I expect people to disagree with me. Probably vehemently. Please understand that I'm suggesting this as a self-identified genderqueer person. Understand that when I say "own", I mean, "take something that people say to cause offense, and wear it as a badge of pride". And if you're still offended, I'm curious to hear why.
My brother dated an agendered person, and my family (myself included) had some issues with the them/they pronouns. Skip forward a couple of years, and now I'm identifying as nonbinary. I never said this to my brother's partner, 'cause obvious reasons, and I'm not in the habit of telling marginalized people how to handle their affairs. English has a perfectly good neuter pronoun: 'it'.
The term "queer" was super offensive when I grew up. But we've owned the term, and many of us identify that way. For some, it's a comfortable umbrella term that works while they're figuring themselves out, and others are just happy to leave it at that.
The pronoun "it" is used for all sorts of gendered stuff. Power plug? "it". Even though it's a female. Cute puppy? "it". Baby in appropriately nongendered attire? "Is it a boy or a girl?" IT! Why can't we talk about people this way? Bugs me. We can use "it" to describe anything at all, except a person. Why? What a stupid exception!
I say we own it. But I'm not going to go around saying to use that pronoun just yet. I hate to think what'll happen if I acclimate some people to using that pronoun, and they try it out when they meet another trans person. So I'd like to hear from the offended. Everybody, really. But I tend to learn more from people who disagree with me.
