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this post was submitted on 04 Oct 2026
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When you have the choice to do something, and you don't do that thing, you're communicating that you don't want to do that thing.
When you have the choice to gender someone correctly, and you don't gender them, you're communicating that you don't want to gender them.
This is called de-gendering and many people will take your willful refusal to do the kind thing as a form of relative cruelty. Because kindness and cruelty are relative.
Also pronouns are usually shorter than names, so using neopronouns saves time over names.
I am bad at remembering names. Remembering a set of pronouns is at least as hard as remembering a name. Pronouns help when I can’t remember names. Having to remember custom pronouns defeats the purpose of pronouns.
All that being said, I’ve never met someone IRL who hasn’t picked one of the three most common pronouns sets (he, her, or they), so I see this as largely hypothetical. The internet does tend to be a space for people to test their more extreme beliefs.
Pronouns have multiple purposes. It's not just for helping people who forget names. It's also for making language flow better, for saving time, and affirming identities.
I would argue that using they/them is gendering someone correctly. They are gender-agnostic pronouns and can refer to any gender, combination of genders, or lack thereof. They are only potentially insulting in that they are less specific-- which is the entire point of a pronoun. I think if it's clear from other interactions that you accept someone's gender identity, it's pretty dumb to be criticized for not being as specific as someone would want you to be when using a term that's supposed to be general.
It's insulting when it's going out of your way to do it. If you only ever used they/them for everyone, it'd just be the norm. But if you call everyone who wants he, she, or they by exactly what they prefer, and neopronouns also as they, you're treating them differently.
Fwiw I both agree that fundamentally neopronouns aren't helping with overall gender perception but also that if someone prefers them I'll do my best to accomodate because it doesn't hurt me to do so.
I've never actually met someone irl who uses neopronouns, so I haven't been able to test how I would actually respond. I tend to use they/them pretty often, including as a replacement for he/she, so I would probably use that unless there was a very strong preference not to. If I did refuse to use a neopronoun for some reason, I'm still not sure that that would qualify as treating them more differently than I would be if I used the neopronouns-- either I would be breaking their preferences or my understanding/usage of the language, there would be no way to behave entirely the same as the situation itself is different. It would certainly be kinder of me to use the neopronouns and for that reason I probably would, but I would not actually believe that to be more correct than using "they", so I'm not really sure.
Do neopronouns typically convey a specific gender identity? It would make more sense to use them if they did, but afaik there is no consistent mapping of neopronoun to gender identity, which makes the argument for using neopronouns instead of "they" kind of moot-- if they do not signify gender then you would not be affirming someone's gender by using them, only their language preferences.
Personally I don't believe language preference is something that must be accommodated in the same way that identity is-- for example I have met cis people who acknowledge that they are cis mechanically but for ideological reasons refuse to be called cis. This makes no sense to me; if the definition of a term is valid then the term itself is. Same goes for pronouns, if they/them is valid (which it always is, since it's gender and plurality agnostic) then I don't think it makes sense to deny its use or mandate the use of another term. It's nice to accommodate someone's pronoun preferences, but I would not consider it bigoted to use non-preferred terms which validate someone's identity.
You would argue it, be right on a technicality the same way a bigot can refer to a binary trans person as them to communicate their refusal to accept their identity.
You can talk all you want about why you do something but if I consistently hear my preferred pronouns being used by you I'm left to make an assumption about your character.
Right, but afaik neopronouns don't have a specific gender they refer to, so using neopronouns instead of they/them isn't any different regarding accommodating your gender identity, it's only different in terms of accommodating your preferences for the language used to describe that gender. It is a signal of potential gender identity denial, but it's such a low-power signal that any other signal should easily overpower it. It should be clear from someone's other behaviors what they believe.
Addendum: Of course, you could easily say that the purpose of a pronoun is also to denote gender, and that refusing to do so by being more vague is an insult; but I don't think it's a good direction to take the language to make gender more embedded in our language. Specifying gender should be optional for when it is necessary, not an obligation to be made whenever you refer to someone. They are more than just their gender identity, and needing to refer to it whenever you refer to them (other than by name) is counterproductive to maintaining that separation, and is also semantically simpler.
Yeah no, I don't want to have to juggle as many pronouns as there are gender identities, because gender is a spectrum and that would result in almost as many pronouns as there are people. Remembering peoples names is bad enough for me already. I don't want to gender anyone unless it's actually relevant to the discussion. It adds unnecessary complexity and increases the probability of accidentally misgendering people drastically. IMO people should be free to express themselves, but in ways that don't require others to actively participate in that expression. You know, clothes and stuff that can actually achieve the kind of variety that gender expression necessitates. Profile pictures, usernames, banner images and profile bios online.
I do sympathize with people trying to break the mold of cishet normative gendered pronouns, but long term I think neopronouns are not a scalable solution and doesn't affect the underlying problem of gendered language (unless one adopts the accelerationist position that people will make so many gendered pronouns that the concept looses meaning that way, but that might be a long shot).
I have the precise opposite opinion, I think society needs to take more responsibility for how we gender others, and not just in language.
We have some ability to control our perceptions. That ability can be trained, and we can learn techniques to do it better. So there's no excuse for perceiving a trans woman as "non-passing". The passing is a thing happening inside everyone else's brain, not in her body! So we need to take responsibility for our own minds and perceive her as female-presenting. And if we can't, that's a harmful skill issue we need to fix.
Pronouns are one of the techniques we can use to hack our perceptions. We can use language to manipulate our minds. That's why neopronouns were invented. That's the benefit of them.
Apologies on the ninja edits on my previous comment (the latter paragraph is new).
Gender isn't biological, so the passing is not happening in their body anyways. Gender is social. If they present themselves as female, then sure, they're female presenting. If someone presents themselves as something more bespoke, then they do just that. Usually it's just a vibe to me. I don't see why it would need to be anything more than that, or why I should change the words I use to refer to them.
Though at the same time I concede that it's probably different for people who have always been changing the way they speak depending on the gender of the person being referred to, and I suppose you're right in that neopronouns have a use in shaking up that framework. Still, I maintain that in the long term ungendered language would be preferable.