It's taken me many moons to arrive at this, but a tweet thread today clinches it for me. Y'all were wrong to guilt me into putting pronouns in my bio when I was uncomfortable doing so. Please don't do that to anyone else.

Normalizing public pronouns is good, "mandatory or you're transphobic" is bad. I've seen too many actual trans people hurt by this, and I'm still figuring my stuff out. She/her is fine for me, but it's complicated, and I think you did me wrong by making me "wear" it.

I am comfortable enough with "she/her" not to cringe or feel dysphoric when someone uses it regarding me. I have, however, become increasingly uncomfortable actively "branding" myself a woman in any way or "advertising" anything about my gender.

I was cornered into it because of the strong waves of disapproval and shaming (largely from cis people) about the privilege of having my gender just "guessed correctly" etc. but if you're saying that you don't know me, and I don't want to be having this conversation with you.

I don't even want to be asked what my pronouns are, and if you ask me, I'll tend to say, "Whatever." That means people will default to she/her because of the way I look, and that's FINE. Being called she/her does not offend me nearly as much as having to talk about my gender.

My gender is, "Leave me the hell alone about it, I didn't choose it, it literally is not part of my identity in any way, but the English language requires pronouns, so use whatever one rolls off your tongue when you look at me, it's fine."

I'm not going to take them out of my bio, because I just... I just don't CARE. They've been there this long. But please don't do this to anyone else again, especially if they make it clear it's not because they think THERE ARE ONLY TWO GENDERS AND MINE IS OBVIOUS!!!

And here is where the Liberal Cis Brigade comes in and tells me, "You have the LUXURY of not caring about your gender because you're cis!!" And again, if you're saying that, YOU DO NOT KNOW ME. And I do not owe you an explanation when this shit's hard to talk about with my BFF.

For the record, my gender is... not straightforward. There is both physical and psychological stuff that has made me relinquish the idea of womanhood to a certain extent and feel more comfortable in a gray genderless kind of mental space. But "she" is still fine.

TL:DR - stop being the pronoun police. If you have Cis Guilt and want to help trans people, there are plenty of charities to donate to, or you could support or signal-boost trans people's work, or vote trans people into office, or.... literally anything else.

I'm not really that mad, by the way. I just tend to use blunt language when I feel strongly about something, and for me, realizing it was actually NOT me who was wrong this time gives me Very Strong Feelings.