Preferences

Happy New Year! It’s been a while since I wrote a blog post, been too busy having cancer treatment (I’ll update you at some point on that if you haven’t been following me on Twitter or Facebook – suffice to say it’s all going swimmingly so far, fingers crossed!)

Once more, I’ve been thinking about my gender and how I express it. Pronouns have become a talking-point over the last few years, with a lot of gender-critical people having meltdowns over them, and despite the fact that they use pronouns everyday, they don’t seem to understand them…

For the majority of transgender people, pronouns are important, they reflect who they are and it’s a way for other people to respect them. That’s why the phrase “preferred pronouns” has been discredited. The pronouns are not a matter of preference, they are a matter of fact and non-negotiable.

For me, they are a preference. As someone who is gender fluid and trans femme, I can’t call myself a woman, that’s not who I claim to be. I mentally can’t escape the biological reality of my male body, even if I wanted to. So, for me, my pronouns are what I prefer to be called.

I would prefer to be called she or them. I’m not overly fond of he, it makes me clench in a weird way, but I’m not going to fight you over it. Same for my name, I would prefer you called me Catie, but I won’t ignore you if you call me Craig. There are people who probably will never call me Catie, but I can’t just cut them out of my life because of that.

I’m not the sort of person who wants to rock the boat. I just want to live my life, to wear what I want to wear and be who I want to be. So, I have my preferences and I’d prefer you to respect them!