as small as a world and as large as alone, madeofpatterns: When there were phone books,...

6:01pm June 19, 2014

When there were phone books, women often chose to list themselves by initials only to cut down on creeps having their phone number or address.

This was especially the case for women living alone.

Think about why that is, before you exhort everyone to list their pronouns on websites.

Also, although I kind of have my pronouns listed now, and I’ve described them, I’m not comfortable listing them front and center on my page.

Because they’re not typical pronouns. They’re sie/hir and ze/zer/zem, in particular. And that means a lot of things.

It means I’m automatically outed as nonbinary (genderless, in particular). In a world where even the trans community doesn’t necessarily have any respect for this kind of identity.

It means that I’m subject to being told that I’m just trying to be special.

It means that people who have trouble with neologisms may feel pressured to use pronouns that they can neither spell, pronounce, nor remember. This can be especially hard for people with language disabilities.

It means that people who don’t get it, still won’t get it, only may blame me for their not getting it.

It means that people who are unable to keep up with nonstandard pronouns, people who don’t understand, or people who just plain forget, may get dogpiled for “misgendering” me, when this is the last thing I want to happen to anyone.

Yes, I do have pronoun preferences. I feel amazing when people use sie/hir, almost as amazing when people use ze/zer/zem, I still remember the first time someone spontaneously did this, and it made me feel right inside in a way I had never felt right with anyone using any pronoun ever. They is my third favorite, followed by she and he. Never it. And I’d never be comfortable with anyone using on me those nounself type pronouns that are popping up those days.

So basically any normal pronoun that you can use is not going to offend me, even if I have some that I strongly prefer, and some thing make me feel wrong. This is because I’m not only taking my needs into consideration, but also the fact that… I have a language disability, I know what it’s like to struggle with these kinds of words, and if I hadn’t grown up seeing sie/hir on MUDs and stuff, I probably would have serious trouble using terms like that.

I also have this feeling, always, when people use my preferred pronouns, like “Wow, I’m allowed to do this? I’m allowed to use words that make me feel better, even though they’re strange words?” I think part of it is that my first introduction to actual human beings (rather than MUD characters) using nonstandard pronouns was a nonbinary intersex person, and I somehow at first got it stuck in my brain that the only reason xe could use those pronouns was because xe was biologically neuter. At that time, I’d never met nonbinary trans people or genderless people. So I felt like using xyr type of pronouns would be “stealing” somehow. Of course I learned better the more I learned about being trans, that was a long long time ago.

But I still just… I feel so good when people do use sie/hir. But at the same time, I also get scared. And I also feel like I cannot demand that everyone use them, and that to do so would hurt people with language disabilities, and I’m afraid that if I put my pronouns front and center on my tumblr, then people would “enforce” them for me, which would include dogpiling friends of mine who physically can’t use sie/hir or ze/zer/zem. And also dogpiling people who forget, or just can’t keep track of everyone’s pronouns, or don’t look at people’s “about me” before they throw a pronoun out there.

And I understand the pain misgendering causes (how could I not, I’m misgendered every time someone gives me a gender!) but I also… I just can’t put people in this position.

Plus I feel like putting my pronouns on my “about me”… I’d rather they have to click at least one level deeper before they find something that personal. Because it is personal. And even though I’m more and more open about being genderless, it still feels vulnerable.

Also note: Not everyone genderless has preferred pronouns at all. Some people are willing to take any pronoun they’re given, because each one is equally accurate and equally inaccurate. Some people just don’t care about pronouns that much. Some people feel like their genderlessness renders pronouns irrelevant. I happen to have strong preferences, but each genderless person is different. Don’t generalize from me to anyone else.

And even the way we relate to strongly preferred pronouns differs from person to person. Some people may be driven to despair by someone getting a pronoun wrong. In my case, I’m so used to people getting pronouns wrong that it’s more a feeling of belonging and comfort and like a lock clicking in a key, when someone actually gets a pronoun right. So I have preferences, but I can also tolerate they, she, or he if I have to.

Although I do have to say, I love that feeling. I love that feeling of a key sliding into a lock and actually fitting for once. And I get that the strongest for sie/hir. So if you want to go to the trouble, and can go to the trouble, it will make me feel wonderful. But I won’t feel upset by you if you won’t or can’t do this.

But even as it feels wonderful, it also feels vulnerable. Because unlike she or he, sie is a statement that something is Seriously Different. Which opens me up for attack on many levels. She definitely has its own problems, it shows a person is a woman, which makes her vulnerable to sexism. Sie shows that a person is one of those freaks, who think they're special or something, or one of those people who shouldn’t exist, or people who really don’t exist not for real, or… etc.

So both she and sie in their own different ways can leave a person quite vulnerable in a way that they might not want to be. And yeah, I can definitely see why a person might not want to do that. (And that’s besides the other reasons I’ve given, which is that I don’t want well-meaning people to declare open season on my friends whose language disabilities don’t allow them to use neologisms easily, or to change pronouns easily, or other things like that.)