Friend wants to be known as 'they'

[namechangeindiana]

I know there's a lot of discussion about this going on at the moment, but I read the threads and don't understand a lot of the terminology. I haven't done a huge amount of reading about it, but I know that I feel uncomfortable with it and don't really 'get' it.

I keep forgetting and calling my friend 'she' or 'her'. This then ends in a minor heated discussion and me trying to defend the fact that it takes time for me to change the language I am used to using. I try, I really do. We have been friends for 24 years.

Has 'they/them' always been a thing? Am I completely awful for thinking it's strange and not being entirely comfortable with it?

Sorry if I sound naive or am posting something that has been done a million times. I've not thought about it much until now. Willing to learn and hear other people's views...

Preparing to be flamed...

But I do agree you should try if that is what they want.

No it's not. The speaker chooses the words they use

I don't get this at all.
Assuming you're female (obviously no idea if you are) going by your logic I can refer to you as he every time I speak to you?
After all, I'm the speaker, I get to choose.

I must admit that the use of "they" does confuse me slightly as to me, it's plural and I'd probably find it hard to get my head round at first.
I would try my utmost to get it right though as I'm not a massive dick.
It's not all about me.

I've had this too and everyone said surely you don't use pronouns when you're with them but there are several occasions where it can happen. An example would be in a restaurant when the server brings multiple meals it's very natural to say "that's for her" "the lasagne is his"..etc I appreciate you could say "that's theirs" but it just isn't what we are used to where as we tend to say "his/hers/he/she" without even thinking because we have learned to associate those pronouns with peoples biological sex.

[quote RiverCrossing]@Bmidreams Gosh you sound like a treat.

OP, with the greatest respect, it’s not about you. Research the links between suicide rates and use of preferred names/pronouns. If you care about your friend then you’ll start remembering what they have asked of you.[/quote]
If you have researched the stats, why not quote them here? How many people off themselves because people won't refer to them as they?
Precisely, how many?

Identity.
Weird how we all managed perfectly well without an “identity” until two or three years ago.
The vast majority of people have no gender identity, and the ones that do are sexist in the extreme.

I know it is annoying there is a strong link between ASD and gender confusion.
My DD has ASD asked to be referred to as they, she is fragile lost and looking to fit on somewhere usually with other's who are similar weird eccentric if you like. Thankfully I've been slowly steering her back explaining it is not as simple as be kind excepting gender. I explained about women's spaces and teenagers who regretting transformation it is the media too it is steering lost souls towards big changes.
I'd go along with my friends wishes. The they are their rarely pops up.

I agree with a pp that you cannot request for someone to speak about you in a certain way, it's up to you how you describe HER.

However, if you don't conform to what 'they' want and call her 'they' then you will likely lose a friend. So, it's up to you OP...carry on calling her 'her' or change to 'they'. I think I would personally move on from such a self-obsessed person.

The word "they" will always signal the plural to me. Why don't non-binary people find a more suitable word to use as a pronoun?

Research the links between suicide rates and use of preferred names/pronouns

Bullshit. Stop weaponising suicide. So manipulative!

YANBU !

If it isn’t a big deal, presumably the OP can carry on referring to her friend with whatever pronouns she wishes?
@FamilyOfAliens Imagine your name is Milly and I said to you "I don't want to call you Milly, I want to call you Lily". Then you'd probably think I'm being insane but also that I'm being rude to call you by your name. You could say to me "it's not a big deal - just use my real name", equally I could say to you "it's not a big deal - just be called Lily". Do you see how those two things are not the same? You should call someone else what they want to be called, not what you want to call them.
Let's be even clearer. If your name was Elizabeth and you had a friend that called you Lizzie. Imagine you hate Lizzie and want to be called Betty - everyone calls you Betty. Imagine if that one friend insisted on calling you Lizzie, even though you hated it, even though you asked her not to, even though it's not what people call you - it's just plain rude.

I imagine the reason it makes you feel uncomfortable is that you feel your speech is being controlled. In no other context can anyone request you to refer to something as x when you feel it is more accurate to use y. Your friend is asking you to collude with her in a pretense and, considering that it is leading to heated arguments, her request is turning into a demand.

Making demands about how other people must speak about you in the 3rd person is obnoxious.

No more obnoxious than forcing unwanted descriptions onto someone. 🤷🏻‍♀️

I couldn't pander to this nonsense and level of self obsession. It's my opinion. Don't bother arguing with it. I don't care what you think.

I'm with you. I roll my eyes so hard every time I read this nonesense. The second someone demands IRL that I refer to them as "they", will be the second I disassociate from them (although I can't see it happening where I live tbh). Daftness of the concept aside, it's clumsy language and just grammatically wrong.

@ECBC

If you are really this person’s friend you can refer to them as they have asked, it’s really not that difficult. This isn’t about you, it’s their identity.

It is difficult though. If you have known someone as her/she for 24 years, it's almost guaranteed that at first you will slip up- with the best will in the world. For example, if I am with a non-binary friend, and I meet another friend (lets call this person A) A: Hi, Dancing! Me: Hi! This is my friend __. A: (makes some conversation) So how do you two known each other? Me: We met at work at _. She was my supervisor.

See? It's almost automatic, especially when you are in the flow of the conversation. It really would take time for it to be automatic to say "them" or "they".

This isn’t about you, it’s their identity.

This isn’t about you, it’s their identity ego.

Fixed that for you.

Using actual humans as "proof" in your argument would be gross even if it wasn't entirely wrong.

I think the gross part is denying the existence of actual humans because they are inconvenient to the argument you want to make.

Referring to a female as “he” is a lie. Being female is not an identity, it is material reality. So the comparison above makes no sense.

Even if you refute the concept of gender entirely, this is not accurate. Intersex people exist. They are a small minority, but they are proof that humans are not all located within a binary sex model.

What's that got to do with anything? A woman who likes football and farting is still a woman. She's not gender-neutral.

For a small number of people it might be difficult to determine if they are male or female. This is fine, and we should be sympathetic.

A larger number of people don't conform to gender stereotypes because of their appearance.

But that's not to say a 6'2" woman is actually a man. No, she's just a taller than average woman. Equally a man with a tiny penis is not 'non-binary'. He's just part of the diversity of being male, as is women who have 'male' hobbies are still women.

Declaring yourself to have special pronouns is just silly, and sexist to boot.

Oh god... this would get old really quick! How tedious!

@LemonadeAndDaisyChains

No it's not. The speaker chooses the words they use

I don't get this at all.
Assuming you're female (obviously no idea if you are) going by your logic I can refer to you as he every time I speak to you?
After all, I'm the speaker, I get to choose.

I must admit that the use of "they" does confuse me slightly as to me, it's plural and I'd probably find it hard to get my head round at first.
I would try my utmost to get it right though as I'm not a massive dick.
It's not all about me.

Maybe speaker gets to choose when the subject requires something different from the expected? Imagine the knots you'd have to tie yourself into in a crowd of people you didn't know well, trying to remember what word they preferred when there's no obvious marker?

The word "they" will always signal the plural to me. Why don't non-binary people find a more suitable word to use as a pronoun?
They did. They used ze/zim and xe/xim but people didn't like that they had to learn knew words...

I think the gross part is denying the existence of actual humans because they are inconvenient to the argument you want to make.

Oh get over yourself.

It does take time to adjust any language which is habitual.

Someone I know wanted us all to call them a different name, moving from a shortened version to a longer version. Eventually I cracked it and now never think of them in the short version, but it did take time and I did make a few mistakes and also had to think very consciously about it.

I have also had to swap genders when speaking about an academic who is transgender, that didn't take as long as I didn't know the person myself and so it only took one round of teaching to get that correct.

It is hard though and not just a question of preference, you have to retrain your thinking. Worth doing for your friend, but it's not as easy as some poster are making out.

@TheFormerPorpentinaScamander
Re your friend's wife who prefers to be they not she. Are they happy about being a wife or would they prefer to be a spouse?