Using they

why am I so bad at using they out loud jfc

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

— shelby reliability engineer (@shelbyspees) August 27, 2020

this is a self-callout

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

— shelby reliability engineer (@shelbyspees) August 27, 2020

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.

I'm mentally misgendering them before it happens verbally.

— shelby reliability engineer (@shelbyspees) August 27, 2020

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.

"Why do I do this?" is less important to answer than "How do I change this?"

— shelby reliability engineer (@shelbyspees) August 27, 2020

I've been able to retrain other automatic thought patterns in the past just with creating word associations.

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)

— shelby reliability engineer (@shelbyspees) August 27, 2020