Misgendering – others describing you with gendered language that doesn’t fit – is part of most transgender and non-binary people’s lives. Whether it comes deliberately from people who don’t accept us for who we are, in passing from strangers who make a subconscious assumption, or from well-intentioned people who struggle to kick the habit, it can be demoralising, especially when it happens often or for a long time.

Despite pronouns taking up a fair bit of space in discussions about trans identities and allyship, many people still struggle to change the words they use. This begs the question: what are we missing? 

This Trans Awareness Week, I want to consider pronouns and misgendering in a different light, and give some practical advice and context to help you, or those around you, adjust to new language and advocate for others to do the same. 

The concept of sharing your pronouns, of asking for the gendered language that fits you best, is a relatively new concept. We are raised to treat assigning pronouns as the responsibility of the speaker: “He looks like a boy, so I’ll use ‘he’; she looks like a girl, so I’ll use ‘she’”. During childhood, we learn what characteristics make someone a boy or a girl, and we unconsciously filter everyone we meet into one box or the other. We do this in a split second, noticing things like body shape, clothing, and mannerisms, and categorising accordingly. The human tendency to classify people and objects is an adaptation: it’s our brains allowing us to function more efficiently in a complex world. 

But, when it comes to gender, our mental short-cuts leave something to be desired. 

So, when our identities fall outside of what’s expected, we ask, when we feel safe to, that folks retire their assumptions, and let us be the authority on who we are. 

Compared to what many trans and non-binary people go through, my coming out in 2021 was pretty smooth. My mum, for example, gradually learnt what my identity meant, and was a they/them aficionado within 18 months or so. Her respect for me has been unwavering – even when she didn’t quite understand. She took a while to replace the language she had always used for me, but she got there through the reliable combination of time and effort.