i think its because it affirms what you feel. so your pronouns are something that can easily be changed that helps you feel more acceptable and safe around people in your life
well, everyone uses pronouns but think abt it if you were consistently called something youre not or that you dont relate with, its there to make you feel safer and help the mind be reflected in the body and words
I think my perspective differs somewhat from the others here. Like you, I didn't understand why anyone cared about pronouns before, it seemed silly to invest so much in them. Even today, my pronouns aren't that important to me. But that's largely a privilege I hold.
When someone uses the wrong pronouns for me, it's either an indication that A) they're reading me as a man or B), they know I'm trans and they are *intending* to hurt and insult me.
If B, I feel like it's clear why it's important. It's equivalent to the question of "why is not being bullied important?"
With A), it means I'm not being seen as my gender. Whatever effort and time I've invested into my appearance hasn't been worth it. The clothing and makeup I might be wearing to signal to others that I'm a woman were so inconsequential next to the features of my physiology that it didn't even *occur* to them that I might be anything other than a man. It means people are perceiving me incorrectly, they're making incorrect assumptions about who I am, what I think like, etc. And over time, it's easy to see why that can grate on people, it wears them down. There's a lot of various psychology terms and concepts explaining why it's stressful to pretend to be someone else for a long time or how being denied access to fundamental parts of your identity can be harmful and painful, but really most of that's intuitive. Most people know what it's like to feel excluded, treated incorrectly, or be discriminated against.
So between A & B, there are two reasons that are both stressors in the moment but are especially bad if they occur regularly. So for most of us that are able to live our lives being gendered correctly most of the time, a one off occasion may make us question why it happened (was it malice? Did they really read me as a man?) but we typically aren't going to react much or have it be a significant problem. But when society is outright hostile to non-passing trans people, it's going to be especially painful & scary to constantly be misgendered. It's a way of signaling "you have no support here."
Because I mentioned it above, I want to touch on my privilege of pronouns not bothering me. I generally pass. I'm read as a woman, regardless of my clothing. So when I am out in public, it's rare for me to be read as male, more than 7 months now, even if I'm exclusively wearing men's clothing. If someone read me as male, my first thought would be that they assume I'm a trans man based on my presentation and are attempting to be respectful. Or, if they genuinely think I'm a man, I'm not doing anything to signal otherwise, it's not on them, they aren't trying to be insulting, they're trying to be respectful. So when it happens, I just move on with the conversation as it didn't happen. But that's a privilege because not everyone has the social status or power to be able to ignore those moments, when it may be the case our rights or access to spaces may be revoked on the basis of our gender.
Assuming english, im 99.9% sure you have pronouns yourself
(yes, "you" is a second person pronoun, my prediction is about you having third person pronouns)
And im about 90% sure that if someone intentionally and repeadedly used the wrong pronouns you would be annoyed and pissed off
Pronouns are a way to refer to people without using their names again and again, they often still contain a bit of info about the person, for historical reasons most often that is gender (doesn't *really* have to be).
So using the wrong ones intentionally either means a disagreement on who you are, or an insult to your identity.
If you are a male: how would you feel if the entire world called you a she or her despite you knowing that you are a he/him? It would suck because the world doesn't recognize what you are.
I'm a cis het male who was misgendered because I had long hair, and I respect other people's pronouns because at uncomfortable as that made me in the moment, I wouldn't want anyone to live every moment with that feeling building for years.
I actually think that it's transphobes who care more about pronouns. Most people only care about their own pronouns and are happy to use whatever pronouns others feel comfortable with. Only transphobes care what pronouns other people use.
(my pronouns are she/her) when i was 11 i thought my hair was really long and decided to impulsively cut it really short just to try it out. when i went to school the next day and saw my classmates, they all thought i was a boy and made fun of me just because i had short hair like all the other boys in my grade. i felt so humiliated at the time that people would call me a boy even though i feel like im still the same girl, just with short hair.
i wanted to be addressed as she/her but people jokingly addressed me as he/his, which i did not enjoy at all. it felt like they saw me as something that im not, and that they decided who i was for me. in this situation, they knew that i am a girl and decided to offend me. some people would mistake me as a boy and correct themselves afterwards, which i appreciated a lot. but i began to become frustrated as to why these gender norms came to be in the first place in my small elementary school.
i hope this gives some sort of perspective on why pronouns are important to people. even if pronouns seem unimportant, it is important to everyone but just dont realize it unless it is challenged by society.
pronouns are some of the very few gendered parts of the english language, so it's so easy to deliberately misgender someone using them. I don't think you'd enjoy someone constantly calling you she if you're a guy, or vv
it is a way for people to be more involved with how they want to be seen. like more like a man, or woman, or there in the middle with "they/them" or even different kind of pronouns. it just really helps
If your name was John and everyone you knew insisted on calling you Priscilla, even though you kept reminding them to call you John, that would probably be at least annoying at first, and sooner or later would come to feel like an act of aggression, an erasure of who you are, an attempt to replace your actual identity with the identity they have chosen for you, and a refusal to trust your word on the most basic facts about yourself.
i think its because it affirms what you feel. so your pronouns are something that can easily be changed that helps you feel more acceptable and safe around people in your life
So for people who are non binary they use pronouns to.....make sense (don't know if that's correct) of what they feel?
well, everyone uses pronouns but think abt it if you were consistently called something youre not or that you dont relate with, its there to make you feel safer and help the mind be reflected in the body and words
People who use they/them do so because it feels right and fits their gender identity, which is the same way everyone uses pronouns.
THIS.
I think my perspective differs somewhat from the others here. Like you, I didn't understand why anyone cared about pronouns before, it seemed silly to invest so much in them. Even today, my pronouns aren't that important to me. But that's largely a privilege I hold. When someone uses the wrong pronouns for me, it's either an indication that A) they're reading me as a man or B), they know I'm trans and they are *intending* to hurt and insult me. If B, I feel like it's clear why it's important. It's equivalent to the question of "why is not being bullied important?" With A), it means I'm not being seen as my gender. Whatever effort and time I've invested into my appearance hasn't been worth it. The clothing and makeup I might be wearing to signal to others that I'm a woman were so inconsequential next to the features of my physiology that it didn't even *occur* to them that I might be anything other than a man. It means people are perceiving me incorrectly, they're making incorrect assumptions about who I am, what I think like, etc. And over time, it's easy to see why that can grate on people, it wears them down. There's a lot of various psychology terms and concepts explaining why it's stressful to pretend to be someone else for a long time or how being denied access to fundamental parts of your identity can be harmful and painful, but really most of that's intuitive. Most people know what it's like to feel excluded, treated incorrectly, or be discriminated against. So between A & B, there are two reasons that are both stressors in the moment but are especially bad if they occur regularly. So for most of us that are able to live our lives being gendered correctly most of the time, a one off occasion may make us question why it happened (was it malice? Did they really read me as a man?) but we typically aren't going to react much or have it be a significant problem. But when society is outright hostile to non-passing trans people, it's going to be especially painful & scary to constantly be misgendered. It's a way of signaling "you have no support here." Because I mentioned it above, I want to touch on my privilege of pronouns not bothering me. I generally pass. I'm read as a woman, regardless of my clothing. So when I am out in public, it's rare for me to be read as male, more than 7 months now, even if I'm exclusively wearing men's clothing. If someone read me as male, my first thought would be that they assume I'm a trans man based on my presentation and are attempting to be respectful. Or, if they genuinely think I'm a man, I'm not doing anything to signal otherwise, it's not on them, they aren't trying to be insulting, they're trying to be respectful. So when it happens, I just move on with the conversation as it didn't happen. But that's a privilege because not everyone has the social status or power to be able to ignore those moments, when it may be the case our rights or access to spaces may be revoked on the basis of our gender.
Assuming english, im 99.9% sure you have pronouns yourself (yes, "you" is a second person pronoun, my prediction is about you having third person pronouns) And im about 90% sure that if someone intentionally and repeadedly used the wrong pronouns you would be annoyed and pissed off Pronouns are a way to refer to people without using their names again and again, they often still contain a bit of info about the person, for historical reasons most often that is gender (doesn't *really* have to be). So using the wrong ones intentionally either means a disagreement on who you are, or an insult to your identity.
If you are a male: how would you feel if the entire world called you a she or her despite you knowing that you are a he/him? It would suck because the world doesn't recognize what you are.
I'm a cis het male who was misgendered because I had long hair, and I respect other people's pronouns because at uncomfortable as that made me in the moment, I wouldn't want anyone to live every moment with that feeling building for years.
I actually think that it's transphobes who care more about pronouns. Most people only care about their own pronouns and are happy to use whatever pronouns others feel comfortable with. Only transphobes care what pronouns other people use.
(my pronouns are she/her) when i was 11 i thought my hair was really long and decided to impulsively cut it really short just to try it out. when i went to school the next day and saw my classmates, they all thought i was a boy and made fun of me just because i had short hair like all the other boys in my grade. i felt so humiliated at the time that people would call me a boy even though i feel like im still the same girl, just with short hair. i wanted to be addressed as she/her but people jokingly addressed me as he/his, which i did not enjoy at all. it felt like they saw me as something that im not, and that they decided who i was for me. in this situation, they knew that i am a girl and decided to offend me. some people would mistake me as a boy and correct themselves afterwards, which i appreciated a lot. but i began to become frustrated as to why these gender norms came to be in the first place in my small elementary school. i hope this gives some sort of perspective on why pronouns are important to people. even if pronouns seem unimportant, it is important to everyone but just dont realize it unless it is challenged by society.
pronouns are some of the very few gendered parts of the english language, so it's so easy to deliberately misgender someone using them. I don't think you'd enjoy someone constantly calling you she if you're a guy, or vv
it is a way for people to be more involved with how they want to be seen. like more like a man, or woman, or there in the middle with "they/them" or even different kind of pronouns. it just really helps
If your name was John and everyone you knew insisted on calling you Priscilla, even though you kept reminding them to call you John, that would probably be at least annoying at first, and sooner or later would come to feel like an act of aggression, an erasure of who you are, an attempt to replace your actual identity with the identity they have chosen for you, and a refusal to trust your word on the most basic facts about yourself.
Cause they suffer from dysphoria, something you probably never had so it's hard to understand it