[243/365] pronoun work

[cosmolinguist]

I mostly had a day of no meetings, lots of work to do, loud music to keep me company (Public Service Broadcasting). It went okay!

I was a little worried about the one meeting I did have; it was one of those regular ones where I'm not always sure if people are going to turn up, if anyone will have things to say, if they'll find it useful. But it went well!

And at the end, one person asked me if I could hang on for a minute to talk to him. I could, and we talked a little about the topic of the meeting. But then he also asked me about a new colleague of his (who, luckily, I know of from LGBT+ stuff) who is apparently the first person he's known to use they/them pronouns. He wants to be good at this, he doesn't know how.

It felt weird to interrupt and correct someone older and more senior to me at work but I absolutely went into regular-queer-guy mode, offering quick "they"s every time he used the wrong pronoun. Very crossing-the-streams to be doing this at work though, an odd feeling.

He was very receptive to my corrections and suggestions (afterwards, diffrentcolours told me "I heard you say 'grammar was written by dead white men'," heh; I did because whatever my colleague had googled on this subject mentioned that some people might not like this because grammar, and he didn't seem impressed by that anyway but I wanted to reinforce that).

And at the end I told him it was good to ask someone else about this rather than (not that I put it in these words) to put the burden of explaining on the they/them pronoun user. I offered to send him a link and he was very keen on that so I did.

I'm also really glad that I'm someone he felt okay about coming to about this. I don't want to be The Tran at work but I haven't been; no one's been weird or transphobic or treated me tokenistically. So I feel like I'm just someone reliable to ask about this kind of stuff, and that feels good. It feels like a bit of an honor to get to help someone get their head around this kind of thing for the first time, honestly.

Comments

[azurelunatic]

I am pleased with your co-worker! Asking questions of someone else! Practicing using their pronouns and practicing getting corrected!

[sfred]

<3

[jesse_the_k]

Ahhhhh, how lovely all around!

[barakta]

Yay for Cow-orker having the guts to ask and yay to you for taking the time and spoons to be as kind and clear as possible.

I'm a huge fan of a third-party doing the answerings. I was one of a trans friend's "ask this human Qs if you want to know shit so I don't have to deal emotionally" person, several years back so that people who needed the basics got told who to ask and friend didn't have to deal. I don't think I had to deal with anyone, but the idea of delegating was clever.

[cosmolinguist]

Yeah I think he just asked someone else because it's the British thing to do (you know, not make a fuss) but hey whatever works!

[ivy]

Solid work, on both your parts! I hope it makes your colleague's life easier and more frictionless.

[cosmolinguist]

I hope so too!

[silveradept]

Glad to hear that sometime is interested in improving themselves and choose to not make the person themselves carry the burden of correcting others.

[tarasacon]

^^^ this

[tarasacon]

Oooh, thanks for the link! I’ve been intending to come out to my siblings about my gender and pronouns, and the best reference I had was less concise.

Plus siblings are awkward because they have 50 years of my being a gendered term that I still sometimes use. I’m working on convincing myself that I don’t have to “pass” as anything, even in how I reference myself, in order to deserve the respect of asking for accurate pronoun usage and references.