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This is actually so true. This is the realest thing. Before my physical transition, pronoun circles were so harmful to me thanks to experiencing the scenario in the OP, and now at this point, I don’t care about them at all. But they have never been helpful to me.
I agree that other people will surely find it helpful if they wish to share their own pronouns; and they are also useful for creating an atmosphere of acceptance to make me feel more comfortable; but they do more harm than good when a person is forced to answer like in the situation in the OP. It hurts.
Cis people, here is how to do it: Feel free to present your own pronouns to convey an atmosphere of acceptance and reassurance, either verbally or in a signature/username/bio, but do not ask other people for their pronouns unless you actually really need to know. You only need to know if you are talking about the person to a third party.
It is also extremely performative and annoying when cis people only do the pronoun circle when there is a visibly trans person in the room. It’s infantilising. Either you always offer your pronouns because you want to, or you never offer your pronouns because you don’t want to.
Disclaimer: This is the humble onion of just one trans person and I don’t respresent everybody.
me when every job asks me to self identify my gender
✅ prefer not to say
ya that’s what i answer each time. Still, I know they say it’s not supposed to affect your chances of getting hired, but…
Similarly when pharmacies ask my agab for vaccines I lie like a boss.
Isn’t the rule of thumb “tell cops nothing, tell doctors everything”?
Look my doctor knows, but the federal government can eat shit.
damn this reminds me of that one time in college when i was boymoding and they were doing a round about on pronouns and fuckin EVERYONE in the class turned around to look what i said. they didnt do that to anyone else 💀
Damn, it is, as a matter of fact, so over rn
noooooooooooooo 🫥
I had to do this at a fucking PARTY once. This person who decided she was event coordinator for drinking in someone’s apartment had us all sit in a circle and give our pronouns, a fact about ourself and our celebrity crush. Deeply painful moment, mostly cause it was cringe af for me. Ice breakers do the opposite.
The first days of uni this year were the best for me because everyone referred to me using female pronouns, like one professor took 3 weeks to stop calling me “madmoizelle” and even a guy who I went to kindergarten with took a full minute to recognize me, and one time some girl apologized to me like this “hey dude… oh sorry you’re a girl nvm” (it was in arabic), it was nice but after a while of me getting into depression and not being able to take care of my looks I no longer get called anything.
only cis people include the possessive pronoun
Ive seen people with neopronouns do it often because otherwise you might just not know what it is
That’s definitely fair, I should’ve clarified. Whenever I see She/Her/Hers or He/Him/His, 99% the time they’re cis.
When would someone else use your possessive pronoun? If they were writing your biography? Has anyone ever differentiated them/themself?
I mean, possessives and reflexives do show up. E.g. ‘it’s theirs’ or ‘she bought it herself’. That being said, unless youre using pronouns people arent assumedly familiar with theres no point in including the possessive and reflexive forms.
Arguably the inclusion of the object form is just because people were using pronouns that required it to be listed, such as ‘hir’, and so when people using they, she, or he pronouns went to include them in a bio or something they copied what others were doing, which was more neopronoun oriented. Idk im not an internet history scholar or anything if someone else knows more do chime in.
The virgin “giving every pronoun variation”
Vs
The Chad “giving the first two or just ‘X series’ because you can easily intuit the rest unless they’re stated otherwise”
Once you get to the fourth (and arguably the third) you’re just playin with yourself
Idiot here, on that point why is the second one needed? Does anyone ever pair “he” with something other than “him”?
Yes, you’ll have to ask the enbies the specifics though.
Hey trans comrades, I got a question as a CIS. I work with teenagers and there’s a decent amount of them that are trans or simply non conforming to CIS stereotypical looks. I substitute teach, so I usually don’t know the names of students.
I’ve made a mistake before of needing to get a kid’s attention and saying “excuse me young man/young lady” or “excuse me miss” or something like that. And they turn around and I’ve misgendered them. What’s a gender neutral way to get the attention of someone that I can start using instead of gendered words?
if you type cis in all caps it makes it sound like you’re referring to the group lead by the treacherous count dooku and not people who feel comfortable as their agab
also repeating what others say. try describing clothing, location, some physical attributes
Sorry my brain autocorrects to all caps cis because I do, in fact, type often about the Confederacy of Independent Systems.
Best fucking reason tbh
if you type cis in all caps it makes it sound like you’re referring to the group lead by the treacherous count dooku
To be fair, as a cis guy we do be doing that
If you’re age 25-35 and your inner circle isn’t discussing the threacherous Count Dooku
Yes I’m exactly that guy. Dudes rock.
Some more terminology nitpicking and then I promise I have something more substantive. Everyone’s pointed out that “CIS” should be lowercase and isn’t an acronym. I personally just took it as emphasis. But more importantly, it’s an adjective, not a noun. You’re not a cis. You are cis. It matters because referring to someone as a trans is generally seen as offensive. Either they’re trans or they’re a trans person.
And the language you’re looking for when talking about whether someone is “non conforming to CIS stereotypical looks” is that they’re “gender non-conforming”, which isn’t really about someone’s gender identity, but about their gender presentation. So cis people can be gender nonconforming and trans people can present as gender conforming. In fact, most trans people I know present pretty in line with a binary gender. Although, it’s been my experience that this is less common with teens in general, both cis and trans, and I know trans self-identification is higher among teens.
So I think in addition to all this, just minimizing gendered language with your students in general will be helpful. From experience, it involves a lot of thinking about the intention of what you’re saying and replacing the shorthand with the intention. So instead of “excuse me, miss”, you can say, “excuse me, I need some help” or “excuse me, this is silent time”. If someone isn’t responding, “can you get her attention?” could be replaced with “a tap on the shoulder would be appreciated”. It can be hard and not always immediately doable, but the habit is more important than any individual instance.
There’s also the issue of what to do when you do misgender someone. It’s common for people to panic and sputter and just generally not know what to do, which can be worse than the misgendering itself. Point of reference, it’s like forgetting someone’s name. It’s rude, but you apologize and move on. That’s all.
cis: not trans
CIS: THE CONFEDERACY OF INDEPENDENT SYSTEMS
Imo this sounds really awkward and verbose having to use the passive voice all the time etc. My ideal egalitarian system is just speaking normally but using they for everyone except when corrected, and then respecting people’s preference.
If I do misgender or deadname someone I’m usually chill about correcting myself and in my experience students were chill about correcting me.
Thank you for the in depth comment, I really don’t know why I put cis in all caps. I know it’s from a prefix. But yeah in general I’ll work on de-gendering my language.
Nitpick to your nitpick: cis is an adjective (descriptor), not a verb (action).
Cis you? I don’t even know you!
“I swear to god I will cis you” is a terrifying threat no matter the context
“hey kid” in your oldest grandpa voice
The only proper way to address children
When I substitute taught I went off what said student was wearing ‘ex you in the yellow shirt’ assuming there’s no uniform, if there was then I would tap their desk or just walk up to them and get attention. Usually direct is best anyway. I hated when the roster would be outdated so you could end up accidentally deadnaming students and get everyone off to a bad start, going by lastname helped but it might set a weird tone.
What about “excuse me, you in the red hoodie there”? Something describing clothing, hair color, etc?
Only one way to address unknown children
First off, fyi, cis isn’t an acronym.
This can honestly be kinda hard because there aren’t a lot of nongendered terms for this, and those that do exist would definitely feel othering in this context (in the same way that being the only person asked your pronouns in like a larger introductory context is othering). My thought would be to just use some (neutral! Be careful about that part!) physical descriptions, like “excuse me, student with the black hair”. Otherwise, maybe you can make a loud noise (e.g. drop a textbook on your desk) and then get that person’s attention specifically when they (and others) look? Otherwise physically go over and tap their shoulder.
None of those solutions are perfect and all of them are obviously contextual, but it’s what I got
Well, you could use second person pronouns (eg. you/your) or use a noun like “youth”…
Idk, I’m out of ideas…
For younger people, I’ve made extensive use of “kiddo” and “champ”. But I do wish we had a proper gender neutral pronoun in English, if for no other reason than I’m constantly fucking up and misgendering people in my online D&D server, and its getting very embarrassing.
