Pronoun Problems

[Tessa James]

I am reminded that this is our "Dominant Culture" at it's apex.  It is deeply enshrined in our mythology.  As our creation "myths" suggest, we NAMED everything under the sun as a first step in domination of the world as we knew it.  Funny how limited those early misadventures were eh???  Consider the vast taxonomy of species and diversity today! 

How more open, dynamic and real to understand that we have an unlimited range of possibilities and discourse to share and learn about.

We ask that people see our whole and true self as we celebrate a river of change running through it....

Why is that so hard to understand?

[awkward-shark]

To me it changes according to the situation specially given that I live in a spanish speaking country and there are no neutral pronouns in spanish (I'm non-binary). Regardless, the closest thing to a neutral form is the masculine form (androcentric, I know).
What really bothers me are specific words like miss, lady, young lady, lesbian or woman when used to refer to myself... I deeply hate the word lady.
When I go out and people use the masculine form or greet me as if I were a guy (wich is not often). I feel very very accomplished but when people use the femenine form... I don't feel anything really.

[graspthesanity]

It's one of the most dysphoric situations to be honest, mostly because I've been in situations where it was used specifically as an attack, so even someone slipping is rather painful to hear.

[turtlekisses]

It's really hard for me to be at home because literally everyone besides my family uses the correct pronoun. And then I go home and my mom greets me with my birth name and I'm like. Ugh. No.

[fennec-fox]

I'm not out to many people yet, so just about everyone calls me "she", except for on the rare occasions where people mistake me for a guy. It doesn't bother me if people refer to me as "she" or "he", but I do prefer "they".

[Kalex]

Im ok when people call me she because is not their fault if I'm not out.  My problem is like this:

To me it changes according to the situation specially given that I live in a spanish speaking country and there are no neutral pronouns in spanish

In spanish we dont have neutral things, its not like "I'm tired" and everyone knows you are boy or girl if they know who you are. If I say "estoy cansadA", the final A says than I'm a girl, but if i say "estoy cansadO", the final O says Im a boy. I'm all the time trying to rephrase things, trying to talk more neutral. Otherwise I always talk like a boy when I'm talking about myself. If I'm writting on whatsapp, facebook, etc I always say it was a typo or that I wasnt paying attention. In person some friends look at me and I just keep talking.

[awkward-shark]

In spanish we dont have neutral things, its not like "I'm tired" and everyone knows you are boy or girl if they know who you are. If I say "estoy cansadA", the final A says than I'm a girl, but if i say "estoy cansadO", the final O says Im a boy. I'm all the time trying to rephrase things, trying to talk more neutral. Otherwise I always talk like a boy when I'm talking about myself. If I'm writting on whatsapp, facebook, etc I always say it was a typo or that I wasnt paying attention. In person some friends look at me and I just keep talking.

By this I guess you're not out yet? Now I'm out to a few friends and I've got more confidence in using the masculine form when speaking to them; I say "estoy cansado/ estoy solo en casa" and even with the ones I'm not out to yet. Honestly I don't think a lot of people notice.
When I'm with my family I want to use the masculine form and I always stop for a second and think if I should or not. Usually I rephrase everything like you do and end up saying "me dejaron sin nadie en casa" instead of "estoy solo/a en casa" lol it's funny. I like playing with words like that.

[Kalex]

No, I'm no out yet . Its harder thinking twice before write, but sometimes I just do it on purpose and wait for some reaction.

[Mayor Mare]

Since I'm not out yet, I have to deal with male pronouns and names. For me, it's extremely painful to hear, yet I can't do anything about it without outing myself. It's caused me to isolate myself from people more than usual, and school is becoming a nightmare.

[Yazoo]

Yeah, english has it a bit easier on the speech being mostly gender neutral except pronouns. In russian every single word ending is gendered, so I am avoiding speaking that language if I can. When I do have to use it I notice the endings a lot, particularly wrong ones and after a while the stress just accumulates, since when we talk we want to convey information not get stuck bracing for wrong endings or panicking a little when you use male ones since the person you are talking to isn't fully accepting and doesn't try to change their speech at all.

My main gripe is when you rarely interact with people that are important in your life, why cant they set aside those few minutes you do interact to at least try to address you correctly? I don't know what happens when I am not there, they are free to do and say whatever, so no I am not putting undue stress on them and expect too much.

Bracing is a lot of how I handle pronouns/endings. It does affect how outgoing I am, but it does help lower the hurt from the wrong ones. 

[BenKenobi]

Tbh I've once or twice used female pronouns regarding myself. It did make me pause for a while. So on that note i don't get that aggravated when I'm misgendered. It'd feel hypocritical. People have been more and more using my preferred name so that's nice. It's mainly customers that use "Ma'am" or "miss" which makes me sad and wonder what is giving me away.

Honestly, i would much rather someone use the wrong pronouns instead of calling me "it". There is nothing that infuriates me more than being compared to an inanimate object. A "thing" rather than a person. It even bothers me when gender neutral people say "i prefer 'it'". I can't for the life of me bring myself to do that (foreign languages notwithstanding)

[GendrKweer]

I'm really lucky that in my native language, there are actually no "he" or "she"... it's all one word. There is also no gendering of nouns or regarding speaker's gender, etc. In English, I usually don't care... if I wanted to be in a position to demand "Ma'am" I'd be wearing a skirt to make it easier for them

[takotsubo]

there are no neutral pronouns in spanish (I'm non-binary).

I'm currently learning Spanish, and I was thinking about this the other day: that it is not a very forgiving language for the genderqueer. Not least because so many professions include a reference to gender (doctor/doctora; ingeniero/ingeniera; maestro/maestra and so on.) I imagine it must be very annoying?

Edit: Oh, never mind - I saw now that you discussed this already. Language in general, and Spanish in particular strikes me as a beautiful tool of communication, but comes with some serious limitations.

[takotsubo]

I'm really lucky that in my native language, there are actually no "he" or "she"... it's all one word.

That sounds amazing. Which language is it?

[GendrKweer]

Re Spanish above: I live in Italy, where they also have the a/e o/i endings for masculine and feminine. It's useful for knowing how people gender you when they don't actually use the word signor or signora. For instance, receiving a Brava vs Bravo for doing something good immediately tells you if someone took you as male or female.

Re what is the wonderful non-gendered language? Hungarian! A country growing more homophobic, transphobic, antisemitic and racist by the day. But the language is great! All because of the tiny word ő which means he/she/it, without the slightest distinction. Funny, as my native language, it sounds so natural to me, but any time an english equivalent is proposed (shim, zee, etc), it sounds so off...

[takotsubo]

Re Spanish above: I live in Italy, where they also have the a/e o/i endings for masculine and feminine. It's useful for knowing how people gender you when they don't actually use the word signor or signora. For instance, receiving a Brava vs Bravo for doing something good immediately tells you if someone took you as male or female.

That must be very useful, provided that you are want to present as one binary gender. Much like the Sir/M'am/Miss in English interaction. I was once called "miss" while on vacation in the US - I was living as a male, and at the moment wearing only bathing trunks, so it made absolutely no sense, but it still makes me happy to think about it.   

Re what is the wonderful non-gendered language? Hungarian! A country growing more homophobic, transphobic, antisemitic and racist by the day. But the language is great! All because of the tiny word ő which means he/she/it, without the slightest distinction. Funny, as my native language, it sounds so natural to me, but any time an english equivalent is proposed (shim, zee, etc), it sounds so off...

Oh.. Well, every cloud has a silver lining, I suppose. :O I thought it might be Finnish, but if I recall correctly they are rather closely related, aren't they?

I'm a native Swedish speaker, and very happy that we have lately introduced a gender-neutral pronoun ("hen"). It has been met with fierce opposition, but somehow "hen" survived and seems to be here to stay. It still feels awkward to use it, but a little less so every time I do. Actually, I recently read an interesting article on the subject. It argued that pronouns (unlike e.g. nouns and verbs) is a closed class of words. While there are rules in place for how and when any Swedish speaker might create a new, comprehensive verb, (essentially by adding -a to a noun) there are no such rules regarding pronouns. The author argued that this is really the reason why people get upset when a new pronoun is introduced - they just don't know it. The reaction is similar to that we might expect if we were to introduce a new preposition. There is no real reason why a person would be on a bus or a train, yet in a car. In these sentences prepositions do not carry vital information and could be replaced, the author suggests, by the word pug. "I am pug the bus, later I will be pug my car, pug my way to you." Even if "pug" weren't a dog breed in English, most people would still feel rather strongly about keeping the old prepositions, because prepositions is a closed word class; we just aren't used to the concept of introducing new prepositions. For the same reason, even many of the genderqueer probably feel awkward using new pronouns like "hen", in Swedish or "shim"/"zee" in English. I think it makes a lot of sense.

[Escher]

At this point, I'm only out as trans to my girlfriend. Everyone else considers me a woman. When I am called "she/her" I have to admit that it feels really uncomfortable. Beyond discomfort, it is a deeply-rooted, lonesome feeling that resonates in my head for the duration of the conversation.

And yet... I know I have to suck it up in order to live my life, get things done, and ultimately make positive changes in my life.

One trick I use is this:

For example, let's say my buddy misgenders me. I immediately try to focus and picture exactly what he/she is saying. I try to escape myself a little bit and be in the present and listen to what he/she has to say.
--disclaimer: This is really difficult to do. Some days it is almost impossible. Not to be cheesy or anything, but meditation helps a lot. Practicing living in the present moment for a bit makes it easier to not linger in the immediate past when someone unknowingly pulls a trigger.

[SimplyThea]

For me this is one of the things that depresses me the most especially because I can't really be angry or frustrated with people and even though I have come out to my friends I feel bad correcting them so I tend to not say anything when they slip. However, the thing that bothers me even more is when people call me by my birth name instead of the name I've chosen to reflect my true gender identity. Once again, since I'm not living as a woman full time I can't really fault people, but I get this terrible feeling when I hear someone call me Zane instead of Thea.