Brace yourself. The misgendering is coming.
Holiday gatherings can be stressful for trans people, because they often feel mandatory and can be full of people you wouldn't otherwise hang out with and who get your name and pronouns wrong.
Amplify Respect is a newsletter to uplift and inform trans folks and allies.
If you find it helpful to learn how to talk about a trans family member, how to promote your work as an LGBTQ+ creator, or how to write about trans people respectfully, you should subscribe.
I've written about how to survive the holidays with family as a trans person:
Rey Katz
But today, I'm going to dig into one specific aspect of misgendering.
Have you noticed this? If someone else misgenders a person, you are more likely to accidentally misgender them too.
Let me explain.
Maybe your family member starts talking about Lisa, and how he is going to bring the apple pie, but will stop at his house first. Your brain nods yes at first, yes, apple pie, delicious, but then...record scratch...Lisa uses "she" and "her," right?
But before your brain can close this circuit, you've already responded about Lisa and called her "him" by accident.
Ugh, you might feel really bad about this. I share this because it happens to me. It's harder to get people's pronouns correct if you've just heard or seen someone use the incorrect pronoun.
Right after I read about a trans friend being misgendered online, I accidentally said "she" instead of "they" to refer to them. I felt ashamed. I usually do better than that.
A friend of mine once called me by my old name unexpectedly, and I know it was because he had just saw the old name on my PayPal at that time.
Our brains are amazing at pattern recognition. We pick up memes, movie quotes, running jokes, and ways of speaking from our community. This can be a great skill for connecting with others.
But this same pattern recognition of others' speech can trip us up with names and pronouns.
As always, if you do mess up a pronoun, the right thing to do is to say a very brief "sorry" or simply move on and gender the person correctly in your next sentence. No big, extended, private apologies please!
But maybe you're at a large holiday gathering, or visiting friends you only talk to once a year, and you're bombarded by the wrong pronouns. I encourage you to give yourself some grace and some understanding that this is going to be a challenging situation in more ways than one.
Be aware that you are more likely to misgender folks when you are around other people who are misgendering them. It's...maybe not entirely okay, but understandable. The same process applies: a brief "sorry" and/or attempting to gender the person correctly in the next sentence.
One other thing to consider is the safety of all involved: if you are in a situation where you think someone might get hurt based on the words used, or if you don't want to "out" someone else or yourself, it's better to misgender people than have someone get hurt.
The good news is that pattern recognition works both ways: being around people who correctly gender people helps you use the correct words also.
By correctly using people's names, pronouns, and descriptions, you are helping others around you build those good habits as well!
I have my pronouns "(they/them)" after my name in video calls, and while a surprising number of people don't read or notice, I think it has a long-term helpful effect.
One of my clients just referred to me as "they" for the first time today, with no prompting other than the "they/them" in my display name. That felt like a nice success. I felt appreciated and respected.
If you're in a safe and comfortable position to set an example with correct name and pronouns, this can be incredibly helpful for others to share in your good habits. But don't be too hard on yourself if you accidentally pick up on other people's speech patterns. It happens, and we just need to keep practicing with an aim to do better.
Good luck, and may your holiday season be magical, boring, or reasonable, depending on your preference!
Amplify Respect is a newsletter to uplift and inform trans folks and allies.
If you find it helpful to learn how to talk about a trans family member, how to promote your work as an LGBTQ+ creator, or how to write about trans people respectfully, you should subscribe.
Do you have any strategies for the holidays? Let us know in the comments!
