Family & Misgendering

[melissa]

I know I am FAR from the only one dealing with this, and would love to hear how other people handle things. My family knows I'm genderqueer and use enby pronouns, and are fine with that...but I see very little effort being made to actually use my pronouns. I've had several serious talks with my mom about how important this is to me, and I'm gearing up for another one. I only see my whole family en masse twice a year, at Thanksgiving and Christmas. This year, Christmas left me feeling sick from being misgendered so often over the day I was with family. Complicating factors: transportation-wise, if I'm going to spend time with family it means at least a day. More significantly, my primary partner passed on last spring, so spending holidays on my own would likely be even worse for my mental health. (I appreciate the kind intention behind expressing sympathy for my loss, but please don't- it just becomes exhausting after awhile.) Any advice for how to get my family to really buckle down and use the right pronouns? Or suggestions for what else I could do for the holidays?

[Ativan Prescribed]

It's hard for people to use NB pronouns unless they do all the time, so the expectations of them remembering a couple times a year shouldn't be to much.
You can correct them from the beginning and whether they can follow along is up to them, but reminding them over and over just leads to them resenting the request.
Wear a big button of have a shirt printed up for what you like, but that again is like the constant reminder.
People are going to say what they are used to and its doubtful they mean any harm by it.
As much as it means a lot to you, they should clue into that but again, most people will forget again a few minutes later.
Just be happy that they aren't the kind who intentionally say bad things about others, and especially about you, that's about as good as it gets.
It's a pronoun and while it is significant, it isn't the end of it all, it takes plenty of time for people to catch on, they have been trained their entire lives to use the language that they use.
You're asking to undo that with a simple request, it just isn't that easy, but one thing you can do is use gender neutral words for them and just hope they catch on, sometimes they do but it takes a while.
With my family its just lucky that they remember my name at all, maybe one of the many reasons I haven't seen or talked to any of them in years, but not only would they not use the right pronouns, they would argue against it right off the bat.
Be accepting and happy with what you can get and over time, they might adjust, and you can back down on it a bit for your own sanity, its the pronouns they used for you since you were born, to them its like you changed your name to something that they can't easily pronunce.
And people get all hung up on the they stuff, they go right into it isn't a singular thing, but it is used that way and always has, old literature has it and in modern use, you betcha people use it in the singular.