this post was submitted on 30 Jun 2025
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Trans Memes
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If it makes you feel any better, sometimes it wouldn't make any difference anyway.
My wife in an e-mail to our kid's tutor: "[kid's name] uses they/them pronouns". The response: "OK, thanks, I'll make a note about pronouns in her file."
If the tutor was being deliberately insensitive, that's awful. If the tutor was just being regular person stupid, it's pretty funny. People make mistakes all the time, and we don't really think about everything we say. Using the correct pronouns shouldn't be stressful as long as you're trying to treat people with respect and decency.
Deliberately using the wrong pronouns is just bullying, though.
tbh I have these kinds of interactions all the time and often the person doesn't even realize they made the mistake - I wouldn't necessarily assume the immediate mispronouning was intentional - in this context it seems more likely they were not thinking rather than trying to openly defy or bully.
You have to remember, most people are not used to thinking about what pronouns they are using and it's a mostly unconscious / automatic process based on quick judgements about a person's gender. Even I find myself doing this when in trans spaces, when I'm taking my time speaking I can use the right pronouns, but when I get excited or otherwise start thinking and speaking too quickly, I fall back to those automatic and less conscious ways of using pronouns and end up mispronouning people. I do think practice helps incorporate pronoun awareness, over time it gets easier to use someone's pronouns and to not make mistakes for example.
Not to say bullying isn't a possibility - it definitely happens, and I've had moments where it felt like my colleagues at work were intentionally referring to me with the wrong pronoun and then correcting themselves with a kind of smirk. That just has a particular feel, though - it feels intentional. Much harder to know from an email like this, though, whether it is defiance or a slip of the mind.