Which is better: being unconsciously misgendered by kindly people or correctly but maliciously gendered by ill-meaning strangers?
Usually, it is the latter (malicious gendering) because intentions matter. — Even though I’m not necessarily offended by the words, it isn’t fun (or safe) to feel hostility from those who intend their words to hurt. He-she, she-he and it are hater favorites. All are, in a way, correct – I’m not a straightforward he or she type of person. In some sense, I’m an “it” – an unknown quantity to people who tend to think of gender as binary. But I don’t wish to be known by those terms, which are too often malice-tinged.
For my first decade of identifying and presenting as androgynous, I tended to just roll with whatever people chose to call me (even if that made me uncomfortable). Occasionally, the very sensitive or progressive person would ask me what gender pronouns do I prefer?
I appreciated the question, but never really had a good response. At the time, there was no consensus in the genderqueer community about a set of gender-neutral (or non-binary) pronouns. There were sets for ze, xe, hir, sir, sie and more (10+ full sets of pronouns, used variously by individuals and in discussion forums). They were weird sounding and looking, not easily adapted to normal conversation as they too-often required explanations, sometimes even inside genderqueer spaces. Therefore, I’d often respond to the pronoun-asker that I preferred an alternating mix of he and she (nearly self-identifying as he-she).
Some people have suggested (and I’ve seriously considered) finding some foreign language counterpart to incorporate (das, sus and the like). But again the problem of too many / too confusing / no consensus presented itself. The easiest and only non-confusing solution seemed to be using my name instead of pronouns (e.g., X, X, X’s instead of she, her, hers), which is adequate, but not ideal (especially before my name change when even my name was misgendering me).
Finally, within recent years and following a surge in gender-nonbinary-identified people (especially younger people in millennial and “z” generations), there has been a growing consensus to reuse our third person (already gender-neutral) plural pronoun set: they / them / their.
This feels a bit weird at first, using a plural pronoun for a singular specific person, but it is much more natural than any of the invented (or imported) pronoun sets. And it’s already used in English similarly (with instances even from Shakespeare’s time), for an indefinite/unknown singular person (for example, Someone dropped their glove).
This pronoun set was specifically used as an example for a non-binary person in my corporate diversity training this year. That is a good sign that genderqueer pronouns, now unified in expression, are percolating into the general culture. So now I can say with complete confidence that my preferred pronouns are they / them / their.
Returning to my original question, the holistic answer is actually the first scenario, because of the volume. Getting unconsciously misgendered once is like a little pinprick, but with high frequency of nearly everyone doing it, it can become painful over time.
I’m trying to become more assertive about this because I think 99+% of people are cisgender and are fine with normal he vs. she assumptions, so this just isn’t on their radar. Even though I visually signify that I’m not cisgender, I can’t expect everyone to be automatically clued in. So I really need to tell people officially (and possibly repeatedly) to get my friends / family on board. Then it won’t be much bother to be occasionally misgendered by strangers – I probably won’t even feel that rare pinprick.
Disclaimer: even I have unconsciously misgendered genderqueer friends and acquaintances. I try to be conscientious, but even with my long history of genderqueer awareness, I’m still tripped up by binary linguistics and culture. No one is perfect.
