this post was submitted on 25 May 2024
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Honestly, do this anyway. Default to they/them until someone requests otherwise. It's the best way to normalize it for people who don't present in an assumable way, without exposing yourself to the same level of potential retaliation that asking leads to.
Please don't do this. This is just misgendering by default. The vast majority of people are exactly the gender they appear to be on the surface, and if they aren't, they'll let you know. I've only known one person who wasn't the gender they appeared (a very masculine-presenting enby), and they weren't offended at all when I misgendered them at first; they corrected me, I apologized, and that was the end of it.
However, if you call the wrong clearly-masculine "alpha male" or clearly-feminine "queen bitch" they/them, you're likely to get a violent reaction.
Gross. You care more about preserving the delicate feelings of bigoted snowflakes than actual vulnerable people.
It's not misgendering if you use non-gendered language. Non-gendered language is not gendered. Grammatical gender is idiotic and we'd be better off without it.
I completely agree. Gendered pronouns are not helpful and at this point only confuse things. I'm just glad English doesn't have gendered nouns, too, like Latin-based languages.
Anyway, the fact is that they/them has become "gendered" in the sense that it's now a preferred pronoun for a lot of people, mostly androgynous enbies, so its implicit meaning has changed. Sure, it's still used as a non-gendered pronoun for hypothetical people, but when used for a real, known person, it has the same implication as he/him or she/her - that they appear to be a certain gender, enby in this case.
I'm a clearly masculine person - I've got a beard and I wear masculine clothes. I personally wouldn't be offended, but I would think it very odd if someone saw me and thought they/them was an appropriate pronoun for me. If masculinity was as important to me as it is to most men, I could see myself getting offended at someone implying that I appear androgynous. Same as if an enby was referred to as he/him or she/her. Cisfolk's emotions are just as valid as valid as enbies'.