There have been many new words coming into creation or popularity to describe people’s sexualities or gender identities. Most of the sexualities are becoming fairly mainstream knowledge; gay, bi, pan, ace, all are fairly simple and self-explanatory. There lesser known sexualities such as demi or gray-sexual. But gender identities seem to be where most people become lost. Most people understand the basic cis or transgender dichotomy, but words like agender, nonbinary, and genderfluid have not reached the same level of public acknowledgement and understanding.

I am a genderfluid individual, in short it means that sometimes I feel more like a man and sometimes I feel more like a woman, and many times I exist somewhere in the androgynous middle ground. This feeling affects me daily as to how I dress and present myself in public. I do not vastly change my personality, I may attempt to keep my voice in a lower octave when I am having a masculine day but that is the extent of personality changes. I own a chest binder, as without it I have a D-cup chest, so when I feel masculine I will usually wear that under my clothing. Pronouns are a bit tricky when it comes to nonbinary individuals. Many people choose they/them pronouns or some other nonbinary ones such as ze/zem or xe/xer. And nonbinary individuals may still wish to go by gendered pronouns for several reasons; it may make them more comfortable or they may not be out to everyone around them.

I personally am not stressed by pronouns, I don’t usually care about whether or not people call me masculine, feminine, or neutral pronouns. I will answer to any of them unless I am obviously trying to present as one or the other. It is important to honor other people’s pronouns, however asking for them can be tricky. Asking someone you just met outright what pronouns they use can cause the person to feel insecure that they may not be passing as the gender they wish to present as. It is best to only bring it up after the person leads up to it and feels comfortable to bring that up with you.