girl help I'm getting they/them'd by well-meaning people who don't know what a tomboy is
This feeling is strange and complicated. On the one hand it's legit quite cool that nonbinary pronouns are becoming more widespread! On the other, I've spent my whole life pursuing interests and hobbies and ideals that weren't seen as particularly feminine, and when I was younger this was a major source of bullying and stress alongside some generalized misogyny taking the form of "you can't do or be anything you think is cool because you are innately inferior and to do otherwise means violating your nature," and it took me a while to conclude that this was just straight horseshit top to bottom and I could do whatever I wanted and present myself however I wanted without in any way being Not A Girl, and now it's like the exact same concept has flipped sides and is coming from a point of theoretical validation but still calculates out to "that's not very ladylike of you, you must be something else". anyway she/her thanks gang
I think it's like. the understanding that the gender binary is a small part of a much wider space of identities is separate from the understanding that a lot of that gender binary is a false dichotomy that artificially walls off universal human experiences behind specific pronouns and while the first concept is gaining wider understanding the second is lagging a little, which means "I am a girl and I like doing boy things" reads as "oh I've heard about this, you must be one of the Others who don't do the binary" rather than "the concept of 'boy things' is stupid from the jump"
just to be 100% clear
what this post is NOT talking about: using they/them pronouns for someone you don't know, aren't sure of, hasn't had a chance to introduce themselves, etc.
what this post IS talking about: my highly personal experience seeing some people "correcting" my commenters that were using she/her pronouns for me, because, despite me exclusively using she/her pronouns and saying so whenever asked, through no action of mine they had gotten the idea that I was using "they/them".
girl help I put a nuanced personal experience on the reading comprehension website
As someone who is a somewhat masculine presenting afab they/them using non-binary person: a) sorry people misgender you and tumblr has no nuance b) I think a big part of the problem is that a lot of people think "non binary, uses they/them" literally means "(probably cis) woman who rejects traditional femininity".
So non-binary people like me are treated like gnc women, not expected to be feminine but expected to identify 100% with women and 0% with men. And there is active erasure and even hostility towards non-binary people who too obviously identify as a man and/or don't identify as a woman at all and/or identify as something else (which are all distinct things!)
The fact that some people treat "they/them" as "she/her for gnc women"(*) doesn't make it any less misgendering to apply to an actual gnc woman. But it's just... misgendering all around :/
(*)No criticism intended of gnc women who do use they/them. The point is there's a massive spectrum and you can't assume what box someone fits in based on vibes.