[Nat]

I went to a Queer Conference in Austin about 3 years ago, and there was a place by the entrance where they would hand you a nametag with your preferred pronoun already on it. I declined without thinking - since I'm relatively girly, live in a female-designated body and am cool with "she/her" pronouns.

In one of the workshops, it was pointed out that those who declined the pronoun-tag were most likely uknowingly exercising privilege.

That was an epiphany for me. I have the confidence that nobody would question which pronoun to use with me based on my gender presentation - and having that confidence is indeed a privilege.

My own experience of my gender is complex - or maybe simple - and I don't really feel like "she" applies to my insides as well as it applies to my outsides. "He" doesn't really cover everything in there either. I'm cool with "she" - it covers my outsides just fine and it corresponds with my lived experience too.

I've experienced so much stress trying to keep track of other people's pronouns, memorizing who will get offended by which - even people I barely know at all. It's not the pronoun that stresses me - it's the risk of offense. Mostly, I find the stress of possibly angering or disrespecting people with an inadvertant incorrect pronoun to be very exhausting.

Also, I have struggled when dating people with male pronouns - struggled with how to refer to them when speaking to others. Struggled with whether to respect the pronoun - effectively closeting myself - or to respect my own identity as an out lesbian by altering that pronoun when referring to my mate - or to give the quick run-down of the gender of the person I'm dating so as to try to respect both (and that ends up feeling the opposite of respectful). Or, I go back to the pronoun game - that closet game where you avoid all pronouns completely. I find it exhausting. I'd manage it if my gf decided she'd rather be my bf, but in the meantime, I am somewhat relieved to have some time and space where I don't feel stuck between the disrespecting-my-partner's-id rock and the disrespecting-my-own-id hard place.

I think the greater issue with all that (for me) might boil down to femme invisibility and just not having been out of the closet for that long. It's like I'm still afraid I could be shoved back in there. If I were a butch, I could call my partner anything I wanted, and it wouldn't put me in the closet so easily. I feel like often femmes are expected to always put the feelings of those of the more masculine persuasions ahead of our own. But then, that may be my own internalized misogyny I'm responding to.

Because of all that (above), I have pretty much decided to accept all pronouns. I might not know whom you're talking about if you refer to me as "he" or "zie" but I'm down with whatever. I want to live in the impossible-to-offend-with-pronouns zone and I'm happy to do my best to memorize and respect others' pronoun choices as long as I can be relatively assured to be left in peace if I occasionally screw it up.