#I couldn't stop smiling the first time I told my discord server to change my pronoun preference to he/him

[canichangemyblogname]

For allies and other genderqueer people...

If you're curious about someone's pronouns and are unsure of their gender, ask personally. If you want to know where someone's landed in a gender journey because where they are has changed from where you knew them- and they've largely yet to tell people- ask personally.

Don't corner someone. Don't confront someone. Just ask casually and privately if you feel you must. Please.

Because otherwise, you're making someone choose between the discomfort of being untrue to themselves or the discomfort of outing themselves in public where that might not be safe.

Don't, for example, ask a "hypothetical" someone in front of a large group- some of whom are complete strangers and some of whom are old friends this person has not seen in literally years- if pronouns have changed. Even if everyone at the table is queer. Don't ask someone this in the middle of a restaurant in ear-shot of other patrons and all the employees. Don't then proceed to yell across the table asking about this person's gender journey and if this person bought a binder and if this person binds, and where this person's transition might go from here. Even if you are genderqueer and at one time explored your gender expression in a similar way.

When this totally "hypothetical" person hedges around the questions with a shrug and an "I don't know," don't press this person. Drop it. Certainly, don't insist on using a different set of pronouns than the ones you were previously familiar with. "How about they/them? I'll use they/them." Because now this person has to choose between being misgendered or coming out in the middle of a fucking restaurant miles away from home and in front of strangers. And even if this person chooses to stay in the closet at that moment by asking you to use old pronouns, you have still made this person choose between being misgendered or coming out in public in front of literal strangers.

And also! Don't tell a totally "hypothetical" dude that he needs to discover the wonders of being involved with women romantically and sexually immediately after he tells you he's a dude and, yes, he likes guys. And don't insist that one day he'll have a sexuality crisis and realize he's "gay" because he probably, truly likes women. And when he corrects you and tells you, "If I'm a dude and I'm exclusively into chicks, that'd make me het," don't double down. Because that tells him that you essentially see him as "girl lite" or a different font of girl. You see him as a chick who's just so quirky that she uses he/him pronouns and goes by an edgy name as a "fuck you" to the patriarchal gender binary, but that's not who HE is.