Description: A five panel comic. In the first picture the main character leaves and a co-worker says "See ya, dude". In the second panel, the protagonist is in a supermarket and the cashier says "Hey man." In the third panel, the protagonist is on a train and someone on the phone says "Hello, sir." In the fourth panel, the protagonist enters an apartment and says "I' home." and is welcomed by a woman who rushes towards her and says "THERE she is!" The two of them hug in the fifth panel, while the woman says "How's my beautiful girlfriend doing??"
Art by Homunculus101
Not looking for sympathy or advice, just here's my trend over time to deal with this.
I am making considerable effort (and regularly failing because damn verbal ticks plus ADHD got hands) to avoid using any gendered or gender neutral terms as the folks in my community change pronouns and names regularly. I just got pretty harshly scolded the other day for using a gender neutral pronoun to refer to a person who told me to use it two months ago, but now it makes that person feel bad and this was the first I heard of it. Almost all of these people are not fully out so I have to keep a mental map of who gets what names and pronouns get used with what people.
I cannot learn and unlearn them fast enough, keep the right context of who is is the room, and keep up with current preferred names and pronouns which change semi-regularly. I cannot overstate how hard this is for my ADHD ass.
Especially when person A is out to B but not C, and D is out to C but not B, and I'm talking to B but C walks in the room, but then B leaves and I'm alone with C. This seems to happen to me several times a week. The mental gymnastics is absolutely thrashing my CPU. And I am trying my damnedest but keep fucking it up and making my friends sad.
I think I'm too ADHD to use pronouns, so I just attempt to use people's current names directly (still keeping attention to who they are out to) or just never speak about them to others and use no names or pronouns at all when talking directly. The latter is easier overall, so that's generally what I aim for. Never talking about these people feels like erasure or something but that seems like the best way to avoid causing what seems to be significant emotional pain and/or accidental outing.
There's some where it's stable enough to at least use names directly, but those are few. And those still aren't out at large, so I'm still faced with the accidental outing issue which is very real.
I guess I'm doing something right because it seems I'm always in the know. I legit want to be an ally to folks and support them in whatever. Just damn I'm not smart enough. I need like a universal translator.
Out of curiosity, what age range are these folks?
I'm having to deal with some people in the "coming of age" range and it is rough. One of them says their preferred pronouns shift constantly, but people should be able to tell based on how they are acting in the moment whether they feel feminine or masculine, to use 'they' is a cop out signifiying that someone doesn't care enough to tell.. The person decided mid conversation they felt more feminine and was disappointed I didn't swap without being told...
I try to be understanding, but folks need to recognize that even if their own internal life and identity is a rich and complicated thing, they need to simplify it for those of us on the outside and understand we can't possibly see inside their mind to understand all these factors that they think should be obvious.
Ages are 18-40.
Yeah that is pretty close to my experience, but thankfully none have been that fluid about it. Just changing week by week instead of minute by minute
Yeah, before the newest one, the most complicated one was on the scale of weeks. And yes they were also kind of upset if you were one or two iterations behind, despite not having seen them since their last two changes....
I remember a bit of this from when I was their age among my peers, and generally whatever it was settled in by 22 or so, a few years of indpendence tended to have people settle in, or at least if they were going to change it was going to be with more conviction than the teenage years.
I think some presume there's some "wholeness" associated with a gender identity and keep juggling around being disappointed that presumed wholeness/rightness is elusive. At some point you accept some degree of wrongness/incompletness is just the human condition, and it's not too bad if you don't overthink it, just pick the path that minimizes that feeling and roll with it.
Same.. also trying but there’s limited marbles rolling around up there lol