I really don’t want to offend anyone, but this kind of confuses me – okay, so a lot of people have their pronouns listed on their About pages or sidebars now. And some people will have multiple sets of pronouns, such as “she/he/they” or “they/bun”. And the fact that there’s multiple options is what confuses me.
Yeah, I get that the people wouldn’t mind being called any of the following. But take this example: a DFAB person who identifies as “agender” has their pronouns listed as “she/they”. Of course, most if not all people are going to address them as “she”, because it’s easier and everyone is already used to that. Or even a DMAB person who identifies the same way; everyone’s still going to call them a “her” if those are the pronoun options.
And then there are the people with the “they/bun” pronouns. Most people would honestly be more comfortable with “they” instead of “bun”, most likely, right?
I guess what I’m trying to say is that I don’t understand exactly why there’s multiple options if almost no one uses an option aside from the one they’re most used to. Why not only list the one option you’re comfortable with and everyone else is most comfortable with too as the preferred pronoun?
Multiple options are usually in the vein of “This one is good, but this other one is AMAZING.” That’s how it is for me, at least. Masculine pronouns are fine for me, but neutral ones are even better. Also, my listed pronouns have nothing to do with other people’s comfort. It’s about which pronouns cause me the least dysphoria.
The OP is also incredibly wrong wrt camab trans people. Others will nearly always choose they. Even binary trans women whom only go by she are consistently degendered with the continued use of they with the excuse of gender neutrality because the only way people can stand to talk about us is if we are stripped of our genders.
Don’t assume our experiences unless you actually know what you are talking about. kthx
A lot of the time, the reason multiple pronoun sets are listed has nothing to do with other people’s responses. I list “he,” “she” and “they” as acceptable, because each one of those feels different to me, as if each one is focusing on a separate aspect of my self. I can’t pick a “most preferred” pronoun set because they have different uses to me.
Most people online call me “they,” which I’m fine with, but I’m not going to leave out the other pronouns that reflect my identity just because most people ignore them. My gender is complicated, and my pronouns will be complicated, too.
(There are a lot of other great comments on this post that are worth reading, too, like Clockworkcrow’s points about accessiblity and experimentation.)
don’t think this has been mentioned already on reblogs but sorry if it has, the ‘they or she’ type sets are pretty useful, even if its unintentional, for when you need to talk about someone in a language that doesn’t have non gendered options. (a note about what people are comfortable with in languages like this along with pronouns is probably a thing that needs to be more widespread)
but also yeah learning and processing new words is tricky as well as pronunciation for some words (personally dyslexia but sure other thing cause similar problems – not neccesserily cause they’re new my hard to pronounce words seems pretty random – though in general words with a lot of s/x type sounds in seems to be a bit of a theme, which is unfortunate with pronouns, have a couple of options increases the chance I’ll be able to pronounce at least one of the sets)
fearlessstateofmind backup 