Is this an indirect request for everyone to refer to you with "they" pronoun? Where is this whole pronoun craze coming from? Will there be a time when people will expect relative strangers to remember not only their name but their pronouns? That seems annoying as hell to me. Hope, I'm not sidetracking things here... Edit: (I have hard time remembering names)
Some people want to insist that there is a 1-to-1 mapping between sex and gender. You're either male or female, and that's how you should be perceived in any social context. Others think that gender should be viewed more as a feminine-masculine spectrum, which is bimodal to a degree but not nearly to the same extent as biological sex. If you adopt that POV, a lot of the gender boxes people are forced into in everyday social interactions start to appear less justified, given the reality that your gender is a major factor in how you are treated by others in pretty much every human culture. Pronouns are a way for people to assert more control over how they will be viewed and treated by others. Of course, it only works if other people are willing to accept it. Some of the pushback against it might be because it's just a mental annoyance to keep track of, but I think much of it comes from a hidden desire to maintain those rigid gender boxes.
I think people should respect mental annoyance a little more than they do. People are creatures of habit. They don't like to think too much. I hear a tembre of your voice and see your haircut and I'm done thinking about your pronoun. (No offense). Anything more can't be expected of an average human that you are not acquainted to, realistically speaking. If that binary social acceptance is sign of social rigidity or some sort of patriarchal contract to you, I may want to posit that it is a necessity for a our society/species to continue to exist. As someone who can be awkward with people in social situations, I personally already find it hard enough to interact within our current maze of social expectations. Anything more and you might as well exclude me from the society. And this is coming from someone who is open minded and a somewhat feminine mentality of "can't we all get along". So is one's right/desire to want to be accepted in a non binary way more important than another person's Inability to fit in in such a word. Everyone wants to fit in and the simpler it is, the better it is for the overall social peace/order IMHO. If you want special treatment for your non-binary identity then I think it is much more "fairer" (in a big scheme of things) to expect such treatment within a close circles of your friends/associates than the whole of our society.
I see where you are coming from. I’m not the sort of person to scold others for inadvertently using a pronoun that mismatches someone’s gender identity. And we should try to avoid needlessly complicating language. The goal should be to come up with conventions that make communication easier, foster mutual understanding, and give people more freedom to live their life as they wish.
Excellent post. See, you can do a lot better when you try. Here is a story from me: On a recent first class flight from the US to Europe, I was seated next to someone who looked vaguely familiar to me. I was tired, so I drank lots of champagne and slept through most of the flight. Did chat with the person at the end though. The person had a beard, was short but stocky, with a bunch of visible tattoos, and I didn't notice anything particularly noteworthy about the voice. Seemed like a guy to me. Pattern recognition. I never thought about the person's gender. We realized that we both work in the tech industry and have mutual friends. He told me he is specialized in tech due diligence. We shared a cab into the city. A couple of months later, I have a need to hire someone for a tech DD. Remember the conversation with the guy. Look up his LinkedIn profile. I see something that says the person is in the board of trans people association. I'm like...wait a second...what? I ask the mutual friend. She says, yup, born as a girl. Did that have any impact on me hiring the person and his firm as a consultant? Nope, none whatsoever. What I cared about was that the person seemed competent (I did some reference calls because this is a six figure project) and trustworthy, which was both the case. I don't care about the person's skin color or what they want to identify as or political views (as long as not extremist) or whatever. So now he and his team are working on this project for me. But this is an example where I was actually completely wrong in my assumption about the person's sex. Does it matter? Does it make a difference one way or another? Nope. And it shouldn't.
That would be great. Implanted chip that will give out our pronouns and petpeeves resulting in true Utopia. I hopewe all have a cool clique of our own and gain all the respect possible. Sounds like sarcasm but I certainly wouldn't mind such reality.
