as small as a world and as large as alone, Do you have any preferred pronouns?

8:35am May 29, 2014

Anonymous asked: Do you have any preferred pronouns?

Yes. Although I don’t actually demand anyone use them unless they specifically want to.

I like ze/zer/zem, and sie/hir. And I like those about equally. Those two types are the ones I like the most, that feel like they actually fit for some reason. I still remember the first time someone spontaneously used “ze” on me (out loud, in public) and how right it felt.

As far as more usual pronouns go, singular they is okay (also, I use singular they pretty much whenever I don’t remember what pronouns a human being uses, which is frequent… for some reason when it’s an animal I default to sie/hir). She is kind of okay, it’s the pronouns I was born with, and I’m used to them by experience. He is sometimes okay too. But none of these pronouns are ones I’m wild about. They’re just, if you have to use “normal” pronouns,,, meh, I can deal with it.

The one pronoun I’ve gotten sometimes that truly offends me is it. That’s the worst one. Either calling me it, or calling me “an it”. I suspect that happens to me because of the intersection between gender and developmental disability, but I can’t be totally sure.

I often tell people I just don’t care what pronoun they use. It’s true that there’s no pronoun (at least none of the standard ones, and none of the common gender-neutral ones) that actually offends me. But I say it more often because I fear the whole stigma of “You’re making us use weird words to describe you” and because I always feel semi-closeted about genderlessness even though I’m not at all closeted really. So I tell people that it doesn’t matter. But I do actually have strong preferences.

If you see people using pronouns I don’t prefer, though, please don’t make them feel like shit about it unless they’re clearly being malicious or using it. I am not usually very public about my preferred pronouns anyway, I usually just let people use she, even though it feels wrong, because… I guess I’m scared, in a way, and I don’t know what I’m scared of. But if there are people uncomfortable not using she, I don’t want to put them on the spot either.

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