“I feel like even asking trans people “why are pronouns important to you?” just shows how much most cisgender people take being addressed correctly for granted.”
A blog post on pronouns, written by one of our medical students.
I don’t think I particularly care about my pronouns more than anyone else – I’m sure if others got misgendered as often as I do they’d have strong opinions about it too! It’s just frustrating that people seem to remember all sorts of details about me, but my pronouns, which are as unique and personal to me as my name, are the one thing they consistently forget.
I can’t really blame people for making assumptions about my gender and my pronouns – these cisnormative ideals are drilled into us from a young age, and even I catch myself making mistakes every now and then – but having to fight against this incorrect perception of who I am is an endless uphill battle. In order to be afforded the same respect that my peers whose pronouns “match” their gender presentation/identity get, automatically I have to undergo what seems like a sort of Sisyphean task of outing myself and continuously reminding and correcting my pronouns, only for the whole process to repeat from square one with the next person I meet. It’s exhausting!
A lot of the time I don’t even bother correcting people when they use the wrong pronouns for me. It feels so confrontational and awkward to have to interrupt and derail a conversation over such a small part of someone’s sentence, despite how much it negatively affects me. Not to mention I never know exactly how someone will react, so I’m potentially exposing myself to transphobia, and it doesn’t really feel worth the risk when most people continue to misgender me anyway.
On one memorable occasion, we were doing an icebreaker in a tutorial that involved presenting to the rest of the class some facts we’d learnt about the person we’d been paired with. Not wanting to listen to myself get misgendered in front of everyone, I made sure to ask my partner’s pronouns, before giving mine when I was asked in turn. On hearing my pronouns they seemed completely stunned – they’d clearly not been expecting the answer I gave – and I ended up having to clarify which ones I use several times, the situation becoming progressively more uncomfortable.
I thought that needing to repeat myself meant that they were making the effort to get them right, but when it was their turn to speak they misgendered me throughout anyway. Each word felt like a stab to the gut. I was so shocked that I just sat there rather than correcting them when they first got it wrong. Besides, I didn’t want to embarrass or upset someone I’d have to work with for the rest of the year by calling out their mistake publicly, or to get a reputation for being weird or difficult in front of a bunch of people I’d just met.
I tried to not let it get to me, but that didn’t change how much it had hurt me to be misgendered after being vulnerable enough to share something so important to me; I remember trying (and failing) to hold back tears on the bus journey home. I felt frustrated, humiliated, and angry – angry that I’d just said nothing and let it happen, and angry that we live in a society which teaches us that everyone can be sorted into one of two genders/pronouns based on appearance.
The temptation when something like this happens is to pretend to be someone you’re not, to retreat back into the closet, in order to minimise the hurt you feel. But numbing yourself to pain also numbs you to the joy of having your gender affirmed by the people who care about you. The first time a friend used my correct pronouns on a group chat I just remember thinking, “Oh, that’s me! Finally!”. So to answer your question: pronouns are important to me because it’s important to be able to fully, truly be myself.
