#basically with regards to louis: feel free to make it a suggestion but don't treat it as the pinnacle of activism and allyship please 🥴

[non-binharry]

hi! I’m seeing talk about people dming Louis to put his pronouns in his bio and being very mad about it, and saying it’s harmful etc, or invasive, which I do understand I think to an extent because the person was dming him. But...I don’t really get why it’s such a negative thing? I know some people were being obnoxious about it in how they asked though. Also, I’ve seen people add on to posts speaking on it saying normalizing pronouns in bios forces trans people to out themselves and it’s a negative thing for cis people to normalize/do. I know of course you don’t speak for every trans person but I was wondering your thoughts on both things? Because I want to understand and I want to not do anything harmful

i find the pronouns in the bio to be a double edged sword because:

on the one hand, you normalize the prioritization of "introducing" oneself with pronouns, which makes people more comfortable when they use they/them or neopronouns because there's an assumed familiarity with the idea that not everyone is going to go by she or he.

on the other hand, pronouns ≠ gender. the only thing someone's pronouns tell you is that they go by those pronouns. but people treat pronouns with an assumption of someone's gender identity, ie if they're male presenting with he/him, they're cis male, female presenting with she/her, they're cis female, when as we know that's not how that works. i've seen people say "she/hers" as a reference to cis women when... queer/gnc/non-binary men and amabs can use she/her too?

the issue is that some people treat the visibility of pronouns as the be all, end all to trans allyship when it's not. i've seen people flat out say that they're not talking to someone because they don't have pronouns in their bio, under the assumption that they're some cis asshole who doesn't respect trans people rather than a trans person who wants privacy regarding their gender identity.

from the jump, i think there should have been a bigger focus on normalizing the use of they/them for anyone you don't know UNTIL you learn their pronouns and/or gender identity. that's always going to be way more valuable when interacting with people in the real world anyways.