2 minutes
Using they
why am I so bad at using they out loud jfc
— Shelby Spees (she/her) (@shelbyspees) August 27, 2020
I wrote college term papers and final exam essays using neopronouns a decade ago, you think I would have gotten a handle on this shit by now
this is a self-callout
— Shelby Spees (she/her) (@shelbyspees) August 27, 2020
because I worry that my internal work of dismantling binary gender assumptions has been superficial
and that my continued failure to get better about this is causing harm to people I care about and admire
Putting on my descriptivist sociolinguist hat: I have zero problem using singular "they" for unnamed people. It's with people I know and talk to who use "they" that I slip up.
— Shelby Spees (she/her) (@shelbyspees) August 27, 2020
I'm mentally misgendering them before it happens verbally.
That's why I think there's a larger underlying problem in my head. I'm putting people in these gender buckets they specifically asked not to be put into.
— Shelby Spees (she/her) (@shelbyspees) August 27, 2020
"Why do I do this?" is less important to answer than "How do I change this?"
I've been able to retrain other automatic thought patterns in the past just with creating word associations.
— Shelby Spees (she/her) (@shelbyspees) August 27, 2020
Might try that with "they" like, "they're cool" or "they is cool" (because coincidentally, all the people I know who use ”they” are really cool)