• they/them

I play games and make mods, I sometimes ramble and talk about life stuff.



One conversation made me think about something I always found quite difficult to figure out without explicitly asking an individual about it, but as someone with social anxiety, I don't always feel comfortable asking the person, in fear of me accidentally annoying the person, because who knows, maybe they've heard the question a million times and it gets tiresome after a while to answer the same thing over and over.

So on the actual topic, I wish there was an official way to differentiate the ways people use multiple pronouns. If we see he/they or she/they, our brains often go "they probably don't mind either", but it's not always the case. For a lot of people it can be either of those three:

  • you can use any of these, I'm completely fine with either,
  • please use them interchangeably/i enjoy if people swap them every now and then.
  • a kind of way to describe priority: she/her are my pronouns, but if you use they/them, I'm fine with them either/fine if you don't know me

But all of them are usually marked with similar symbols, and it's pretty much impossible to tell the difference without getting to know the person a little bit. Here's a few examples of how those three could be differentiated:

  • you can use any of these (example: he/she/they/xe/its)
  • use them interchangeably: (example: he x she x they x xe x its)
  • priority: (example: he>she>they>xe>its)

Those are just examples and of course the symbols are nowhere close to perfect, but I just wanted to explain what I meant. I'm honestly surprised that I haven't really heard people talk about it, but it would help so much with making sure I talk to someone in a way they find to be the most comfortable. Especially once you get to know more people, remembering everything can be difficult, and having extra indication I think would be a welcoming change, since nowadays we're talking a lot about how important is to properly gender or refer to someone, but I always thought this specific topic hasn't been brought up much, and I'd love to see a change like this in the future. It might be a little awkward or difficult to get used to, but after some time I think it'd be for the better.

What do you think about it? Maybe you have an idea to solve this? Feel free to share them in the comment section.


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in reply to @Ezel's post:

i love the idea of being able to differentiate between those three, but also from a personal perspective, i think i kind of like the ambiguity of it as it is atm, at least for describing my own experience of gender? like, i am still very much figuring myself out and i feel like i move around those three different categories fairly often, and i'm happy that i'm able to just label myself as "she/they" and not have to worry about specifying any more than that, because the ambiguity of that reflects the ambiguity i feel in my own gender, if that makes any sense

i do definitely agree that it would be good to have a better way to differentiate between those three for those that want a way to differentiate between them though (also as someone else with social anxiety, can heavily relate to struggling to ask people and it sucks, would definitely like to not have to worry about that as much)

Changing and switching around pronouns is bound to happen when people are figuring themselves out. It sometimes even happens to people who are completely confident with their gender.

I can see why some people like the ambiguity, but in my case, I do have some sort of irrational anxiety about saying the wrong thing. I like to be told exactly how to refer to someone, so I know I'm not making some feel bad.

This sometimes even happens if people use any pronouns, so partially it's a me thing. I do have anxiety, so that checks out I guess.

yeah fair enough

i think i am mostly just somewhat worried about being stuck constantly altering how i communicate my pronouns to reflect how i feel at any given time, because changing it so much when i was earlier in the process of realising i'm trans, and feeling like i constantly needed some representation of what best described my gender at all times, was kinda stressful to me

but now that i actually type that out i think those concerns may be more of a reflection of me needing to come to terms with the fluidity of my own gender as opposed to an actual objective issue with that idea, so i'm not sure how worth considering it it actually is

and i do think worrying about referring to people in the wrong way is definitely justified (even if anxiety can tend to make it end up being somewhat counterproductive, in my experience at least), and maybe it's partially a you thing but i think it is definitely a valid flaw in the current system for representing pronouns

not sure how much of that makes much sense bc i'm not the best at articulating my thoughts very well but yeah