Speaking As A Relatively Binary Person Who Has Several Nonbinary Sweeties And Friends, This Post Seems

Speaking as a relatively binary person who has several nonbinary sweeties and friends, this post seems to have generally good advice.  Many of the examples focus on singular they rather than neopronouns, although most of them will work regardless of the pronouns a person uses.  

The only section I have issues with is “tricking yourself” into using the correct pronouns for a person, partly because the examples given won’t work well for pronouns other than they and partly because that sort of mental gymnastics would be harder for me to learn (and unlearn) than teaching myself to do it right from the beginning.  However, I understand that that issue is specific to me, personally; other people are obviously going to have different experiences.

Pronoun tips from binary men and women

Every once in a while I am asked (or see someone asking) how to use pronouns other than he/him and she/her. The person asking is usually a man or a woman unfamiliar with nonbinary stuff generally, but they’ve got a particular nonbinary person in their life whom they care about and they don’t want to mess up. Maybe they keep misgendering their nonbinary friend and they feel guilty, or they want to take the burden off the nonbinary person who keeps having to correct them, something like that.

When binary people lack that confidence with pronouns, they seek the advice of nonbinary people. Not only are we likely to give advice that’s not ideal for binary people (because we’ve got skin in the game, all our friends are nonbinary so we’re used to it, etc.), but it is another facet of that dynamic of the privileged group (in this case binary people) placing their burden onto the marginalised group. Binary people should be asking advice from other binary people who’ve mastered pronouns.

So, I asked, and a bunch of binary people answered. I got advice from trans and cis binary people (men and women), and I’m collecting all the common stuff and the stuff I thought was good, all here for your perusal. If you know a binary person who’s struggling to get pronouns right, pass this along.

[This article assumes that you know a specific nonbinary person and you want to get better at using their pronouns, though the advice can be adapted. It also assumes that you’re familiar with the concepts of singular they and neopronouns, and you accept that they’re grammatically correct.]

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