I hate to do posts that seem like sort of humblebrags designed to cynically drive engagement. This isn't that. But.... this bears saying. I was in a situation yesterday - an all day training course - with a lot of people who are trying to make the world better. People at the cutting edge of social justice. As left wing as it gets. There was shouting, fists in the air and people referring to one another as comrade. All walks of life were in representation. But. In one of the exercises - a scenario with role play - there was a clear example of a non-gendered person, and people just could not understand that instead of referring to a female-coded name, they should be referring to them as they/them instead of she/her. I found myself the only person in a group of maybe 30 people who had to openly and vocally say - no, it's they/them. It is not her/she(bar). No one really understood and I had to say 'sorry everyone, but this person isn't gendered' and they all looked at me like I was mental and carried on referring to the person in the female gender. I did it like 4 times. Do people in the wider universe (ie. Not Fedi or my brain) not understand this? I feel like in 2026 this isn't some kind of ineffable concept. Am I weird? I don't feel like I am (well I definitely am, but not in this) and it's not *that* difficult to understand? I was going to start calling the he's she's and the she's he's in the group to drive the point home, but thought that might be a step too far. Hopefully I made my point and they'll (THEY'LL) think about it later. But, dudes. If you can fight the good fight for the people, you can at least understand some people are non-binary?
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@TheBreadmonkey There are lots of examples of people fighting for justice in one realm who disparage other struggles as less important, or not important at all. The New Left was full of men who claimed there was no need for feminism because a socialist utopia would free women so the only struggle was the class struggle. Similar BS about antiracist movements, LGBTQ rights, etc.
How did the nongendered person feel about all this? Did they want you to be their champion at this event?
They didn't have a choice because they were a written character in a semi-fiction scenario
@TheBreadmonkey Some people have lousy theydar. In the role play, did the character introduce themself with name (relying on others in the interaction to "pick up on it") or did they use their pronouns?
If their introduction was "Hi, I'm Susie, and I use they/them" or "This is Susie. They're new to our group." and the rest of the group uses "she" for them the rest of the scene, that's going to be a very different debriefing than it would be for "Hi, I'm Susie" and the rest of the group didn't ask for pronouns.
It was written, and I thought it was quite obvious because they were just referred to as they them throughout. In much the same way you'd identify someone who's male by them being referred to as he him. I thought it was nice they'd included a non binary person in the exercise, then thought it was shitty the people running the training just referred to them as female. And not one other person picked it up or even corrected after I'd pointed it out, missing an already low bar.
I think most people can deal calling somebody "she" they've always perceived as male (or the other way around).
(And of course there are alwas some cunts who explicitely won't do that just to be an ass.)
But refering to a person as "they" just seems and sounds (grammatically?) wrong to many people, in my experience, and it might take a lot more time for people to get used to.
I would consider my mother, for example, as left-wing and liberal, but I doubt she can grasp the concept of somebody being non-gendered...
@TheBreadmonkey English has a grammatical solution, if we just used it: the use of “they/them” can be confusing if used in a context of both a “non-gendered” pronoun AND as the 3rd person plural. The solution is to use “one” in the 2nd context: “One really should refer to my nonbinary friend as ‘they/them’ and not otherwise.”
But one needs to be consistent and clear (and REPEATEDLY).
Here's a more positive experience that I talked about a while ago. As a parent of a non-binary person this kind of thing is close to me. That said, reprogramming elderly grandparents to not misgender is a a challenge.
Lol. ARE YOU ONE OF THOSE THEMS? Fwiw my take is as long as you're trying it's OK. My mother in law struggles and at one point would just list all pronouns hoping to land close enough.
@TheBreadmonkey Beautiful 🌸 sakura petals upon you and lotus below you 🪷 for simply respecting a person.
I am sure some folk gained some enlightenment.
You'd think it'd require zero effort but we live and learn.
Thank you for sharing and for your perfect handle.
@TheBreadmonkey I've given up reminding people for myself now. Very often the people I'm reminding turn around and do it again a week later and I just end up feeling shit for constantly trying to get respected.
Too many people will just ignore I've said it altogether.
@TheBreadmonkey Some people just don't get it no matter what. :(
@TheBreadmonkey It's baffling, isn't it?
If someone changes their name, by deed poll, the extremely vast majority of other people can work with that very quickly. I've never seen anyone doing "Hey Phil, you just don't look like a David so I'll keep calling you Phil".
The fact that someone decides they want to be referred to as *how they feel* rather than necessarily how they appear, and others won't/don't/can't accept that is as baffling to me as apparently the pronouns thing is to them.
@TheBreadmonkey Thank you so much for doing that, and for being you. 💛
@TheBreadmonkey
You are LegBendary! Kudos to your efforts against a tidal wave of bigots.
@TheBreadmonkey This concept is an entirely effable one. You are not a looney. At work we have had quite a number of ‘they/them’ personnel and they’ve all be respected as such.
It’s quite unfortunate you had to deal with a bunch of hide-bound, insensitive, wank-heads.
@TheBreadmonkey That's very disappointing. Was it an age thing? I've found that younger people are usually perfectly fine with "they" whereas people my age (50s) seem almost incapable.
No one under 20 but I think a couple under 30 and a couple of people I was really surprised didn't get it because I assumed they were enbies
@TheBreadmonkey Wow, that's even weirder.
I'm trying very hard not to be judgemental about how the hard left are extremely good at "othering" people, even as they insist they would never. But I haven't had very good experiences of that type.
@TheBreadmonkey @janeishly To quote my dad: tha's none so blind as those who won't see.
@TheBreadmonkey We have two people who have transitioned in the last year at work and prefer 'they/them'. Everyone has just changed how they refer to them without even blinking. It's quite refreshing.
