This post is bad, ur bad, and anyone who uncritically reblogged this is bad. Seriously. Stop fucking shaming people for their pronouns and genders wtf???? Gross
You just defended space alien as a legitimate gender, good job.
Do you fucking transtrenders have any idea how difficult you’re making it for legitimate trans people to be taken seriously? Do you even fucking understand what a gender is? A gender isn’t a fucking aesthetic. It’s not a feeling, an animal, a colour, a fashion, or any other sparkly snowflake bullshit. A gender is literally the way your brain is biologically wired. There are millions of people who suffer and face dangerous discrimination because their genders don’t match their bodies, and you tweenyboppers are making it into a fucking trend that you can wear like a brooch or a scarf? Fuck you.
legimate autistic trans person: this mogai shit, especially neurogenders and your “autigender”, harms us
some cis kid: lmao mean gatekeeper
Me, neurodivergent and nonbinary: neopronouns arent necessary and saying that people like me “need” them to “properly express” our gender makes us out to be dumb toddlers.
Some cisgender neurotypical: you’re ableist >:((((
Honestly, neogenders and all that stuff aren’t really my cup of tea and personally feel excessive to be creating unique labels with specific definitions and all that, but I also really don’t care cause its not my business about what makes people comfortable and happy. It’s not MY cup of tea, but if others like it and find happiness in it, cool glad they have that.
Plus? I honestly get it. Weird genders and stuff like that, I really get it. I don’t really want to use any neopronouns as it’s just too hard for me to wrap my head around for myself, and I’m very very very happy with they/them - but honestly my gender is very very very much best described as “male bird” which is a tangent I could go on for hours about how that doesn’t really fit anywhere, but it is the only way of describing my gender that felt right and made sense.
With that being said, outside of me using the phrase as a meme and occasionally a descriptor to close friends, I really wouldn’t regularly use that as my gender cause I don’t really feel the need for everyone to know my EXACT feelings and way of experiencing gender beyond that I’m nonbinary and I guess (let me have some egg time I’m still processing it okay) somewhat transmasculine.
But with that in mind, with how nice and comfortable it is to have a quick phrase to explain to myself the general energy and vibe to what my nonbinary gender is, I TOTALLY get it. Being hard nonbinary in the sense that it is really really really hard for me to pinpoint my gender in relation to the binary like, at all is a really confusing pain to be in because even I don’t know what I want to be like and what I need to do to make myself less dysphoric / more euphoric. A lot of it is guessing and seeing the results and I’ve gotten pretty used to that, but ever since starting the (original joke) of my gender being male bird, its really helped in internally navigating it and having this general vibe of how to be my best self
So if someone experiences a similar situation with say, stars, bunnies, light bulbs, whatever and want to call themselves stargender, bunnygender, lightbulbgender, or whatever cause that helps them understand themselves and makes them happy, honestly I can’t knock it.
I’d be annoyed as shit if people told me I couldn’t think of my gender in terms of being a male bird, or that I couldn’t joke bout it to my friends because its 1) none of their business and 2) it helps me a lot so its none of their fucking business.
Anyways, this is just a shout out to people with weird genders and weird gender labels. I don’t fully get it and its not my cup of tea, but I get the vibe and support yall to the best that I can understand.
With that being said, I don’t understand nor care for what the whole mogai discourse is about so I’m not gonna label myself pro or anti mogai or anything like that since I don’t know what the fuck is going on over there and I am not really wanting to ask. Personally I think LGBTQIA people would benefit from not arguing with each other about things that likely really don’t matter as much as people put energy into them.
[ID: A screenshot of a post edited in blackout poetry style. The text is gray on a green background. The edited text reads “Yes, you need to be trans. Yes, nonbinary people exist. Neopronouns are fun, as are MOGAI genders. Cool my dudes” /End ID]
—
Yes, you need to be trans. Yes, nonbinary people exist. Neopronouns are fun, as are MOGAI genders. Cool my dudes
friendly reminder that you don’t need to justify your sexual orientation to anybody, whether you’re homosexual, bisexual, pansexual or asexual!
friendly reminder that you don’t need to justify your romantic orientation to anybody, whether you’re homoromantic, biromantic, panromantic or aromantic!
friendly reminder that you don’t need to justify your gender identity to anybody, whether you’re binary, non binary or use mogai identities!
friendly reminder that you don’t need to justify your pronouns to anybody, whether you use commonly used ones, rarer pronouns or neopronouns!
friendly reminder that you don’t need to prove to people that you’re “one of the good ones”!
friendly reminder that you don’t need to justify your existence to anybody, whether they be a stranger or a friend!
you don’t exist to be an argument for or against a political cause, and you shouldn’t feel the obligation to prove to people that you have a right to exist as who you really are.
This short, clarifying survey ran from 4th until 24th April 2021. There were 2,998 usable responses. Unlike the annual Gender Census survey, this one was open to anyone of any gender, provided they lived in an English-speaking country.
It asked about two things:
They/them verbs and reflexives - basically whether people who prefer they/them pronouns prefer the reflexive to be themselforthemselves, and which people feel is more “correct”.
Sir/ma’am/? - investigating why people use sir/ma’am in areas where it’s polite and common to do so, and whether there are any viable nonbinary or gender-neutral alternatives.
This blog post will also investigate the Spivak vs. Elverson issue, which was actually a separate poll that took place on two social networks.
~
THEY/THEM VERBS AND REFLEXIVES
Someone asked about themself vs.themselves, and it reminded me of some of the they/them issues that people ask about in feedback boxes and various confusions surrounding them.
Singular they - what is it, and when and how do people use it?
Plural they - what is it, and when and how do people use it?
What is the “correct” reflexive for each of these?
Participants were asked a series of questions about singular they pronouns. Everyone was asked a “which is correct” question, and participants who sometimes or always like to be called ”they” were also asked about their personal preferences.
The graph is a view of only participants who sometimes or always like to be called “they”.
Verbs. As you can see, participants overwhelmingly (94.3%) wanted people to use plural verbs (”they are reading a book”) when talking about them in the third person - even though the percentage of people who thought that was the most “correct” form was a little lower (81.8%). This was lower because 11.4% of participants who preferred “they” answered “both are correct”.
Reflexives. People were much more likely to say that both themself andthemselves were correct (28.3%), and more likely to have no preference between the two (17.4%). However, themself was still more popular overall at 59.3%, and 47.3% thought themself was grammatically correct.
You as a control. I also asked all participants whether yourself oryourselves was more correct when addressing one person as a kind of control question, because they is almost grammatically identical to you - it can refer to one person or multiple people, it takes plural verbs even when referring to/addressing one person, and in that situation only the reflexive changes. Many people who say that singular they is grammatically incorrect have no issues with singular you, so it seemed like something that might be interesting to compare. In the graph above you can see that 93.6% of people thought yourself was more correct; only 4.2% of they-accepting participants felt that both yourself andyourselves were equally correct when addressing one person.
There were a couple of things that came up several times in the comments:
“They is” is common in African-American Vernacular English (AAVE), and probably in other dialects too. As I don’t live in the US I’m pretty unfamiliar with this dialect, but either way that seems fine to me. It’s part of why I also asked for participants’ locations, because I wanted others to be able to download the results and see if some regions were more likely to use some words/constructions than others.
There were some alternatives to themself andthemselvespresented, such as theirself andtheirsen. Both of these points lead nicely to the third…
The idea that any language choice is more “correct” than another is quite prescriptive. What feels correct or natural varies depending on a lot of factors, such as where in the world you learned English, and there is no such thing as objective correctness when it comes to such a broad and variable language as English.
I am aware of and agree with that third bullet point, so my asking which phrases were more “correct” was a bit of a trick question. It was a good way to get a feel for people’s linguistic instincts.
I also thought it was interesting that participants who never wanted to be called they were slightly more likely to side with the most popular view on what is “correct” across the board, and less likely to say “both are correct”.
~
PLURAL VS. SINGULAR THEY
I actually ran another version of this survey first and then scrapped the responses, because it was clear that my survey design was leading to some pretty confused and unhelpful data! Among other things, it asked participants whether they preferred singular or plural they for themselves and then directed them to particular questions based on their answer, and the comments suggested that people either didn’t really understand the distinction or meant different things by those terms, even though I had added help text.
This is my understanding:
Singular they isthey/them pronouns when used to refer to one person. Verbs are usually plural (i.e. “they are” rather than “they is”), and themself andthemselves are both common. Example usage: They are getting themself a cup of coffee. They bought themselves a nice new hat.
Plural they isthey/them pronouns when used to refer to two or more people. Verbs are usually plural (i.e. “they are” rather than “they is”), and themselves is almost universal (with the exception of regional variations such as theirselves). Example usage: They are getting themselves some coffee together. They all bought hats for themselves.
Some plural/multiple people refer to themselves as “we” and prefer to be addressed as “they/themselves” (which they call plural they) because they are a group of individuals sharing one body.
The reason I initially asked directly about singular vs. plural they is because I was concerned that plural/multiple systems would cause some statistical confusion. Many plural people have asked me to add plural they to the checkbox list of pronouns in the annual survey, but since it has never been entered by over 1% of participants I have never had reason to do so. As far as I knew, the only difference between singular and plural they is the reflexive (themself for singular and themselves for plural), so I wanted to be able to investigate non-plural people in isolation, and I was curious to know about any trends or differences. I wanted to find out if I should be doing anything differently to ensure that Gender Census statistics are helpful.
So, I swapped out the badly-designed question for a straight-up checkbox, a “check this box if you’re plural/multiple” type of thing, with a note that participants should fill in the survey once per body wherever possible, and then I made some graphs.
Here you can see that plural systems were still more likely to prefer people to use themself to refer to them rather than themselves, though the margin is narrower:
Plural participants were also more likely to say that they sometimes or never want people to refer to them as they, whereas non-plural people were more likely to want people to always refer to them as they (or they just feel fine about it):
There’s not a lot in it, though. It’s all relatively evenly distributed, with no strong leader in either category there.
For the curious: 8.2% of participants checked the plural/multiple box.
In conclusion: plural and non-plural people alike all prefer people to use themself when referring to them in the third person using they/them pronouns, and I feel that there is probably no need to ask about plurality or separate out data from plural people in future. (Asking about this and seeing the responses did in part prompt me to start an anonymous feedback form for plural participants of the Gender Census, though.)
~
THE SIR/MA’AM ISSUE
For several years participants have been asking me in the feedback box of the annual Gender Census survey to also ask about gender-inclusive or nonbinary-specific alternatives to sir and ma’am. I’ve largely not done anything about it, because when informally asking around I’ve generally had the response “just don’t say sir or ma’am, just leave it out altogether.” I live in the UK, where if someone calls you sir/ma’am you’re either looking at home in a fancy restaurant for billionnaires or you’re being made fun of - or sometimes both.
However, during this year’s annual survey while talking about it in a little more depth I learned that there are places in the world where sir/ma’amis very common, required for politeness, and basically inescapable. Nonbinary people in those areas are really struggling, because they do actually need a nonbinary-friendly stand-in for those terms - omitting the sir/ma’am isn’t an option.
Again, the location question was asked so that anyone else downloading the spreadsheet of responses can analyse by region to find out whether sir/ma’am is ubiquitous in particular regions and in which contexts it is used, and can even check whether there is a region-specific alternative to sir/ma’am emerging. I asked several questions about sir/ma’am, including about reasons/contexts and personal preferences, and some superficial analysis is included on the spreadsheet of responses.
But the juicy bit is the nonbinary-specific and gender-inclusive alternative words, right?
[The counting formula is case-sensitive so I made everything lowercase to make the count a little more accurate.]
Suggested gender-inclusive alternatives to sir/ma’am
mx - 4.1% (151)
friend - 2.2%
comrade - 1.2%
captain - 0.7%
ser - 0.5%
mate - 0.4%
m - 0.3%
per - 0.3%
boss - 0.3%
folks - 0.3% (9)
Suggested nonbinary-specific alternatives to sir/ma’am
mx - 8.3% (250)
mix - 0.7%
tiz - 0.5%
friend - 0.4%
ser - 0.4%
comrade - 0.3%
mixter - 0.3%
captain - 0.2%
ind - 0.2%
mir - 0.2% (6)
So it looks like Mx (pronounced “mix” or with a toneless vowel that sounds a bit like “mux”) is the clear winner in both categories. If you want to try to introduce a gender-neutral version of sir/ma’amin your area this one is probably your best bet.
~
SPIVAK VS. ELVERSON
This wasn’t part of the same survey! It was a Twitter poll and a Mastodon poll that ran for one week and ended today, and I’m putting it here because it has to go somewhere.
Sometimes people refer to the ey/em ande/em “versions” of the Spivak pronoun set, which makes my eyebrows do things, because they’re not both Spivak. They are distinct established pronoun sets with their own names.
Spivak - e/em/eir/eirs/emself - written about by Michael Spivak in the 1990s. [source: Nonbinary Wiki]
Elverson - ey/em/eir/eirs/emself - created by Christine M Elverson in the 1970s. [source: Nonbinary Wiki]
The Elverson set is older, but it’s less well-known for some reason, so they’re assumed to be variants of Spivak due to the similarity in spelling.
I was recently asked how we can know which is more popular, given the “oh this checkbox option is close enough, I’ll just choose that instead of typing in my very slightly different set” effect and the “hmm this checkbox option is very close to my set, I’m probably meant to choose this one” effect, plus the boost that checkbox options get with the “oh I hadn’t thought of that one but yeah, why not” effect. Spivak (e/em) is on the checkbox list of pronouns in the annual survey, so it appears to be much more popular than Elverson (ey/em)… but is it really?
I ran a poll on both TwitterandMastodon, and then used a spreadsheet to extract the useful numbers. There were 141 relevant votes after one week. I wouldn’t usually make annual-survey-altering decisions based on a sample that small, but in this case the results are extremely decisive:
It seems that the highest proportion of people who like at least one of the sets are happy for both to be used, at 48%. 45% prefer ey/em (Elverson) and 7% prefer e/em (Spivak). This is pretty stunning! I’ve been presenting e/em (Spivak) as a checkbox option on the Gender Census annual survey for years, possibly since the first survey in 2013, and because it’s a checkbox option it seems to be consistently a lot more popular than ey/em (Elverson). That’s 4.3% and 0.6% respectively in the 2021 survey. But this poll suggests that actually ey/em (Elverson) is much more popular when the two pronoun sets are viewed on a level playing field.
When you remove all “I don’t mind” votes, you get this:
Over 6 times as many people prefered Elverson!
I will definitely be adding Elverson to the Gender Census next year, just so that we can split the e/emandey/emvotes and really get to the bottom of this.
Most neo pronouns are okay. Like sie/hir, ae/aer, ze/zim, etc.
Other neo pronouns (like emoji pronouns) are just ridiculous.
If you arent comfortable using they/them and feel like it/its is dehumanizing, go ahead and use neo pronouns. The only people that wont like it will be the ones that hate change.
Abt your question in the tags about MOGAI, not sure which part you were wondering about, but MOGAI actually stands for “Marginalized Orientations, Gender Alignments, & Intersex” which simply makes it an alternate umbrella term for people who’re LGBTQ+ (though not everyone who’s LGBTQ+ also IDs as MOGAI, and they don’t have to; they just functionally can fit under it by its definition).
As for emojiself pronouns, I just want to note that they’re really more like “fun” rather than ridiculous. For the most part, they’re similar to if you’d use an alternative nickname in online spaces which you wouldn’t use IRL. It’s just a nickname someone wanted to use online because they like it and it’s fun.
So I don’t quite think describing it as ridiculous is quite fair. But otherwise, thank you for sharing the neopronoun love, feel free to ask some questions, as I’m a linguist who’s studied these things.
I’m generally pretty neutral on the dysphoria debate and LGBT issues but MOGAI and neopronouns have my brain dying
“Pronouns are gendered” this very much screams of cissexism, in fact this is almost word for word something my transphobic dad has said to me.
“Neopronouns are useless” if it makes someone more comfortable it is not useless.
They/them has been used as singular since about the 14th century and STILL that doesn’t mean alternate gender neutral pronouns are not beneficial to English.
The main use of they/them is plural. Even when singular, it uses plural verbs (are/have, rather than is/has)—therefore, it breaks subject-verb agreement. The only other pronouns in English that break SV Agreement are you/your—and that’s because you/your used to only be plural. (xx,xx,xx)
Because of both, 1) its main use being plural, and 2) always using plural verbs—English speakers automatically assume they/them is referring to multiple people. The only distinuishment between plural and singular they/them is context, and -self rather than -selves (which not everyone uses).
And some people are fine with that! They’re comfortable using they/them even with its dualism! But other people aren’t!
Some people feel they/them’s dual, plural-verb nature is alienating to them. Some folks would prefer to have an option for themselves that doesn’t break Subject-Verb agreement and is never plural. Or they’re just otherwise uncomfortable with all our current third person pronouns because of their connotations!
So, we’ve got neopronouns! And they do actually follow actual grammatical patterns! I’m a linguist and it’s very clear neopronouns easily reflect standard pronouns!
“They are my friend, I love them. Their cat is a calico, and the calico right here is theirs, they told me that themself.”
“Ne is my friend, I love nem. Nir cat is a calico, and the calico right here is nirs, ne told me that nemself.”
Neopronouns are beneficial to English. They are beneficial to many languages, especially ones with extremely gendered pronouns.
Please practice compassion and understanding instead of mirroring the bigotry of cishet folks.
Unfortunately, a lot of people hate on those who indentify with xenogenders, neopronouns, or other MOGAI related terms. Similarly, a defence often used for these people is that, “most of them are just children,” or something akin this.
And as much as I agree that we should definitely let kids explore their identities in harmless ways, without others stepping in and mocking them, those kind of reubttles also feel… discrediting.
Again, for the younger groups who do identity with such terms, great! But that kind of phrasing makes it sound as if everybody who relates to those labels are just a bunch of misguided kids who will soon grow out of some phase.
Thing is, though. Teens and adults use neopronouns. Teens and adults indetify with xenogenders. So on and so forth. That doesn’t make them any less valid or real. The support is appreciated, but maybe try a less biased argument..?
This morning, Hope went to the park. I went with Hope. And Hope brought Hopes frisbee. At least I think it was Hopes. By the end of the day, Hope started throwing the frisbee to Hopeself.
This morning, Serenity went to the park. I went with Serenity. And Serenity brought Serenitys frisbee. At least I think it was Serenitys. By the end of the day, Serenity started throwing the frisbee to Serenityself.
Blunt/Blunt/Blunts/Blunts/Bluntself
This morning, Blunt went to the park. I went with Blunt. And Blunt brought Blunts frisbee. At least I think it was Blunts. By the end of the day, Blunt started throwing the frisbee to Bluntself.
Envy/Envy/Envys/Envys/Envyself
This morning, Envy went to the park. I went with Envy. And Envy brought Envys frisbee. At least I think it was Envys. By the end of the day, Envy started throwing the frisbee to Envyself.
Unknown/Unknown/Unknowns/Unknowns/Unknownself
This morning, Unknown went to the park. I went with Unknown. And Unknown brought Unknowns frisbee. At least I think it was Unknowns. By the end of the day, Unknown started throwing the frisbee to Unknownself.
Orange/Orange/Oranges/Oranges/Orangeself
This morning, Orange went to the park. I went with Orange. And Orange brought Oranges frisbee. At least I think it was Oranges. By the end of the day, Orange started throwing the frisbee to Orangeself.
Throughout #autgust I will be posting portraits of other Autistic People of Color to celebrate the diversity of autistics and challenge the way society has engrained in us to see autism.
“You don’t look autistic.”
Yes I do.
Here’s Part 1… Everyone in this^ post is a nonbinary autistic person of color. These are volunteers.
Used the 3 flags for this set of pronouns! You may request pronoun userboxes, but if your set doesn’t have a flag, yours will just use the mogai symbol! Please remember to add the color you’d like.
“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.
Xie had only been on this planet for around 40 cycles. Xie had arrived in a community district along with the rest of xirs team. They’re were only 10 of them as that had been all the planetary admins would allow. This was meant to be a study of the native culture and an exchange of information. The locals had no intention of joining the Coalition and xir team wasn’t affiliated with the Coalition so this had been a relatively peaceful academic excursion.
This was xir first trip planetside since xie had left Earth to study intergalactic sociology on the station. At first it had been slightly strange to be on a planet that wasn’t Earth but xie had gotten used to it.
Until today.
Xie and a few of the younger members of the team had been invited to the coast with some of the locals and for some reason upon getting there a few of the (xir included) had begun to feel uneasy.
J had been the one to notice that all the ones who felt uneasy had been born on Earth and had begun to speculate if this was some sort of bacteria that they had picked up.
Xie was the first one to notice the starry sky. The moonless starry sky.
Then xie noticed how still their body of water was. It was as large as an ocean, but it was still.
“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.
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.
[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.
Notes: i don’t know if there are other xenic terms that are already known, but i thought it wouldn’t hurt to try to make my own. the only one i know is commonly used is ‘xenic’.
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