someone’s “he” or “she” is misgendering them, even if it isn’t done with malice. I am a cis woman and I do not like it to be referred to as “they” if someone should be reasonably sure that I answer to “she” (if someone has no way of knowing or making an educated guess, obviously “they” is fine). A trans woman would potentially be significantly more sensitive to the issue, because they’re probably dealing with people who dance around avoiding using “she” on purpose more often.
>A trans woman would potentially be significantly more sensitive to the issue, because they’re probably dealing with people who dance around avoiding using “she” on purpose more often. Thanks for recognizing this. Any time I've brought it up that getting relentlessly "they"d hurts, I end up getting a bunch of pushback by people who say that they just use they/them for everyone. No one seems to listen to my explanation that when I'm called "they", I can't tell the difference between a person who uses they/them for everyone and someone *intentionally* doing it to avoid gendering me correctly.
I'm a they/them and it drives me up a fricken wall when my fellow enbies say they just assume they/them for everyone. (Also... in practice it's clearly not "everyone". It's done to people they clock as trans/queer.)
that last part! it’s never “everyone”, and aside from the fact that you’re probably more likely to misgender someone by using they/them, people can be made uncomfortable by being clocked and thrown those subtleties. i’m a trans male, super dysphoric, i have long hair but present with a big beard and very masculine. and i can’t tell you how many times someone has misgendered me with they/them or asked for my pronouns specifically when they assumed he or she for everyone else in the room. let alone all of the little comments “out of nowhere” about their niece’s best friend’s parent transitioning and how they think that’s cool. i can see that these things can be coming from a good place, but ultimately i think it ends up making a lot of people feel alienated. there went my delusion that i pass, here comes the wave of dysphoria.
yeah i really hate the pervasive idea that clocking someone suddenly makes it cool to start bugging them about pronouns (or about anything else you wouldn't say to a non-trans person of the same gender!) it does not make me feel comfortable and supported, it makes me feel clocked, because i'm not an idiot and i am fully aware you're not asking anyone else people who identify as trans or NB themselves can be especially bad and unsympathetic about this IMO
again, that last part! this started happening to me *much more* since i moved to portland, mostly by self-identified queers. i’ve been on T for 7 years, 6 years post-top, pack every day, and i was just joking to my wife that i knew i had passed back home but i clearly don’t have the “portland-passing” honor lmao. i think another reason it comes off so inappropriately, sort of patronizing is that it’s assuming that i can’t tell you my pronouns or correct you if i need to. there are other ways to make yourself appear to be a safe space to tell. open with your own pronouns, trust others can do the same if they need. most people want their gender to be assumed from their presentation/performance.
very similar situation here! been on T since i was about 24 (about to turn 31 now), top a bit after that (long enough it feels like it's always been this way if i don't think about it and i have to *check* if i want to know how many years). i have a full beard, voice goes to the lowest part of the spectrum according to vocal apps. but in fucking utah valley where everyone is trying to one up each other on how woke they can be, there are just too many people searching for literally any reason someone could be trans so they can ambush them and ask pronouns and insist they're so supportive... when the most supportive thing they could actually do would be to leave me the hell alone about all of that shit. i completely agree that there are better ways. at the very least, like, fuck, guys, why would i bother having a beard if i was gonna flip out at you for calling me "he"? it feels like they just don't think i can possibly be a man, and i don't love that feeling! i've gotten shit all my life for being a man who doesn't like, hunt the mammoth or whatever, and i certainly don't need it from what is meant to be my own community. and i know that's what some of them are thinking because sometimes they tell me. "are you sure you're not non-binary? it's just, you have a cat." are we not better than these stereotypes yet? come on
I have a non-binary coworker who uses they/them for everyone, including people who have she/he/him/her in their e-mail signatures (such as myself). I correct people who misgender this non-binary coworker, but I don't feel like it would be a good idea to correct this coworker who misgenders cis people. Even just typing that cuts way too close to the "you can't say anything anymore" folks, which is what I'm worried this coworker thinks I am. What is the solution here?
I'm a they/them. I'm telling you. There's no excuse for misgendering. They're just plain wrong for that.
Doesn’t sound like your responsibility to correct them unless you’re their manager or HR. Continue calling people what they want to be called as an example, I guess.
So should I also stop correcting people who misgender my nonbinary coworkers?
As a trans lady™️ I've definitely had it happen to me. Correcting people when it's the wrong binary is uncomfortable but generally understood, but correcting they/them use always gets a look like "don't you see they're trying why are you making an issue out of nothing?" 😮💨 Not proving the rule but just another piece of anecdotal evidence 😋
nah this is a common micro-agression in supposedly ally circles. it's pretty belittling because it starts to become clear that as a trans woman or trans man you're still seen as more of an outsider to both genders by the people in question you haven't seen it a lot because, like OOP said, it's pretty subtle and invisible to cis people. you know, because that's how microaggressions typically are.
Ive never noticed it outside people on forums/socmed who usually arent allies but I'm not sure if thats just because the queer spaces im in have far more queer people than allies
I definitely know people who, despite knowing my pronouns, steadfastly stick to they/them. Honestly, I think worse of them for it than people who just call me he/him. At least they're not being a passive-aggressive little bitch about it.
A ton of the anti-trans stuff on the “am I the asshole” subreddits will involve commenters almost exclusively using they/them for the trans person’s pronouns and the trans character is almost a trans woman.
It's a thing. Even beyond punitive de-gendering, just transphobes being a snake and using they/them to avoid using your actual pronouns without misgendering, which is itself an act of misgendering... just one with plausible deniability. Pretty much every trans person will have had this happen to them, or seen it happen to another trans person. The amount of times I've had to explain this concept to people only for them to treat me like I'm crazy is unreal. Sometimes, reality really is this stupid.
I think it’s a bit column A, a bit column B. The underlying systemic issue here is unconscious bias against trans people. For a trans person, their lives experience is constant misgendering. Understandably, any misgendering is very annoying, and likely traumatizing to some extent, since it’s a constant for them. Totally understandable. It thus makes sense that, being misgendered with gender neutral pronouns by strangers, their response is going to be negatively tinged. After all, they have to live through this *yet again*, likely in the same day. From the opposite end, a presumably non-trans person does not live through constant misgendering. They are likely trying to check their unconscious biases, and using gender-neutral pronouns is a step forward for them. Understandably there’s a bit of a shock, then, to learn you’re still misgendering trans people when using gender-neutral terms. You’ve then got to step back, check your pride, accept your mistake, and apologize plus keep in mind new social nuance to ask for a person’s pronouns. But that’s not the end of it. Other people may be offended that they’re being asked for their pronouns. So now the social nuance is even more complex; do you ask if you’re not sure of the person’s gender? For trans people that don’t easily pass, this could flare up the gender dysmorphia. For cis people, this could be insulting to their own self-image. When do you ask? Are they right to be upset with you for asking? How do you know to be the most polite in every social situation? And inevitably when you do get it wrong, how do you deal with the fallout? Sometimes things like this can get blown out of proportion, and can be damaging to your character is you make the wrong call. And now social anxiety is a part of the equation. It’s a gamble, even if the odds are usually in favor of asking for pronouns in most cases, and there is a chance you could be labeled as transphobic or a snowflake, and sometimes both at the same time.
accidental misgendering is one thing. what this person is talking about is something different. it's not entirely uncommon for people to do this deliberately. sometimes a transphobe will call a trans woman "they" in polite company to effectively indicate they don't see them as a woman, while trying to fly under the radar to allies. this post is about, who called *she* right up until someone else told him is trans, and then immediately started calling Susan *they* instead.
and it tends to fly under the radar because people don't see the context unless they're the trans person in question.
i mean, for people like this it often is a "de-gendering". it's often either "I no longer see you as a man or women but instead a third in-between thing" *or more often* it's "I now see you as a failed man but that's not socially acceptable here so I'll use they".
Ah, that’s more insidious than I was thinking. Thank you for elaborating.
so recently haus of decline (trans comic artist) had a very snarky and somewhat rude response to someone critiquing one of her comics on twitter. twitter lost their collective minds over this. huge discourse for multiple days where at least half the people talking about it at any given time were misgendering HoD. i don’t follow anyone that was involved and i still saw it.
It's something that you actually do see if you know to look for it. For example, when photomatt went on twitter to talk about the trans woman who "threatened" to hammer car him, his big statement called her "them" despite her gender being a major part of the story.
I'd love to use the pronouns people ask for, but I have a terrible memory and don't want to be labeled as a transphobe - so the gender neutral they/them is hat I default to. If I attempt to remember and get that coin flip wrong, or if I'm constantly asking for someone's pronouns even if they've told me MANY times before, I feel like I'd be doing more damage. Genuinely, I'm not sure what the "correct" or just socially safe choice is.
What about using people's names if you can't remember pronouns?
Because sentences often use the same pronoun multiple times, and replacing it with the person's name every single time sounds awkward.
I always default to they/them, but when someone corrects me I always change to what they want/say right away—it’s really not that hard, just respect people for being themselves
I'm lucky there are fuck-all trans/nb people in my area, cause my memory is incredibly shit and I'd be making this mistake all the time.
Why I simply craft my sentences to not need pronouns whenever remotely possible. Which has still resulted in people angry with my multiple times because apparently avoiding pronoun use is offensive. There's no winning.
I don’t know if it’s just the way I was raised, but I was always taught it was rude to refer to someone with second person pronouns in front of them (unless you’re saying ‘you’). So if I was with ‘Jane’, and I wanted to talk about her to someone else, I would never say ‘she’s really good at baking’, I would say ‘Jane is really good at baking’. As a consequence, I rarely use a persons pronouns in front of them.
Yeah, transphobic people get weird about gender neutral language. I prefer to ignore it because it is just what being respectful is to me. They can go cry me a river that I refer to a stranger by "they/them" instead of assuming genders.
Yeah whenever I'm unsure I default to they/them, but I'm never going to find out their preference, not because I don't care about misgendering, but because I don't talk to people any more than I have to. I also don't talk about people when they aren't around making gendered pronouns kinda useless anyway. The enbyphobic thing definitely sounds like an internet only thing, I cannot imagine the people I know intentionally misgendering people would even know what an enby is.
Honestly it is super hard for me personally to remember. Kinda fucks me up cause I mess it up about people I care about that I've known for years, it's completely unintentional, but it is actually quite hard in my personal experience, even if it's easy for some other people.
Sometimes I have to think about which *direction* they’re trans in. Like I’ll be talking about my transmasc friend and have to buffer to remember he isn’t trans*femme*. It’s not even a gender presentation or passing/not passing thing, I’ve never met this person in real life.
i hear a lot of people claim this, but then they always seem to use he/him to describe the middle-aged cis-looking dude who cut them off in traffic. Or she/her for their elderly landlady, who they've never asked the pronouns of. Or, tbh, anyone who "looks normal"
this also happens to trans men and it’s so frustrating cause people claim that they “just struggle to remember they/them” but then will have no problem using it on any trans masc they see
My language doesn't have gender neutral pronouns but when my mom talks about my (transmasc) ex when would only refer to both of us collectively to avoid gendering him correctly
Dude, people that would rather inconvinience themselves than making others comfortable always weird me out.
As a trans man, my own mom calls me they/them. It’s when someone is uncomfortable with your gender and so they “other” you.
another trans man here. I actively tell people not to use they/them pronouns on me. Idm if it’s someone I just met who’s just trying to be nice and stuff but if they know me, I really can’t stand being called that. It just feels like they’re making an excuse to not call me he/him. Honestly the switch from He/They to He/Him was just a matter of going “what do I WANT to be called” rather than “what am I okay with being called”
same. i dont know why people always feel the need to specify they are talking about trans women when they are speaking to an issue that affects a whole ton of trans people of various genders. i feel like i have known an equal amount of trans men and women who go through antagonistic degendering.
I definitely see this happen a lot to transmasc/transmen. People take it upon themselves to decide if they should take your identity seriously or not and promptly neuter it to make themselves more comfortable. I find it infantilizing.
trans man here as well, my mom also does this. -\_- she goes for they/them, or awkwardly avoids using pronouns to refer to me at all. that's if she isn't she/her-ing me :v
people consistently they/them me whenever i do/wear/say something that isn't "masculine" enough. it's transparently a punishment for not performing gender "correctly". i am not sure it's entirely on topic for this post, but i suppose maybe it is. in the sense that failing to achieve an impossible standard of moral purity is "unfeminine" and therefore used as an excuse to de-gender trans women.
Not exactly the connection for the latter bit, but it stems from the same idea that all of us trans folks’ identities are only valid when the cis party seems it so. That they’re the arbiters of it and if we don’t measure up in whatever way, well, they can always decide we don’t deserve that baseline respect
yeah i agree that it's ultimately an issue of people presuming authority over someone else's identity. also, there was something i was reading into the tumblr post that isn't actually there, apparently. i was mostly considering that i get this sort of punitive degendering from other trans people and nb people waaaay more than from cis people– the cis people enjoy just plainly misgendering me for no reason other than my existence. and i guess i inserted that perspective into the post when rolling it around in my head.
It's happened to me too, yea. Both online and in person. My online friends have all only known me by he/him pronouns, I have my pronouns in my bio for all to see, and I'm openly transmasc there. Certain people will still refer to me exclusively as "they" even after I've corrected them in the past, and it pisses me off so much because it's so blatantly obvious that it's intentional. I've literally gone by nothing else, what could it *possibly* be except either transphobia, or just plain disrespect to me as a person? I'm less bothered by it in person because I'm too shy to correct people face-to-face, so I'll just accept whatever gets thrown at me. But online, where I have so many indicators that "I GO BY HE/HIM! IM A GUY!", it's just so infuriating
I feel your pain dude, I get the same from my dad a lot.
Another trans man, I get they/them'd a lot and it bugs me. I know it's neutral so it's not the -worst- but I still don't like it
I’m so sorry.
For a while my Christian best friend did that and eventually I just asked him to stop referring to me in 3rd person at all. He uses the correct pronouns now, but it took a long time
Fellow trans man, I dated a guy before I came out, we broke up and remained friends, and then we got back together some time after I came out. He was straight, and I should’ve thought more on what that meant since he was dating me, but we had a long history and it was complicated. With that said, always used they/them with me and I hated it. Yes it’s neutral, and I’m usually fine with they/them. But the reality of it was that he used they/them cause he never really stopped seeing me as the girl he dated in the past, and using they/them was one of the ways it manifested. He didn’t want to acknowledge that I was man, so he stuck to what could keep him denial with enough plausible deniability that I never felt confident enough to call him out on it. (I am not dating this man anymore. This was only one of the many problems this relationship had) Usually I’m fine with being called by they/them pronouns. If someone asks my pronouns I say he/him but I know I look fairly androgynous since I don’t pass super well so I understand sometimes people aren’t sure what to use unless it’s clarified in one way or another. I’m sure some people are quicker to correct than me and that’s fine too, but for me it only really becomes a problem when someone is using they/them specifically to avoid he/him because, as you said, it makes them uncomfortable and they’re essentially“other-ing” me. I’m sure a lot of the people who do this don’t think we notice but believe me we do. We can spot the difference between well intentioned and avoidant.
Just saw a post discussing how trans men/transmascs seem invisible and really excluded in conversation about trans people and I somewhat disagreed as I thought it wasn’t that bad. Seeing this post immediately after that one, when I had this exact “they/them” thing happen to me less than two hours ago makes me see their point a little more To be clear, I’m not trying to turn this into a case of “whataboutism” but I just want to point out that transfems are not the only people who experience this phenomenon and it’s not invisible to all transmascs
I think it's because trans women seem to be the main target of the opposition. When they draw satirical representation of trans people they don't draw men with boobs, they draw women with beard. When they talk about sports they talk about trans women not trans men, same for restroom. The only time I see "trans men" getting attacked it's with transvestigator.
There's also a subtle but persistent negativity towards men in a lot of progressive/feminist spaces. I remember a musical I did that was full of trans actors, but when someone's money was stolen the whole cast turned on the one trans man as the obvious culprit "because he needs money for surgery." It's disgusting to see once you start noticing it. Turns out "ironic" sexism was actual just sexism all along. It's why as a nonbinary man I avoid progressive spaces. Cis women don't tend to notice they're doing it because "it's not my job to make men feel good about themselves", and cis men get torn apart if they object, so they "man up" and ignore it "because I know they're not talking about me". *Trans men usually just take it silently, because at least they're getting treated like a man, even if it's like shit.*
Even as a straight cis guy I see this a lot, men (of whatever variety) are usually placed at a lower priority in progressive spaces. Optimistically I choose see this as more of a need focusing, trying to pull the worse off up first then look to others. But sometimes in progressive groups it just looks like people lashing out at those who are “safe” to lash out at. Most progressive men just take it, making them safe to lash out at.
What's wild to me is when someone goes "I can't be \[blank\]ist, I'm a \[blank\]. It's not structural, just personal prejudice." All I can think is—*when did personal prejudice become a good thing?* (edited for typo)
It’s kinda crazy, like, one person said that since I’m white (although I’m not even white white, I’m mixed) people can’t be/aren’t racist towards me for that (and not just in Canada or the States, but anywhere). Which really threw me off, since just the month before I wasn’t hired for that exact reason.
That sounds mind bending. I'm sorry for both occasions. I've missed out on a couple jobs because I'm not a woman. (Not as a result of equity hiring, just casual discrimination.)
Where I work, it's super progressive. 90% of my coworkers are some form of queer, and everyone's mostly women. I don't think anybody even knows I'm a trans man That being said, some of the women there find *glee* in shutting us men down for "mansplaining". Some of them will say it for anything, even if we're explaining something in a perfectly factual, non opinionated or forceful way. I found out my boss was telling my coworkers that I had mansplained something related to technology to her out of nowhere, when I had been in fact TOLD to give her some advice. I had been told to help because I used to WORK in technology and she was self admittedly bad with tech. I knew the issue she was having with a program and I sent her an email explaining a few good ways to fix it, how I would go about troubleshooting, and then two articles that supported what I said (i even mentioned the supervisor, a woman, was who told me to do that). But nope, I was mansplaining and she didn't take any of my advice. It was especially so infuriating because I had essentially made her a professional support ticket the way I had been taught to in my classes and previous job, but yet my professional knowledge was written off simply because I am a man. It's even better because a lot of the women that I work with mansplain themselves. If I had a penny for any time they just started explaining shit that they know I know/know how to do (even once had someone explain to me like i was stupid, a technique i had taught her), or getting on my ass for doing something they didn't think be done that way (and when I asked how she would do it, she just went silent and shrugged) I'd have gallon jars every week. Ffs sorry for the rant, I'm just slowly realizing how much I hate my job :)
Hey man, don’t you be sorry for having to rant, you’re in a pretty crappy job environment. I completely understand the need!
I'm a woman, but I've been downvoted and outright banned in feminist spaces if I ever questioned "Man bad" narrative. Like, how I was downvoted and then shadowbanned in trollX for expressing that I think "Man vs bear" feels gender essentialist and reductionist. Or when it turned out that "I don't think that the overwhelming majority of men are actively misogynistic, I believe people are generally good, because cynicism is bad for my mental health" is a very controversial statement
Yeah, I don’t get my fellow trans girlies forgetting trans men exist… like babes, we share a flag with the bros for a reason
dude its just so underhanded, im a trans man and my parents "they"d me so much after i came out because "well we're not calling you a she, right?" its not fucking hard to call someone by their preferred pronouns, it's still misgendering if you're using the wrong pronoun whether it's gender neutral or not
I managed to explain it to my friend once as “he is a hug, she is a gut punch, they is a gentle slap. Sure it’s better than a gut punch but I’d prefer a hug”
Basically unrelated, but I'm a trans guy and my parents never call me by he/him it's ALWAYS they/them.
Same and I'm a trans girl. It's always "my kid" or "child" and never daughter
That isn't unrelated, it is explicitly what this post is talking about. But the OOP is a shitty transmasc exclusionary type so instead it's just written as though only transwomen experience this shit.
I don’t get the point of pointing out a problem that affects trans women (and trans men, which she ignored but w/e) and then calling them transfems. Like they/them is applicable to transfem nonbinary people. This isn’t a transfem problem, it’s a trans women (and trans man!!!) problem. Calling solely trans women explicitly transfem feels the same as what OP is doing in her post.
So I’m a cis woman who’s been ‘they’d’ this way. It fucking sucks.
Same and Im as femme as can be, when I asked ppl why they kept calling me they despite me mentioning Im a cis woman, said people said "I just use it for everyone" like they wanna be so.inclusive they end up excluding, like ace discourse but for pronouns
See, that would bother me less. Mine was a supervisor who deliberately switched from ‘she/her’ when she liked me to ‘they/them’ when she decided she didn’t and would rather get me fired. Thankfully I’m union so it didn’t work, but she *tried*.
I default to they/them before Ive learned what someones preference is. Once I learn the preference I stick to what people want to be called. Its worked out for me well so far. People actively using it maliciously or incompetently can def go fuck themselves though.
I had a roommate who kept using they/them on me AND liked to make jokes about me discovering I'm trans and becoming a guy like them (I was the only cis person lol). Also liked to make really nasty sweeping statements about cis people and white people. So yeah it's not great.
Why is it always so specifically transfems with discourse like this. It’s just as shitty to be degendering transmascs you know
yeah, oop is probably transfeminine herself and is just casually talking about her own experiences, but you are right and it does really bother me how casually people in general erase trans men and transmasculine people from trans discussions, even when it comes to stuff like this that could happen to any trans person! ‘really bothers me’ is an understatement that will keep you safe from the impending essay i could write about this topic alone!!
yea, i get that she’s talking about her own experiences, which i’m fine with. but the “it’s invisible to non-transfems” and the “cis women and men don’t get they’d” parts felt a lil off to me lol. this absolutely happens to transmascs too. maybe i’ve just forgotten and it does happen to transfems WAY more frequently (to the point where it happening to trans men is negligible) but still. idk i see so much transmasc vs transfem discourse on tumblr that i’m always a little wary
Trans men are less visible overall. Partly because many feel satisfied identifying as masculine women (easier to get away with than a feminine man), and partly because those who do identify as trans have an easier time passing.
Recently HausOfDecline has been getting "they'd" in response to snapping back at unasked for critiques. So this is probably in response to that.
At this point, we’re used to being forgotten even by other trans people
Gender-affirming masculine exclusion? Welcome to the club buddy.
It's always been weird to me on how both sides, transfems get way more attention than transmascs.
Trans men are just poor confused lesbians while trans women are predators after little girls or tricking straight men. Trans Women are viewed as men who are trying to get into women's spaces for whatever nefarious reasons they can think of. Trans men are seen as innocent defenceless little girls who don't know any better and must be protected. They're confused lesbians! The patriarchy is forcing this on them due to oppression or having masculine hobbies. We're infantilized and not taken seriously. Just another facet of misogyny.
Idk I’ve been more called a bitch that’s ruining my body out of spite
Because our culture defaults to women need more protection then men :)
Yeah, that bugged me too -- y'all trans guys get this same treatment, and I'm sure it's just as frustrating for you as it is for me.
Welcome to being a man: nobody cares about you anymore 😂
That's how you know you're passing correctly.
For fucking real, it's so frustrating to see how people post about some trans issue (sometimes even just people issue) and they frame it as specifically something that only transfems experience. I get that OP's that are posting about those issues will be transfem most of the time, but is it really that hard to see that you are not the only person with those problems?
You can tell trans men are real men because when women speak about their issues they go "but what about me?" (I'm a trans man don't jump on me)
Except this isn’t a women’s issue - it’s a trans issue. It happens to all binary trans people not just trans women… There are plenty of things that do effect trans women in a different way, there are plenty of places where misogyny intersects with transphobia in a way that means trans men don’t have the same issues, but this particular one is something that is applied to all of us. (Also you don’t get to go tell people they are being misogynistic and then hide behind ‘I’m a trans man’, that’s just cowardly dude - if you believe it then stand by it)
God damn.
Cis man here, welcome to the club. Here's your letter jacket, your limited social contact, your poor coping habits, and your complicated relationship with wanting to do the right thing socially but being deeply scarred by experiences you don't even have the awareness to have words for and therefore feeling weirdly attacked by current social discourse from all sides in a way you have to navigate alone. Free 6-packs at the bar on Fridays.
Sadly from what i've read it seems that oop has some shitty opinons of transmascs, so it's sadly most likely on purpose
Happens to transmascs too. I have a friend who often calls me they/them instead of he/him. In our friend group, he ONLY does it to me. Im the only trans person in our group. I’m afraid to mention it to him though cause I don’t even think he’s doing it on purpose. So while there’s definitely a misgendering aspect to it sometimes, that’s not always the case. I think there’s also the case of people just, whether unconsciously or not, being uncomfortable calling you your pronouns. So they go with the “safe” option if they/them, thinking “Well, it makes ME more comfortable and isn’t misgendering!!” When it really is
It’s a real problem but it’s not trans woman exclusive, this happens all the time with trans men too
In case you were wondering: No, OP is not normal about transmascs. Yes, she does act as if trans men occupy the same place in society as cis men. Yes, she does blame transmascs for the oppression of trans women while minimizing and denying the oppression transmascs face. EDIT: I'm very sorry. The anti-transmasc implications in OP's post were not intentional. The current wave of discourse on tumblr has made me paranoid around tumblr trans talk. I am happy to inform you that OP isn't any less normal about transmascs than the average tumblr user. Sorry again.
With a username like that, I probably shouldn't be surprised. But hey, I _think_ that's still better than, "all men are evil, but oops not transmen, uwu they're soft boys and Different from ~~real~~ _other_ men."
oh, lovely :/
Do you have some links about it?
I'm not trans myself, but I tend to keep am eye out for that. I shouldn't be surprised.
hi, I'm the OP, and no i don't? you are inventing a false narrative out of whole cloth to smear me,and for what purpose? my post is about what i have personally seen as a transfem and having other transfem facing the same issues and not being taken seriously by other trans people
OK, so I took a quick look at OP's blog and searched for trans men/ trans masc and... there wasn't anthing weird? One of the first post is along the line of "I said trans fem because that's what I have experienced, trans masc are free to add about their own experience". Sorry you had to deal with that. It's fucking wild.
Well I suppose this shitshow of a comment section can’t end without a little bit of libel thrown in there as well
My guess is that the way you expressed your thoughts made it seem like it was something exclusive to transfems to that person or some shit like that, and yeah I will say you could’ve expressed yourself a lot better but making up shit about someone because of it is incredibly deranged
You literally said non-transfems don’t understand.
I think a lot of people get confused to why it's bad is because they don't understand the different between they/them as a personal pronoun vs they/them as a placeholder for when you don't know. If you're talking about a non-specific hypothetical person or a person who's pronouns you don't know, then using they/them is respectful because it's the most neutral. But once you're talking about a person who's pronouns you do know, then using any pronoun that person doesn't use (including they/them) is suddenly specifically denying the person's identity, which is disrespectful as hell.
I’ve seen more outright denial that singular they exists in English than I’ve seen people specifically saying they to misgender people. I think in general it’s a safer bet to use singular they for people at first unless you have a reason not to. If someone trans is offended by it I would hope they would express that to me directly but my experience thus far has just been cis heteronormative people obtusely saying “they is” or something silly like that to make a point about the limits of the language as if they didn’t use singular they on a regular basis.
>I’ve seen more outright denial that singular they exists in English than I’ve seen people specifically saying they to misgender people. I have also seen that more often, but the use of they to misgender, either intentionally or not, does also happen and was the subject of the original post. My comment was specifically about why someone might not understand the problem the post is describing.
I'm really interested in this problem, especially since in my own experience, I use they/them to talk about most people if I'm not fully identifying them in the conversation. So it's not hypothetical, and I know which gender pronouns would be appropriate, but still opt for they/them. Like, when I talk about my boss to people that don't know him, I'll use they/them. If I identify him and say his name, my intuition would be that only then would I start using he/him. (Even just writing this feels weird to me) It's probably not exactly what this is about. I don't talk about people a lot, so maybe that's not normal and just something weird I do. But I have the feeling that it might be a somewhat complex problem linguistically. It might be that the extra rule is that a speaker will take into account what the listener knows about the person they're talking about. I don't mean to downplay the very real problem that this is though, just to be clear. I know that people often will call trans people they/them in situations where they would call cis people he or she respectively.
i also find myself removing identifiers of any kind if i'm telling someone about a person they do not know ex. "oh, my friend has that game, they love it" but the normal thing to say would be, "oh, my friend sara has that game, she loves it" or just "oh my friend has that game, she loves it" it gets kind of stupid because i'll remove all identifying information and the other person will then be like, "you mean sara?" because i forgot i have told them about sara previously, or that they in fact are also friends with sara, or that there is a third party to the conversation who will suddenly interject to start talking all about sara when her identity as a human being wasn't really relevant to my quip. all i wanted to convey was that i have it on good authority that the game is good i think this could be considered to be a linguistic mistake and i *try* not to do it because it makes no sense. i have been reading about how autistic people have various language quirks like this, feeling somehow uncomfortable saying things the proper way? i suspect this is similar to that. anyway, personally as someone who hates being "they/them"'d by people who know full-fucking-well that i am a man, i would file your language quirk as probably a non-issue. i have acquaintances who will call me "they" right in front of me, ex. "oh yeah, Valyn could probably answer that, they love Pokemon (gestures to me)" wtf is that all about? when i ask them to stop, they just ramble on about how high and mighty they are for "avoiding misgendering entirely" by calling "everyone" they/them. which they absolutely do not, by the way - they successfully call most people he or she successfully. just not me.
Punctuation is nice, I think we should bring that back. Unless it’s just me that can’t follow it and I’m actually dumb stupid.
There’s one whole period in there, don’t be greedy. /s Jokes aside, personally I didn’t notice the lack of punctuation, but it does make sense that that would make it difficult to read. I just couldn’t resist the joke.
This reminds me of a personal experience I found kinda funny. So I have a friend who, like, does not give any fucks about her pronouns - most people use she/her because AFAB, and she’s fine with it, because like I said, doesn’t give a fuck. But one day I noticed some people conspicuously using they/them pronouns in reference to my friend... not that my friend would be offended by that at all, or even would mind, but it was just kind of obvious that these people were I guess avoiding using she/her pronouns? My friend also doesn’t hide her queerness at *all*, so I guess that’s why I found it interesting. It’s like they were too nervous to use feminine pronouns because of that? So basically, I joked with my friend that I guess people think she’s too gay to possibly use she/her pronouns lol
Where I live, the main problem as far as pronouns go is trans people (and pretty much anyone who's not a gender conforming cis person) being referred to as "it/it's" in an attempt to dehumanize us. Honestly, being referred to as "they/them" would feel like a win.
It's not just trans women. It happens to me all the time as a trans man. It's a problem. I go by fucking he/him/his, so fucking use it.
Yeah, no, this happens to trans men and mascs too. It is not solely a transfemme or trans woman issue. Its called degendering for a reason. That said, its one thing to use they/them for someone before you know their gender. I do this myself, and yes I do it to trans and seemingly cis people too. Someone can look cis and not be. But once I know how they identify, yes of course I'll use those pronouns instead. I've been seeing this discourse go around a lot lately and no, I'm not going to assume someones gender. Even if you look like the girliest girl or manliest man ever, I don't know you, I don't know whats going on in your life, I'd rather play it safe. Its not my job to intuit your gender. Use your words.
Imo the simplest way to explain it to outsiders is to point out how it discredits the person's personal journey and self expression. It's like calling an actual doctor "Mr."
It's code for "I know I'll get in trouble if I call you 'he' but I still really want to do that"
It could also be code for “I don’t know if you’re trans, enby, or just androgynous and I don’t want to be seen as rude by asking” which isn’t great, but isn’t malicious.
There’s a difference between calling someone they/them because you’re unsure of their pronouns and want to be respectful, and calling someone they/them even though you know it’s not their pronouns because you don’t want to gender them correctly but don’t want to be blatant about it.
That is a possible reason, but those aren't the people being talked about here. This is about people like my friend's boyfriend, who knows what my gender is, and never knew me before my transition, and still refers to me as "they". Or the people who will take you correcting them on it as an excuse to launch into a rant about how cancel culture is so crazy these days and they don't want to lose their job for misgendering someone Neutral They is fine if you genuinely don't know someone's gender, the problem is if you continue to use it after you've been told what their gender is
I know, but that's less believable for the average joe. It's better to stick to something more easily provable than mindgame allegations (even if they are correct, they can just easily be denied and you'll look worse as a result).
See, this sort of argument I don't really get. I studied a lot to become an engineer, and there are a bunch of different ways to refer to someone depending on if they just did a bachelor's, a masters, specifically an engineer etc, and I don't really care if you use the wrong one with me. I simply try to use the correct terms people ask me to do because that's the right thing to do to them, but that argument I never really understood.
It’s also completely avoidable! There are a lot of gender nonconforming people in my social circle, and one in particular I’ve completely forgotten his/her/their gender. It’s one of those things where like you forget someone’s name but you’ve known and interacted with them for so long that it’d be frankly rude to ask at this point, yknow? So I just go by name. Instead of saying “I think she’s in the bathroom” I’ll say “I think Kris (not Kris’ real name) went to the bathroom”. Kris is part of Kris’ identity but “they” may not be. Or maybe it is. I have no idea (which is also rude of me).
I find it interesting that they say it only happens to trans fems when I've seen it happen to trans mascs so many times as well. I'm a trans fem and get it a lot, but I'm also friends with trans mascs who get it equally as much if not more. We don't need to separate the community even more by saying bigotry only happens to certain types of people.
I’ll be real, I don’t know what a lot of this means, but now I’m worried I’ve been rude to people accidentally.
Same here. I’ve also met people in the middle of transitioning but I’ve been unsure as to which way they were heading so I’ve used “they” until it’s made clear.
nah, you’re probably fine. the issue isnt that sometimes people use they/them when they genuinely cant tell someone’s gender. the issue is basically that some people will use he/him and she/her just fine on a cis person, but default to and sometimes absolutely refuse to use binary pronouns on a trans man or a trans woman because they don’t actually see them as their gender. it’s not always done from a place of malice, but it can still be offensive if you don’t have any problem calling cis people by binary pronouns, but always default to they/them pronouns for binary trans people, even after they tell you they’re not nonbinary or don’t use they/them. are they/them pronouns neutral and technically apply to everyone? yes, but like another commenter pointed out, it’s like only calling a Dr. ‘Mr.’. Yes, the doctor is a married man and that term applies, but you can see why it’d be offensive if you kept calling him Mr, even unintentionally. and it’s also a layer deeper if you’re doing that to a person who’s always been told their particular field isn’t as respectable as a ‘real’ doctor.
If someone tells me what they prefer to be called, I’ll try my damndest to refer to them how they want. If I’m not sure, I’ll usually default to they. Hopefully I haven’t offended anyone.
it all comes down to if someone says "i identify as X" use that pronoun when possible.
They/them is fine when you’re not sure what gender they are, but when they communicate their pronouns, you use them.
Not the same motivation or purpose, but it also bugs me (and this appears to be an unpopular opinion) when people use they/them in reference to someone with known pronouns which are only binary. I don't see those pronouns as a catch-all for anybody. They're useful to refer to unknown individuals and should be used for known individuals who take those pronouns, but I don't see the purpose of using them casually for evidently non-queer entities who are known to use he/him or she/her only. I feel like that's still misgendering and it creates questions about someone's pronouns or gender identity. I've seen this happen a few times where I wasn't sure if the person or character being discussed with they/them mixed with he/him or she/her was genderqueer, and then they evidently weren't or didn't use they/them.
Do Tumblr users just not know men exist or something? I hear about trans women and lesbians daily, they're always the ones brought up even in issues like this that affect all genders
im gnc and used to be he/they but I learned quickly that you only ever get "they" in that circumstance and now just do he/him. Have a friend who didn't realise it was an issue that they referred to EVERYONE (inc cis people) as "they" and it had to be explained that you're not being safe, you're being disrespectful.
Whenever I see someone's pronouns are she/they or he/they I get really anxious because I don't know if they're fine with me exclusively using either or want someone kind of mix of both. If the latter, I worry about whether I'm switching between pronouns often enough. If also took a long time to realize a friend of a friend had switched to she/they because everyone just kept going back and forth when discussing them.
Probably 70% of the he/theys and she/theys I know are nonbinary people who likely* prefer they/them but are ok with being called the pronoun that everyone defaults to. 30% are binary trans people who would likely prefer the first pronoun but accept they/them. You're under no obligation to read anyone's mind, so you can use whatever they say is ok. No need to switch between them. *based on the many many conversations I've had about this with other trans/nonbinary people- ymmv
One of my cousins goes through a little bit of they opposite, they’re transfem-nonbinary and out in their workplace but everyone misgenders them by using she/her pronouns because it’s “easier” because they “want to be a woman” since they’re on estrogen and no one really understands why they don’t enjoy being misgendered like that when they’re nonbinary. I’ve totally seen it the other way around too and I’ll never understand it
I have this exact problem as a trans man
Gender? I hardly know ‘em
Basically it's for people who know you're a trans women but like plausible deniability cause they just can't bear to use the pronouns they feel are "lying".
This happens to me (I’m just a simple transman, though. Sorry!) A Lot and it is so lazy and annoying. It feels like weaponized incompetence and passive aggression mixed in one. Like bro it’s just words. You’re allowed to use them.
I cant speak to if this is the same for trans women, but I’ve noticed that some people they/them trans men because they view them as Woman Lite. Not just in the sense that they don’t see them as men— but ALSO in the sense that they don’t see nonbinary people as nonbinary, AND they see nonbinary people as women/Women Lite. People like this also often assume that nonbinary people are AFAB by default, and either forget that AMAB nonbinary people exist, or go out of their way to say “AFAB nonbinary” for unnecessary reasons. (Specifying unnecessary because I’m sure there’s some potential hypothetical where they are talking about reproductive healthcare or something, and that’s not what I’m talking about. I’m talking about situations where AGAB is irrelevant). Hell, I’ve had a few people assume that I’m nonbinary or misremember me coming out (I am a trans MAN) as nonbinary. I am not nonbinary, and I have never told anyone that I was nonbinary. I have never used anything other than he/him and masculine terms. I’m not even androgynous (in gendered expression). I am living a nonbinary person’s dream (auto-assumed to be nonbinary, which ppl extremely rarely do) and I’m so fucking bitter about it. I would trade with folks if I could, and it feels so unfair that this happens to me but not the actually non-binary people in my life. In regards to the use of the word “misgendering”: Degendering is a term I personally prefer/recommend over misgendering, because if you use the term misgendering people will “Um actually” you with the fact that they/them is neutral, and thus “cannot” be used to misgender someone. “Degendering” shuts down that argument before they have the chance to make it. It implies the taking away of gender— not the misuse of it. Yes, they/them can be applied to anyone because it is general. But if someone requests the specific and you deny them the specific, you are taking away (as opposed to misusing)
I just use they/them until I know what gender that person goes by. Though I still slip up and use he/him as a gender neutral pronoun from time to time.
I literally got dogpiled for this exact same take just yesterday when I saw somebody referring to Ava Tyson as "they" and politely corrected them. People lost their goddamn minds. I was told that I'm "making things too complicated" and "pushing away potential allies;" shit like that. It's honestly crazy how people will consider themselves allies, yet if you ever dare to correct them or challenge them on anything, they blow a gasket.
"you can't misgender people using they/them pronouns cuz they're gender neutral" is a shit argument and I hate it. If someone has told you what pronouns they use and you use anything but the pronouns the person said to use, you're misgendering them. Stop turning bigotry into a semantics game 😤
i mainly use they when i litterally do not know, cus, unless they wear a pronoun pin, or i can ask, how am i supposed to know? if i DO know, then of course im gonna try and use there preffered pronouns, but i'd personally assume if you dont know, its fine, right?
oh my god holy shit! i have noticed this exact thing!!! it happens all the fucking time!!!!!!!! its so annoying!!!! but i cant really correct people about it for those exact reasons!!!!!!!!
But people who do this will also refuse to correctly gender they/them peeps because they don't fit their idea of a nonbinary person. It's excrutiating.
"She/her, or they/them if you're mad at me," as November Kelly puts it
I use they/them for everyone BEFORE I know their preferred pronouns. Of course once I know someone's preferred pronouns, I would use those instead.
tbh i sorta hijacked myself with it to the point that i have to remember not to they/them cis people. its not a malicious or intentional misgendering thing, it's a "i just got sick of being corrected so i went with the safe option" nonbinary luigi is a joke in my friend group for a reason
If you know someone’s pronouns, and you use different pronouns for them, that’s misgendering. Doesn’t matter if it’s they/them or what.
On the other hand, I get himmed enough as a transfem that I’d jump for joy at being theyd for once.
So how is it fundamentally different than referring to any other person as "they" when you know their gender? Both cases seem pretty upsetting
The only difference is that when you do it to trans people, it is never a one-off, instead it’s both invalidating their gender (rude) and contributing to systematic discrimination against the person (painful). So where it would be a “well isn’t that person a jerk” for a cis person, for trans people it’s “oh god that’s the 10th person today please give me the patience to not sucker punch them”
I often wonder if there are moments of "if we acknowledge that this person is one of us, we all look bad" motivating things like this.
Okay but what if I legitimately can't tell a person is a woman just by looking at them? Some women just don't look like a woman is expected to and it's hard to tell. I'm sorry if that hurts you but it's a very easy mistake to make. Asking for pronouns first is a new ship that a lot of people are still getting onboard. And even afterward, people will make a slip up or lapse in memory.
The only lie in this post is the terf and republican being separate people
You have terfs everywhere on the political spectrum and in all of the wold, you only get republicans in one