How do you ask people to use your pronouns?

[Wormmms]

I have a small circle of queer friends, including a handful of trans and genderqueer friends. I know that if I was to ask them "could you use they/them for me in the future?" they would respond well, and they probably wouldn't question me further. However, even though I want to ask them to use my pronouns, I'm stopped short by my fear of inconveniencing them. In general I am not someone who asks people to make accommodations for me, and the prospect of doing it for something so personal is really unappealing to me. I do have two people who know what my pronouns are and who try to use them for me, but they mess up a lot because I've asked them to only use them when they're around other people who know, which is not often.

How do you get over the aversion to asking people to do something for you? How do you stop feeling like you're inconveniencing them? How can you temper the fear of judgment enough to let people see a side of you that you're not confident about? How do you convince yourself that you deserve to be called by the correct pronouns?

I'd love to hear your advice as well as your own stories.

[Ativan Prescribed]

Jun 17, 2017 4:19:31 GMT 8 Wormmms said:

I have a small circle of queer friends, including a handful of trans and genderqueer friends. I know that if I was to ask them "could you use they/them for me in the future?" they would respond well, and they probably wouldn't question me further. However, even though I want to ask them to use my pronouns, I'm stopped short by my fear of inconveniencing them. In general I am not someone who asks people to make accommodations for me, and the prospect of doing it for something so personal is really unappealing to me. I do have two people who know what my pronouns are and who try to use them for me, but they mess up a lot because I've asked them to only use them when they're around other people who know, which is not often.

How do you get over the aversion to asking people to do something for you? How do you stop feeling like you're inconveniencing them? How can you temper the fear of judgment enough to let people see a side of you that you're not confident about? How do you convince yourself that you deserve to be called by the correct pronouns?

I'd love to hear your advice as well as your own stories.

You have to understand that others want to know how to accommodate you, like you do them.
It's a basic thing in knowing people, it's hard to figure out sometimes, so when you ask them, rather just telling them your preferred pronouns, they aren't being inconvenienced, they now know something more about you, it enables them to do things for you that are a convenience, what goes around...
If it's too much for them, they simply won't do it and let them not do it, it's their preference.
You can't bend the world to your doings, but you can make it easy for the world to do that if it wants to.
It isn't an inconvenience, it's just letting them know something that might be useful for them to know.
What if they are wondering in an off hand way?
Now they know, end of story, on to the next thing about you that they might want to know, because there are things about them that you want to know, this is how people know each other, lol....

[Ativan Prescribed]

I also use them/they/whatever works all the time, I hardly ever use a him or her kind of pronoun.
I've had maybe a couple people say something, like asking if I'm talking about two people, but most of the time, they start to do the same thing in our conversation.
It's the easiest way to get it into use that you can do is to do that as much as possible, even correcting people if you need to.
They is entirely useful if the gender isn't known, so unless it's a known thing, they is actually more proper than fricken guessing, assuming, trying to bend the world to your doings...
You're a a distance from someone and they are acting weird, so you say to the people around you, "I wonder what they are doing?".
Wouldn't it be really weird to assume a gender or assign one based on limited knowledge about the person?
Yet people do, I've even heard disagreements over it, one person thinks male, the other female, they each assigned a gender they want.
But the question other than if they are a they or not, is getting away from the reason you were talking about that person to begin with.
What a waste of time to argue over a pronoun that they think is right, when they simply don't know?
All they had to do was say they to begin with and the question about the person can then be answered without the discussion being muddied up with crap.

[Wormmms]

I want to update here: I finally asked one of my friends to use my correct pronouns when she is talking to the small group of people who already use those pronouns for me. This friend has known that I'm nonbinary for about a year now, and I've talked to her about all the accompanying frustrations, dysphoria, etc, but only now have I actually been able to ask her to use my pronouns. It's like I need people to be outrageously over prepared before I breach this topic with them.

I have a group of people who I play tabletops with, & my last two characters have used they/them so maybe that's a good way to ease into it. It's funny- one person in our group played a character who used her preferred pronouns and chosen name before she came out to us in real life. it would be interesting to make an entire thread about the ways that we "practice" with certain pronouns and names before we "officially" start using them.

[Jennifer (Tink)]

Jun 23, 2017 13:06:16 GMT 8 Wormmms said:

I want to update here: I finally asked of my friends to use my correct pronouns when she is talking to the small group of people who already use those pronouns for me. This friend has known that I'm nonbinary for about a year now, and I've talked to her about all the accompanying frustrations, dysphoria, etc, but only now have I actually been able to ask her to use my pronouns. It's like I need people to be outrageously over prepared before I breach this topic with them.

I have a group of people who I play tabletops with, & my last two characters have used they/them so maybe that's a good way to ease into it. It's funny- one person in our group played a character who used her preferred pronouns and chosen name before she came out to us in real life. it would be interesting to make an entire thread about the ways that we "practice" with certain pronouns and names before we "officially" start using them.

The RPG approach is actually a great idea.

Something I have been doing in relation to using my preferred name (instead of pronoun) is in any email that I send to people I am out to, I always sign it with my preferred name with my old name in (). Like Jenn(Bill)

This way it acknowledges that they are still using my old name but shows that I would prefer they first use my preferred name.

My Aunt has a tendency to use my old name when sending emails, but when I respond she corrects herself and uses my preferred name. It may be considered passive aggressive but I view it as a subtle reminder of what they are doing.

[Wormmms]

Jun 25, 2017 2:20:39 GMT 8 Jennifer (Tink) said:

Jun 23, 2017 13:06:16 GMT 8 Wormmms said:

I want to update here: I finally asked of my friends to use my correct pronouns when she is talking to the small group of people who already use those pronouns for me. This friend has known that I'm nonbinary for about a year now, and I've talked to her about all the accompanying frustrations, dysphoria, etc, but only now have I actually been able to ask her to use my pronouns. It's like I need people to be outrageously over prepared before I breach this topic with them.

I have a group of people who I play tabletops with, & my last two characters have used they/them so maybe that's a good way to ease into it. It's funny- one person in our group played a character who used her preferred pronouns and chosen name before she came out to us in real life. it would be interesting to make an entire thread about the ways that we "practice" with certain pronouns and names before we "officially" start using them.

The RPG approach is actually a great idea.

Something I have been doing in relation to using my preferred name (instead of pronoun) is in any email that I send to people I am out to, I always sign it with my preferred name with my old name in (). Like Jenn(Bill)

This way it acknowledges that they are still using my old name but shows that I would prefer they first use my preferred name.

My Aunt has a tendency to use my old name when sending emails, but when I respond she corrects herself and uses my preferred name. It may be considered passive aggressive but I view it as a subtle reminder of what they are doing.

Ooh that's smart. I'll tuck that away in my mind and save it for when I'm out enough that I need to start correcting people.