I am tired of being a "nice" nonbinary person. I'm tired of being "understanding" of your mistakes with my pronouns. I'm tired of constantly validating you in your pitiful attempts to actually respect me as a fellow human being.
I am angry.
I worked closely with a person who came from several places of power, and had recently been through a whirlwind of training on social justice oriented things. I made concessions for this, trying to be understanding and accepting of the fact that he was still learning, still trying his best to catch up. He never once got my pronouns right, but at least he would correct himself... right?
I recently found out that over a year later, after repeating the same social justice oriented training, after talking about supporting people who use nontraditional pronouns many, many times, he is still apparently physically incapable of getting my pronouns right.
I am angry.
I make a special effort to approach professors that I've never had before so that I can be sure they know I use nontraditional pronouns. I am consistently, unfailingly, met with excuses before I am ever given acceptance.
"Well, I always struggle with pronouns so I just don't use them. I'll just call you your name." "Really? You use those pronouns? But what about the grammatical impact of that?" "Oh, thank you for letting me know your pronouns! I'll do my best to get a hold on them, but you should correct me if I slip up!"
I am angry.
Stop placing the burden of respecting me back on my shoulders. It's not my job to be okay with you discarding a facet of my identity because it inconveniences you. It's not my job to validate the existence of nontraditional pronouns to you. It's not my job to comfort you about my pronouns' effect on your beloved grammatical structures (which, I have to mention, you didn't care about until I brought up pronouns...Interesting). It's not my job to constantly be on edge for your mistakes, to remind you (gently because you're still learning!) that I've specifically asked you not to refer to me that way, to be your babysitter while you toddle your way to respect and decency. I'm tired of holding my professors' hands to get them to recognize my pronouns, and still constantly being mispronouned day after day.
That coworker that I mentioned? We were working as orientation leaders for my college. We were the first people students would see, and they would be following our lead on a lot of things because of that. My coworker's endless slip ups around my pronouns resulted in him basically telling every student that it was okay to completely ignore or disrespect my identity. I mean, if he as a campus leader could do it, why couldn't they, the laypeople, do the same?
Stop giving me excuses instead of respect. Stop telling me that I should be nothing but accommodating to people who won't even refer to me the right way in conversation. Stop assuming that I'm going to shoulder the burden of your learning process. Your mistakes hurt me, day after day, over and over. And I'm tired of pretending that I'm not angry.
