A Different Way to Look at Pronouns.

Many cis-gendered folks do not feel they need to understand or care about people's preferred pronouns. Nor do they know why it is so important to actively try to challenge gender stereotypes and to not believe in a binary gender system, aka Male v. Female. As a nonbinary person who was a late bloomer, let me help give some context on why you should care.

First we shall start with definitions so that we are all on the same page.

Cisgender: A person who identifies with the sex they are born with as their gender. For example, if you are born with a stereotypical penis with relatively good hormonal health and feel as though you are a man, then you would be a born male cis-gendered man.

Born a dude, feel like a dude, still a dude.

Transgender: Born with a sex you do not feel matches your gender, and so the person decides to transition from one gender to another. For example, you are Born with a penis but feel like you were supposed to be born a woman. There, this person might take hormones, change their clothes, and even have surgery to change their body and appearance to be closer aligned with the gender and possibly sex they wish they were born as.

Born a dude, always felt like a chick, doing whatever it takes to become a lady.

Nonbinary:  A person who does not feel they fit a man or woman category. They may or may not be intersex. Example: They were born with a vagina but never felt like a "woman," but they don't want to be a man. They are happily somewhere in the middle.

Born a woman, always felt in the middle, doesn't want to be a man or a woman.

Born a man, invariably felt in the middle. Dresses more feminine to appear gender ambiguous.

Gender Fluid: Someone who may or may not claim to be nonbinary; their gender fluctuates. Sometimes, they feel like a man or a woman, but at the same time, they feel like neither. This can vary significantly based on the person. Hormones, culture, and social context may or may not affect this.

I felt like a man yesterday, today I feel like a woman today, last week I felt in the middle almost everyday.

Agender: This is someone who does not feel like any gender; There is a correlation with being asexual or autistic, but you do not need to meet any of those criteria; they are all different definitions for a reason.

Kind of feel like an alien; I just want to exist; stop trying to make me pick any box; I WANT NO BOXES.

Intersex: Not to be confused with gender, an intersex is a person who was born with either chromosome outside of typical. In some cases, it can cause medical complications such as Klinefelter syndrome or Turner syndrome. Or an intersex person has the same chromosomes, but their genitalia, or hormones, do not present as either typically male or female: "Being intersex is a natural variation and not a disease or disorder. While there are no exact statistics on how prevalent being intersex is, some estimates suggest that around 1.7% of the U.S. population is intersex3—about the same number of people with red hair or green eyes."(Gould, 2023)

Neurotypical/Neuronormative: A person whose brain works in a way that the society they live in deems typical. Their behavior, speech, sensory experiences of the world, and emotional expressions via age all match social expectations.

Neurodivergent/Neurospicey/: The opposite of the above, the rule breakers, the social distributors, the very sensitive or insensitive, emotional intuitive or clueless. Think ADHD(VAST), ASD, Dyslexic, bipolar one, etc.

The thing is, there are a lot of gender expansive, nonbinary folks out there. So for all of us who don't feel like we want to partially transition, or look gender ambiguous, or look like our assigned birth sex, there is difficulty for all of us in different ways because society expects us to not exist or pick a side. An activist and artist who clearly explains what it is like to live in the middle that everyone should listen to is Alok:

The depressing thing is many cultures worldwide today have 3 or more genders, so why can't the United States, just get over it's self?

The Mahu or Kumu Hina of Hawaii, Two Spirits in North American Indigenous tribes, and many more .

Many Jews don't know this, but in Ancient Judaism, the Hebrewlites had EIGHT genders! 

Misted Forest's gender background

Hello, my name is Misted Forest, and I consider myself a non-binary forest, merperson.

 I'm a late bloomer when it comes to embracing my sexuality and gender, probably because I have tried to survive the neuronormative world. At the same time, being multiply neurodivergent: ADHD (VAST), dyslexia, and possibly on the low-middle needs of the autism spectrum. This, paired with many different battles with chronic or acute health conditions, made it difficult to fight for my gender rights or assert my gender before.

One of my health conditions, PMDD, does affect my experience of my gender. To stabilize this condition, doctors prescribed external hormones as the solution. As It turns out, when I found the right cocktail of hormones, my gender fluidity stabilized. Eventually leading me to not need them (for now anyways). I found that Traditional Chinese Medicine, especially acupuncture and taking herbs (Gui Pi and Xiao Yao), alternating to match the rise and fall of progesterone in my cycle, was much more effective and less disruptive.

Gender Artwork

Currently, I am in a happy non-binary state that is less gender fluid. Before, my gender fluidity was so liquid it was an everyday battle of "what the heck am I" every time I looked into the mirror. In some ways, I feel like I fit more in the intersex camp than in the trans camp.

(note not all trans or intersex people take hormones, nor do surgeries or change how they dress. Every gender expansive persons' life is unique to them, and they are all valid)

My neurodiversity definitely affects my internal sense of gender.

Growing up, I never felt like a boy or a girl. And I didn't even understand what the whole hoo-ha was about. Boys Over here, girls over there, and every time that would happen in PE class, I always feel like, do I have to go on the girl's side? Can I go on the boy's side? Once a Blue Moon, I'd be like, whatever girl side. I often stood in the middle, defiantly, I didn't want to choose. "Can we please not do this?" Feeling uncomfortable all the while.

I didn't overthink my past because I was dealing with sexual harassment from a young age. And so, for me, misogyny was a real threat, and my sexuality at the time, being bisexual (there wasn't a word for pansexual yet), was already such a big deal that I felt like, Okay, I want to survive right now. My childhood was challenging enough as it was.

As a young adult, I had the freedom to study gender and sexuality in college. This led me to meet many uniquely sparkly and fantastically outrageous types of people; I started to think about, hmm, you know, I have a lot of trans and intersex friends...could I possibly be one of them? I mean, I tend to gravitate toward the queer community. I don't like being around most straight or cis people because I do not want to deal with bigotry.

Unfortunately, it took almost a decade to accept the gender-fluid non-binary label that matched my internal experience.

In a two-week intensive meditation experience where I couldn't leave the mountain and meditated five plus hours a day around both cis and trans/gender-expansive people alike, I finally realized:

Holy shit! I'm gender-expansive and nonbinary; no wonder why I've felt so uncomfortable with most people for so long.

This realization liberated me to finally accept my gender and know that other people would take me for who I am. After leaving the mountain, I began a new journey of stepping into my nonbinary identity, practicing my new pronouns, and figuring out what clothes to wear. They/them became my new pronouns. I'm trying out the pronouns zi, zir, and some of the other ones, but because of how fluid my gender can be they/them just fits the best.

Anyways, for me, they/them pronouns also feel like I'm acknowledging more than one part of myself or acknowledging that people change and have, in a way, multiple types of personalities because we don't act the same with the same people and in a manner, all of us have different behaviors and lingo depending on who we interact with.

Therefore, for me, they/them pronouns have a double meaning. It means I don't fit in the binary and don't want to; I'm acknowledging multiple parts of my being.

So why use pronouns?

Well, obviously, we all do. Most people use she/her/hers, or he/him/his. I have experienced a lot of pushback with my pronouns because I don't dress very androgynous, and even when I try my best to dress in the androgynous, I still look feminine; I'm curvy, it's pretty tricky. I embrace my body as best as possible, and at the same time, I do what I can to feel more at home in my body. And you know, if I had it my way, I would be a shape shifter, Kirby anyone?

But after experiencing years of orthorexia which is typical for us models and dancers, I do not feel putting myself into a dieting lifestyle to make other people feel better about my gender . Trust me, I've tried, and with illnesses, I can't find a way for me to look Agender or androgynous, nor should I or any other nonbinary person have too.

People miss gender me all the time because of binary gender expectations, Even after I have told people my gender or worn a pronoun pin. These gender expectations are almost always tied to a person's body type, height, clothing, makeup, and societal expectations. These pronoun expectations are destructive. Think about all the womxn who have body image issues. The gender expectations hurt cis people as well. Adopting an asking and consent culture is a step toward everyone's healing.

When we're looking at pronouns, we need to think that a pronoun is not just to match the gender that the individual feels about themselves; they feel like a man or a woman, both, neither, all, etc. It is respecting the person's internal experience. When you use someone's proper pronouns, it validates and respects their autonomy and intelligence.

What happens when you continually refuse to use someone's preferred pronouns?

It's incredibly insulting and invalidating. It is like saying, I don't see you for who you are; I don't care about who you are. Just fit into the box I want you to be in...And that hurts!

Gender Expectations Come Out everywhere, In the workplace, school, and public and private spaces. So imagine never finding anywhere that cares to see you. It is not a shock then why trans teens have incredibly high suicide attempt rates.

Many teachers do not try to use my pronouns because I am the only gender-expansive person in the classroom.

Even when I dress really masculinely, it still happens. I have had more than one teacher say things like, Right ladies, we are all womxn here, and other comments lumping everyone in the class together. It feels like the 1950s sometimes.

This goes beyond pronouns when folks say, "Well, boys like this, girls do that... etc. Or your boy clients will want to do ____; girl clients are different."

Even textbooks with sex education rarely talk about intersex or show different sex and gender differences beyond a penis and vagina. It's infuriating how many people are being ignored or dismissed.

How Cisgendered Allies can Help Gender expansive, Transgender and Intersex Folks

It makes gender-expansive folks feel really alone when they are the only ones who speak up and point out binary gendered language. It is a lot of emotional labor. This is another reason why cis-gendered people need to care about this, so they can speak up for us, too. Almost every social justice movement benefits when folks with privilege listen to what help marginalized folks need. As a cis-gendered person, if you do not want to harm your gender-expansive community, learn from us and challenge any biases you might have. Everyone has gender biases; the sooner we acknowledge that, the quicker change can happen.

Think about your own pronouns and how you would feel if someone kept calling you by different ones.

Exercise One: Your coworker keeps calling you he even though you are a she. If you identify with he reverse this.

1. How does that make you feel write it down:

2. What are the questions about the other person who keeps miss gendering

you, write those down.

3. Now start to consider what you need to do know look more like your identified gender. Write those down.

4. Practice in the mirror what you would like to say to this person to convince them you are a she/he not a he/she.

5. Now sit in contemplation with no distractions for 5 minutes and imagine dealing with that everyday.

It's a lot of emotional labor to carry around, isn't it.

If you forget pronouns, think about names. How often do people make excuses not to learn and remember folks' names? That is complete bullshit. And everyone knows it's bullshit because there are techniques to learn people's names better. And if you were gonna be given $1,000 or $10,000 tomorrow, if you remembered everyone's names in your class or at your job, you better believe you would learn everyone's names. Almost anyone can. It's just a motivation and a choice.

When you misgender someone, acknowledge it in the moment, use the correct pronoun and move on. Don't make a big deal about, but also actually try.

In conclusion, if you forget someone's pronouns, try remembering

their name and using their name more often, and who doesn't love hearing their own name?

Please send this blog post to anyone who needs to learn more about pronouns from a personal point of view.

Sparkles,

Misted Forest