I'm here to break that, so we can stop hurting people.
Now, before you cis types get all defensive, saying, "But I don't mean
to be rude, it's just a hard habit to break." let me tell you this. Misgendering someone by accident makes it
worse.
If you have read any of my other posts on social issues, you know that my
prescribed cure for ANY ignorant attitudes is to get to know people. Get out there, meet people, talk to them, and
especially, listen to them.
I have gotten to know some wonderful people, who don't fit any stereotype,
he, she, they, mugwump, and more. I
concentrated on using correct pronouns to be polite. That's the wrong reason to get the pronouns
right. It's not about being
"polite". Listening to trans
people talking among themselves, I hear them objecting to pronouns, not because
of the implied social role, or a sense of discrimination, but something much deeper.
Let's dive.
When we try to understand someone, we look for a point of contact. We do
this by asking ourselves how we would feel in a similar situation.
"How would I feel if I wasn't allowed to marry the person I
love?"
"What would I do if someone wouldn't hire me because I have freckles,
and the courts backed them up?"
"Could I cope if all my tax forms were in braille, and I couldn't get
them in plain text because nearly everone else could read braille?"
So, we naturally ask ourselves, "How do I feel when someone calls me
by a pronoun I don't identify with?"
But that's the wrong question.
The cis answer to that question varies from "Can't that idiot see I'm
wearing a dress?", to "How dare they call me a girl!" Most often, though, it's not an extreme
reaction.
But, the trans folks I know feel very deeply about it. These aren't hysterical people. They're not the sort to freak out because
someone bumped them, or demand free coffee because their name wasn't spelled
right. These are just regular people,
who get along as well as anyone else.
Seeing a trans man tear up when he tells how his "supportive"
family still refers to him as "she", I have to find the right
question.
When someone tells me I can't fix a car because I'm a woman, they're not
denying I'm a woman. When my doctor
dismisses my pain because I'm fat, they're not denying I'm fat. What similar situation then, can I imagine
for transgender?
Calling someone by a word they know in their soul does not apply to them...
How about, if someone snaps their fingers, or whistles to get my attention,
as though I were an animal?
I think that is the right question a cis person should ask themselves about
pronouns.
"What if everyone talks to me and about me as though I were a
dog?"
That's why cis people don't get so upset by pronouns. We haven't been treated to a constant
background of this sort of treatment. We
get misgendered once in a while, by individuals we can easily dismiss as
assholes or idiots. Trans people have
been misgendered constantly, by the entire world. Even though the message might be "Good
dog!" it's still the wrong words.
Which gets to why doing it accidentally makes it worse.
Once someone has told you their pronoun, they have basically told you they
are not a dog. If you use the wrong
pronoun in the future, even though they keep correcting you, you are
essentially saying, "Of course you're a person you cute little
doggie!"
I want to thank all the patient trans folx who put up with my cis shit,
you're good friends, I love you all dearly.
I know I'm approaching wisdom, because I feel really, really stupid right
now.
