The first thing is that I’ve had all fanfiction submissions and @ mentions this morning, so I’m going to be spreading them out a little so the day isn’t completely fic. Everything will get posted this week and I absolutely encourage folks to keep on submitting and @ mentioning (you cannot spam this blog) but I just want to explain why something may go up the next day instead of today.
It’s so cool to see so many folks really getting their creativity on this week! You’re all so talented! I keep grinning every time because you’re just offering up really cool, thoughtful, interesting pieces, and it’s so exciting to see new things pop up in my inbox or activity page. When else do I get to go from handwarmers to voidpunk art with stops via Doctor Who fanfiction and autistic aro-ace characters?
The second thing is that I want to let people to know that I am changing my preferred pronouns to ze/hir/hir/hirs. I was out as agender before the increasing normalisation of non-binary identities and neopronouns on Tumblr, and, at the time, singular they was the only pronoun set that had half a chance of anyone else using it. So I shrugged and went with it.
But “they” has come to feel like a pronoun that is both generically neutral and adopted for other people’s convenience--not a true expression of my specific relationship to gender and genderlessness. It’s a pronoun set adopted for everybody but me. I think, in 2019, it’s time to choose pronouns that represent me and what I want to be as opposed to clinging the vain hope it’ll be more accepted.
(Exactly two cis people in offline interactions ever used my correct pronouns, so I’m going to be misgendered anyway.)
I’ve been writing in this set for years, I like the way the possessive and the objective case are the same as in the she/her/her/hers set, and it doesn’t have that need to switch between singular and plural verb forms if you’re alternating between using a name and using the pronoun.
So, even though this means updating approximately a thousand bios in my books and all around the internet, I’ll be making that change.
If you want to know the pronunciation, this mypronouns.org article has a good explanation. If you want to know how they’re written, I’ve got a couple of short stories: Hallo, Aro: Unspoken and A Gift of Naming (a rare not-aro piece) both use this set for the narrating protagonists.
I accept that some folks may need to use “they” as an auxiliary pronoun set, and I’m not going to rage at anyone for using “they” to refer to me, but if you can use my preferred set, I’d be grateful.
Thank you so much for reading, and an extra thank you to the fabulous @the-rose-owl and @crimsonsquare for already using them. I’ve seen them both use “ze” since I started questioning and it’s felt really good to see it--something I’m taking as an indication that this is right for me.
(To emphasise, of course: this is my personal relationship to singular they and not meant to represent anyone else’s relationship to those pronouns.)