#neopronounhaven

“Nobody will use your neopronouns in real life” how you gonna argue that with my siblings, mother, random strangers I met at the LGBTQ+ center, etc. who have all used my neopronouns or talked about using them at some point?

​There are safe spaces in real life. Even if they are not accessible to everyone, even if there’s not enough of them, their existence is not impossible,itdoes and it can happen. With thousands of people who use or support neopronouns, we are bound to run into each other at some point.

“Neopronouns will never be used in real life/will never gain recognition.”

Tell that to hen, gender-neutral pronoun coined in the 1960s and 1990s in Sweden, and in the past decade officially recognized and used in the Swedish language, across both official and casual contexts.

This determination to tell anyone using neopronouns that there will never be any positive recognition stems largely from bias against neopronouns and disrespect towards people who use them. It’s used, more often than not, as an excuse not to personally recognize or validate neopronouns. Maybe they won’t gain recognition in English, but neither will a whole lot of words that people use. This is not a reasonable argument against using new words, or against respecting other people.

Neopronouns are a linguistic goldmine though, extremely sad so many linguists have not realized this. Like really, linguistic excellency.

The trans movement is not about making cis people comfortable. Trans liberation is not supposed to only be for the people who can appear most palatable to cis people. It shouldn’t ever be.

Cis society desires our eradication and silence. Placating those desires by silencing and fighting any trans and gender nonconforming person who is easily visible, atypical, and targeted by cis society’s hatred…that leads directly into a path of community “cleansing” that denies & kills every one of us who does not meet cis standards. By the way, that’s most of us, and the most marginalized first.

ALT

ALT

[images: The first photo has a light gold background with black text, reading, “neopronouns have a beautiful place in linguistics & language.” The next has a light lime green background and says, “your pronouns are worthy of respect.” end images]

Language cannot exist without words being made. Language exists to communicate and describe. Neopronouns are a part of this.

Working with pronouns that look very similar does not always go well when I am probably dyslexic…which is problematic considering I study them.