Dee 🌺

@puteri.ng

i like messing with computers, i guess 🖼️ by @personwebs.bsky.social

I had hoped things had moved on – I recall having this conversation over 10 years ago – but am still coming across these same "objections" to gender-neutral pronouns in the wild so thought I'd come up with this handy guide to debunking them.

Poster reading

They / Them
A Very Quick Reference Guide

“It’s grammatically wrong, you’re only one person!”
In fact the use of they / them as a general pronoun to refer to someone of indeterminate gender is very common and almost everyone uses it daily without any issues. Imagine you work in a shop and discover that one of the customers has left an umbrella behind. You would tell your colleague: “Someone’s left their umbrella behind. I’ll hang on to it so if they come back I can give it to them.”

“It’s all so complicated I’m afraid of making a mistake!”
Mistakes are rarer than you think – most of the time when talking to someone you’re not going to refer to them in the third person (he, she or they) anyway! You’re going to use the second person (you) or their name. Plus if you do make a mistake it’s unlikely anyone’s going to have a go at you. Sometimes non-binary people even accidentally misgender themselves!

“They’re so aggressive and they go too far!”
This is actually rare as well. As mentioned above, we all make these mistakes and are generally very forgiving of others if they do so. In fact, if someone does correct you when you misgender them that’s often a sign that they feel comfortable enough with you to do so – most of the aggression surrounding this issue comes from people who take offence at the very idea of gender being more than just a simple binary. (What does “too far” even mean?)