1. Today is International Pronouns Day (I have learned). I'm fed up of the really basic scope that conversations around pronouns with cis people seem to be limited to, so this is a thread where I'm just gonna… try and have some thoughts.

2. Giving pronouns is good because it implicitly challenges the idea that pronouns (and by extension, gender) can be reliably inferred by appearance. Pretty basic point. But.

3. Of course, for the majority, gender can be, and is, routinely inferred from appearance. It's important to note this suits some trans people, and fails some cis people.

4. If you're a trans person who has gone through a hell of a lot to be gendered correctly (like everyone* else), it can bloody sting when cis people only start asking/giving pronouns when they know your trans status.

5. This isn't necessarily about not wanting people to know that one is trans, but rather about how the deployment of pronoun discourse can be performed not to bring about structural change, but to render oneself an ally.

6. If you only tidy away the cisnormativity when there’s company present, then, that’s a problem.

7. This is ultimately part of how it becomes possible for a person to acknowledge a person's pronouns explicitly, and then misgender them 5 seconds later. Again... But!

8. This implies people are insincere in their allyship, which for vast majority, I don't believe! The problem I'm trying to point towards is how sincere allies are able to make mistakes over and over, even if it frustrates and upsets them when they do it.

9. Why is this? I think it’s because there’s this idea that gendering people correctly, and with certainty, is about just ‘step 1, be told pronouns’ ‘step 2, remember, use ‘em’, when it’s actually about a massive ontological shift.

10. It takes practice, one has to rewrite what one has passively learned about how gender works in the world. Until they explicitly tell you, you *cannot* know someone’s gender or pronouns.

11. The social mechanism of gendered inference is a cisnormative trap, while also being, for many, a euphoric comfort juxtaposed against transphobic experiences.

12. The reason why ‘trying to remember’ will always risk failure is that it’s an individualised answer to a systemic problem. Only a systemic answer (unlearning gender for everyone you’ve ever known or see) will allow equal conceptualisation of gendered subjects.

13. And don't mistake this for 'everyone has to be non-binary, no-one is allowed gender' - it's simply that everyone gets autonomy, and that depends upon not relying on inferences.

14. OH BUT ALSO because standardising being asked pronouns produces a confessional process, this can be awkward and difficult for anyone who isn’t sure, is renegotiating, or otherwise falls between the cracks. It assumes an ease of knowing and an ease of saying.

15. This can also be deeply contextual. A lot of the time, we don’t need people’s pronouns. Some languages don’t gender their pronouns at all, and so identity and meaning can’t be inferred from them.

16. There isn’t going to be a magic bullet, but I am confident that at least engaging with more structural answers to this as a structural problem will fail some people a little less. I'm glad of allies' sincerity, but what I'm looking for is change.