I just want to punch people sometimes

[CursedFireDean]

Some people who claim to be accepting

I was at a diversity alliance conference and one of the big conversations was transgender people. One girl began talking about a guy at her school  and she mentioned how hard it was for her to understand but she tries. At first I kept thinking, oh cool, she's trying! but as the conversation got deeper, I really wanted to smack her. She began talking about when this guy asked for her to call him by male pronouns, and she said, "She asked me to call her by male pronouns. It's really hard sometimes but I'm getting a lot better! I almost never call her 'she' anymore, and when I mess up she seems to not care that much anyways." And she went on like that. She kept calling him 'she' and 'her' but at the same time was saying she almost never messes up his pronouns anymore?! I just wanted to slap her and make her realise that she never said 'he' once. So many times I wanted to tell her that it's not that he doesn't care, its probably that he doesn't want to cause a scene. I wanted to explain to her that correcting someone's pronoun usage is incredibly hard for some people to do, especially if they've recently come out.

The other bad part was that she was in the LGBTQIA panel with me, and in the LGBTQIA panel, the first thing we did was tell everyone our preferred pronouns. I said male of course, because this was a group of perfectly open people. Later that day we were in a session with lots of different groups, and some of the people in this group included people from my school, so when one person asked if anyone wanted certain pronouns and I didn't speak up, this girl actually called me out on it and said "He uses male pronouns!"
I was just so baffled. Like, she can't call one of her friends by the correct pronouns, but when some random person she doesn't know makes a point to not share, that's when she uses the right ones. It also bothers me that it is so hard for people to use the right pronouns if they knew the person before, but when I'm obviously female bodied but she never knew me before, it's easy for her?

*sighs* I really just wanted to rant. Rant over now.

[spacerace]

It sounds like that person is sorta insecure but possibly still well-intentioned. By calling him female pronouns while she talks about using male pronouns, she can give herself credit for her 'understanding' while simultaneously distancing herself from its ingrained weirdness to her.

Also makes sense in the context of her telling other people about your pronouns instead of letting you handle your business...she probably made herself feel good by being an 'advocate'

sorry you had to deal with her

[wheat thins are delicious]

I would have called her out on it to be honest.  I don't have the patience to deal with that kind of disrespect of others.

[Shaina]

Oh no, I'm sorry you were so frustrated in what should have been a safe place! 

Still, I'm going to give her the benefit of the doubt and assume she did have good intentions. Misgendering can occur with even the most sincere of advocates.

However, there seems to be some expectation that people in the queer community are less ignorant when it comes to trans people but that's not always the case. Just because someone is LG or B doesn't mean they know anything about the T. Unfortunately, ignorance is everywhere. All we can do is cope and-occasionally-vent on Susans like you did!

Hope you're feeling better about everything!

[Gene]

I know the feel, bro. I recently had an incident regarding someone and pronouns too. She'd known me before I came out to her. When I did, she mentioned another "girl" like me that her mother knew. She then continues using female pronouns. I haven't said anything about it when she apologizes for using them. Assuming that she was just finally apologizing for messing up accidentally, and understanding the difficulty because I haven't started transition yet and still have massive breasts, I dismissed the incidents and said that as long as it wasn't on purpose I didn't mind the mix-ups. She then proceeded to explain that it wasn't by mistake; she just couldn't think of me as a guy since I have large breasts. I was pretty taken aback by that. I had no idea what to say. The pronoun thing seems so simple to respect, but other people seem to take it upon themselves to decide which one you get to use.