Pronouns. Pronouns are things that we learned about in grade school and for most people, something they haven’t thought about since (unless we get into learning other languages but that brings up something else entirely). Pronouns are almost always read off the body, which is funny because they actually have nothing to do with bodies. Pronouns are related to gender, so within the gender binary, it makes sense that he/him/his or she/her/hers are the only pronouns people know, and are almost always the pronouns that people read off of others’ bodies. I’m gonna let you in on a little thing called “there are more than two genders” (it’s shocking, I know. I’ll let you think about that for a minute).
Pronouns are something that I hadn’t thought about much myself, until last year when I started thinking about gender, and how the one I was assigned at birth didn’t quite ‘fit’. Since then I have started identifying as nonbinary, and using they/them/theirs pronouns. Saying one’s own pronouns (not preferred pronouns, but pronouns, cause they are not optional thank you very much) has become more and more common in queer circles and in LGBTQIA+ clubs. This is awesome because it can force people to think about the fact that people use more pronouns than just he or she and there are people of other genders, not just man/woman, but unfortunately, it has become very common to say “male” or “female” when asked to state which pronouns one uses. This not only forces people to further conflate “male” with he and “female” with she, which we already do way too much, but it erases anyone who identifies as man/woman and doesn’t use he/she as well as anyone who identifies other than man/woman and does use he/she.
They pronouns are another thing. People refuse to use they as a singular pronoun for those who ask, but use it unconsciously all the time. They has been used singularly throughout literature since Shakespeare and Marlowe’s time with no objections I’ve heard, so why is it so difficult to use it when asked? People often complain that it is too hard to use pronouns other than he and she, so anyone who uses they, xe, ze, or any other pronoun is faced with constant misgendering.
It becomes hard to imagine a place in the work force when the only options on a job application are woman/man. I currently have a job and the transition from people calling me she to calling me they is still very much incomplete. Most people misgender me, whether it is with the use of she pronouns or by calling me girl, and I can’t help but to lose hope for what lies ahead. I’d like to say I always correct people when they call me incorrectly gendered terms or use my birth name, but I don’t. It’s not that I don’t want to, but when I am one little voice that is often unheard or continuously overlooked, speaking up can be the hardest act in the world.
I could talk forever about pronouns, and how there are very few options for pronouns and gendered language apart from he/she or man/woman in other languages, or how people use “he/she” in writing to indicate something is genderneutral. But at the end of the day, what I wonder most is will I be able to live and exist in this world without the constant degradation and attack that misgendering can be?
Unruly Bodies 
This reminds of how some fool was whining about how an individual who identifies as a woman despite having (what mainstream society considers to be) a traditionally masculine appearance was offended when he bumped into her and said, “Excuse me, sir.” He kept going on about how he was just being polite and he didn’t have to say anything at all. I mean, I guess, but she’s not mad about the fact that you said “excuse me”, she’s mad because you misgendered her? I had to drop the conversation when he decided to assert that if people misgendered her it’s her own fault for “looking like a man”. It’s incredibly easy to misgender someone or to view your world in a solely binary manner if you identify as “woman” or “man” yourself, but it’s so much worse when you refuse to see things from another perspective. Then, to go out of your way to admonish the oppressed because they somehow mustered up the courage to fight back… Ridiculous. It mostly boils down to a certain level of respect, and some people can’t even be bothered to get that right.
I took a GWST class where at the end of the semester, after learning so much about gender and gender identity, the professor wanted everyone to go around and say which gender pronoun they preferred. I was surprised at how each person answered. Some people were firm in that they wanted to be referred to strictly as their assigned gender and nothing else. Some people were trans and wanted to stick to an assigned pronoun that was opposite than their gender assigned at birth. Some people did not want gender to be a factor in how they were defined, these people preferred xe or ze, etc. Then there were people, like me, who identified with their assigned gender, but did not care what pronoun was used. At first I thought it was ridiculous that anyone would care if someone called them “he” and they were female, or vice versa. But then I thought about it and just like it’s my decision to accept whatever gender pronoun is thrown my way, it was theirs to have a preference. Gender is important in our society. It defines a lot of how we walk talk behave dress date, etc, but at the same time it is socially constructed rendering it almost completely useless because people are people are deserve respect and representation no matter what. It’s great that there is so much discussion in main stream media about these kinds of topics because everyone deserves to be recognized and included. It really is a beautiful thing!