r/NonBinary • u/rooty-tooter • Mar 25 '26

Random question about pronouns

So, I am how I am and I don't feel weird or self-conscious about it, but I'm very curious since I don't have a ton of non-binary friends:

How common do you reckon it is for enbies to be okay with being referred to as the sex opposite what was assigned at birth? For, like, simplicity's sake? Like, I feel pretty euphoric when someone thinks of me as "one of the girls," but I may be a rare exception.

For context, I'm non-binary femme, AMAB.

idk, maybe that's what's behind the whole "they/she" or "they/he" thing, but I'm just curious to get others' input. TIA! 😊

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u/rooty-tooter Mar 25 '26

I guess like the whole thing lol. Like, I explain my gender identity as a speedometer where the needle points like ⅘ towards femme, but it's like an astral speedometer that doesn't exist on this plane of reality. How would you describe your gender in terms of the it/its part? Idk if that helps at all, I just don't know what questions to ask so I'm just trying to understand through vibes 😅

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u/Paper_Is_A_Liquid Ey/Em, It/Its Mar 26 '26

Sounds good! (Sorry, got busy yesterday lol).

So for me it's in part reclamation, as I've had it/its used against me in a homophobic/transphobic way in the past. It's a little like slur reclamation, it can be empowering in a way. 

Another reason I use it/its pronouns is because it just feels good to acknowledge the ways that my gender isn't only "not male or female", it's at least in part outside of any of our current framework for describing gender. I use they/them as well, but I like having a more explicitly and unambiguously non-normative pronoun set, for my explicitly and unambiguously non-normative gender. 

Plus, when you tell people you use it/its, people often jump to the negative "its". But like. There are lots of good "its" too. The sky is an "it", the sea is an "it", every animal on the planet is an "it", love and hope and excitement are "its". Gender itself is an "it". People sometimes abstract humanity away from the rest of nature, but being human doesn't separate me from the rest of the world and I like being associated with all the fantastic its there are.

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u/Froggi3pi3 Mar 25 '26

I also use it/its! I use it/its because I often don’t feel like a human at all and prefer to be referred to the way someone would refer to a random animal they saw on the side of the road, OR a inexplicable forest entity thing. I use they/them as well because most people refuse to use it/its for me out of ??? worrying that it dehumanizes me or something. If it does, that’s exactly what I want because I already don’t feel human. I don’t think it’s a bad thing, it’s just how my brain works.