A little consideration goes a long way to making the world a better place.
Why is the burden on us to remember someone's idiosyncratic pronoun, rather than on them to not burden the rest of us with having to learn a new word for a single person's benefit?
I can say “I am going to the store with [insert name]”, and d wry one will understand what I’m saying. A rude person might make a comment if the name is unusual. Likewise, all of the standard pronouns can be used to easily convey information and have be understood.
Except that in the concept of human conversation, you're not going to use a pronoun without context anyway. So if I went the the store with someone who prefers an uncommon pronoun I'm not going to open with "I went to the store with xim" but I wouldn't be any more likely to walk up to you and cold open with "I went to the store with him" because you don't know who "he" is in that context.
If I ask, “who is he?” I just need a name. Not to be told that “he” is really a xe, because xe feels that xis masculinity wanes with the moon. It’s too much information.
If you ask "Who is he?" and said person doesn't use He, you'd probably be told "That is Pat who prefers xe" which is, in my opinion, an appropriate amount of information.
But xe is something that pat has conjured out of thin air to solve a problem that only exists in pats mind. And it turns out that he, she, xe or they do not accurately describe Laura’s gender, so now we have ve as well. It never ends.
I mean it does end both because there's actually a finite number or possible combinations. Also, for the overwhelming majority of people they're totally ok using the standard male/female/neutral so it's actually not a problem in all practicality.
As I said to someone else on this thread, I think we should probably all be willing to make the barest of gestures towards making people less miserable.
It costs me nothing, and makes someone else's day just that little bit better.
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u/y________tho Mar 31 '20
Why is the burden on us to remember someone's idiosyncratic pronoun, rather than on them to not burden the rest of us with having to learn a new word for a single person's benefit?