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?
Continue reading “Neither he, she, nor it.”