20th March

2025

doi: https://doi.org/10.34834/2019.0030

Key Words:

gender
identity
transgender

Sustainable Development Goal No. 10

The aim of this guide is to answer any questions about gender-related things that you may have felt like you should know already or don’t know how to ask/search about. This guide gives an overview on things like pronouns in general, and I have gone into quite specific detail in some cases, however it’s always best to ask people about their preferences, as every individual person will prefer different things for themselves!

CAVEAT: while the advice broadly applies to most trans communities, some of it, particularly the terminology parts, applies to the anglosphere and in English only (for example, the part about adjectives).

Background: Gender & Sex

Gender and sex are not the same thing.

Sex refers to categories people are placed in at birth based on the appearance of particular characteristics of their bodies, namely their genitalia. These categories are male and female, which correspond to a set of characteristics (genitalia, chromosomes, hormones, etc.) that align in the same way in up to 98.3% of people – the other 1.7% are known as being intersex. People who are not intersex are called dyadic, perisex, or a few other terms.

Gender refers to how someone feels internally. Around 99% of people have genders that coincide with their sex – i.e. being both of the female sex category and identifying with a female gender. Approximately 1% of people do not identify as the gender that commonly corresponds with their sex – these people are transgender, transsexual, etc. People who are not transgender are called cisgender.

It is generally considered to be more correct to say transgender/cisgender rather than transgendered/cisgendered.

Intersex people can be cisgender or transgender, and their relationships with these identities (and gender and sex in general) are often very complex.

People who were determined to be in the male category at birth are referred to as ‘assigned male at birth’, shortened to AMAB (or sometimes DMAB), and people who were determined to be in the female category at birth are referred to as ‘assigned female at birth’, shortened to AFAB (or sometimes DFAB). It is not uncommon for intersex people whose intersex status was identified at birth (as for some intersex people it does not become apparent until puberty) to be assigned one of these two sexes.

There is a lot of discussion currently about if the use of AFAB/AMAB terminology is acting against the interests of trans* and intersex people, as it can be considered similar to just putting people in the male/female categories the terminology was trying to avoid in the first place. As a rule, never refer to people’s sexes or assigned at birth genders – for example, if you want to refer to people who menstruate, say ‘people who menstruate’ rather than females or AFABs, as not all people whose sex is female or who were AFAB menstruate, and vice versa.

Transgender Identities

Sometimes people write ‘trans*’ to encompass all the different terms like transgender, transsexual, etc. Often people will just say ‘trans’ without the asterisk to mean the same thing also.

The trans* umbrella has many identities underneath it, however the broad things to know are:

• The unifying thing about being trans* is that you do not identify your gender with the sex you were assigned at birth 100% of the time (these feelings fluctuate over time for some people, for example, however they are still under the trans* umbrella).
• There are many identities under the umbrella, some very common, some used by only one or two people – the most important thing is to simply respect that people are who they say they are and to refer to them how they prefer to be referred to.

‘Trans(gender)’ is an adjective – this means that there should be a space between it and the identity that comes after it (in English).

✅ trans man; transgender women; trans people

❌ transman; transgenderwomen; transpeople

in the same way that:

✅ tall person; creative people

❌ tallperson; creativepeople

This space is important, as transphobic people often like to remove it to dehumanise trans people (’transperson’ seems like a different thing than a ‘trans person’, which is just a person who happens to be trans).

Binary & Non-binary Identities

Broadly, there are two major categories within the trans* umbrella: binary and non-binary. The ‘binary’ here refers to the male-female gender binary (i.e. there are only two ‘classical’ categories).

Binary trans people:

• identify as the other binary (i.e. male or female) gender to which they were assigned based on their sex at birth
• include transgender women (sometimes referred to as MtF (male-to-female)) and transgender men (sometimes referred to as FtM (female-to-male))

The MtF and FtM terms are becoming more uncommon due to having a focus on someone’s assigned gender at birth, similarly to AFAB/AMAB.

Non-binary trans people:

• may identify with no gender, multiple genders, or may have changing gender identities
• may identify in some relation to male or female, or may identify as something completely separate from those ideas
  • this includes some but not all transgender men and women
• may identify as a specific gender (e.g. androgyne, demigirl, fa’afafine, two-spirit) or just use an umbrella term (e.g. non-binary, queer)

The strict gender binary is a western concept imported into many cultures through colonialism – most cultures around the world traditionally have a third gender or much more fluid ideas of gender than just male and female. Non-binary people are not a new fad or trend.

“I can’t remember if I should call them a transgender man (because they ‘used to be a man’) or a transgender woman (because they are ‘becoming a woman’)!”

The easiest way to think of it is this: the person is transitioning away from something and towards something else – they are going to want to be referred to as the thing they are aiming for, so call them that. In the above example the person would be called a transgender woman.

Pronouns & Language

Pronouns are the words you use instead of using to someone/something’s name constantly in a sentence. Common ones in English are he, she, they, it, you, we, etc. Within the trans* context, we are looking at third person pronouns (i.e. he/she/they/it/etc).

Roses are red
Violets are blue
Singular ‘they’
is older than singular ‘you’
– unknown author

People often try to say that ‘they’ always refers to multiple people and always has. This is simply factually not true. English was using ‘they’ to refer to one person before it was using ‘you’ to refer to one person (’you’ was historically plural, and ‘thou’ was the singular form).

Semantics note: it is often considered impolite/shortsighted to refer to someone’s pronouns as their ‘preferred pronouns’ – it implies that their pronouns (and by extension, gender) are not their ‘real’ pronouns(/gender), and are merely a preference (if not a delusion) that everyone is humouring.

Similarly, it is best practice to say someone ‘is [gender]’ rather than ‘identifies as [gender]’ in most cases for the same reasons.

Neoprounouns & Neo-grammar

The pronouns listed above are classical/standard pronouns, however people have also made up new pronouns to better suit their needs. These are known as neopronouns. Some of them are entirely made up, some are borrowed from other languages, some are existing words but were not originally pronouns.

English:

Neopronouns have existed in English since the 18th century.

Some relatively common* neopronouns in English include:

• ey/em (based on they/them)
• xe/xir (based on she/her)
• and many more

* when I say common, they are not common in the grand scheme of language, but within the subset of people who use neopronouns these are major ones.

Spanish
In Spanish, the neopronoun ‘elle’ and an -e word ending (as opposed to the usual -o/-a) is becoming more common as a gender-neutral pronoun.

German
In German, common neopronouns include:

• dey/dem or dey/deren (based on English they/them) – this one is the most common
• hen (based on the Swedish gender-neutral pronoun)

Of course, in German nouns themselves are gendered in a more difficult way to adapt than Spanish, so some options for this include:

• saying the written ‘Freund:in’ (for example) out loud (pronouncing the punctuation as a glottal stop)
• using -mensch/-person as a suffix instead of -in (e.g. Freundperson)

The nonbinary wiki has fantastic information on gender-neutral language options in German – English link; German link – I cannot recommend it enough.

Formatting/Conventions

You may have noticed that it is common to write pronouns in the format [subjective case]/[objective case], for example he/him or they/them. This is the generally accepted convention on listing pronouns as it gives an indication of how the rest of the forms are structured.

For example, I can take a pretty good guess at what the other forms of ze/hir might be based on the fact that from just these two case examples I can see that it follows the same pattern that she/her does. An expanded form of she/her might be she/her/hers/herself, so I can assume that the equivalent of ‘herself’ in ze/hir pronouns is probably ‘hirself’, or that the equivalent of ‘hers’ is probably ‘hirs’. Similarly, if I know someone uses ey/em pronouns that person probably would use ‘emself’ or ‘emselves’ to refer to emselves.

While ‘themselves’ is generally the more ‘correct’ term than ‘themself’ (from a general grammar standpoint), either option is completely fine even when referring to just one person.

Multiple Sets of Pronouns

The above convention is helpful, but some people write their pronouns in the form of she/they (for example). This does not mean that the correct way to use these pronouns is ‘she is going to get they wallet from the car’ (for example) – the ‘they’ is not a substitute for the ‘her’ in she/her.

Pronouns like she/they, he/it, they/xe, etc. are shorthand forms for saying “I use both she/her and they/them pronouns”.

From here, there is a lot of personal preference involved. Some people who use multiple sets of pronouns might:

• not care which of the options you use, or:
• prefer the pronoun set that comes first, but tolerate the pronoun set that comes second, or:
• prefer that both sets of pronouns are used, either by:
  • generally alternating between conversations, or:
  • alternating pronouns even within sentences (this is less common as it can get confusing)

If people use multiple sets of pronouns:

• if you are unlikely to interact with them much long-term, just pick one and use that
• if you are likely to interact with them long-term, ask their preference!

Pronouns & Gender

Anyone can use any pronouns! Just because someone uses they/them pronouns doesn’t mean they are automatically non-binary. Just because someone uses she/her pronouns doesn’t mean they can’t be a man (especially in butch lesbian spaces, he/him pronouns can be common for even people who 100% identify as women).

Cisgender people can use any pronouns they like, in the same way that transgender people can! If you are cisgender and want to see how they/them pronouns feel, go for it!

Even if it may be ‘obvious’ from your gender presentation what your pronouns are (despite the fact that gender expression also does not determine pronouns), it is good practice to list your pronouns in places like name tags or email signatures. There are a few reasons for this:

• it normalises the idea of thinking about people’s pronouns
• it shows trans people that you are a safe person to be themselves around
• it fights the idea that people have to present as a stereotype of their gender, or that people can only use certain pronouns if they look a certain way
• it stops trans people from being implicitly ‘outed’ by listing their pronouns (if only trans people are listing their pronouns, then having pronouns listed is automatically a signal that you are trans, but if everyone does it then it no longer automatically ‘outs’ trans people)

A couple of things to not do with regards to pronouns:

• insist that other people share theirs – it must be opt in not opt out. Making it compulsory to share pronouns can force trans people that are not ‘out’ in that environment to either have to ‘out’ themselves on the spot or to list incorrect pronouns for the sake of staying in the closet, which can be very difficult emotionally. Leading by example (i.e. sharing your pronouns unprompted) is the best way to avoid forcing people to share their pronouns in group settings.
• continue calling people ‘they’ after you know what their pronouns are (if the person does not use they/them pronouns) – this acts in the same way as misgendering them (although this is sometimes called ‘degendering’) by denying them their autonomy and validity of their gender. While calling a trans woman (who does not use they/them pronouns) ‘they’ may not be as bad as calling her ‘he’, it still denies her womanhood, for example.

Various places to include pronouns:

• name tags
  • at events
  • on office doors
• email signatures
• display names on social media
  • BlueSky has a pronouns labeller that can put a little badge with your pronouns under your name
  • Discord has a pronouns field in the user profile, I believe so do other platforms like Instagram and TikTok
  • Zoom has a pronouns field that displays after your name in meetings (you can toggle this on or off; your organisation may have to enable this feature) – Teams/Microsoft also recently added this feature to profiles
    • otherwise if you are signed out you can always just edit your display name to include your pronouns
  • bios on social media or other websites
  • when introducing yourself to a group of people (e.g. “my name is x, I use y pronouns”)

Misgendering

Misgendering happens all the time for a lot of different reasons, many of which are completely innocuous. Sometimes it’s that you see someone from behind and assume their gender incorrectly, or that you hear them over the phone and misjudge, or they present in a different way to how you think people who use their pronouns present, or the person has changed their pronouns recently and you still aren’t quite used to it yet. Everyone will misgender someone at some point – it’s how we deal with it that matters;

If you misgender someone:

• if you notice right away:
  • DO: pause, say “sorry, [correct pronoun]” or similar, and keep going with your sentence
  • DO NOT: make a big deal about it! This may look like:
    • “Oh my gosh I’m so so so sorry” and not finishing your sentence
    • “I am still getting used to this, you have to give me time to adjust” – we know, nobody expects anyone to be perfect immediately
  • if you notice later on:
    • DO: approach the person you misgendered in private and say “I’m sorry I misgendered you earlier, I didn’t notice until after I had stopped speaking”. This shows:
      • You did notice and do pay attention to your language
      • You care enough to apologise
      • You are doing your best to gender them correctly and are making the effort despite not being perfect
    • DO NOT: make a big deal about it, because:
      • you will likely just bring up the trans person’s bad feelings about being misgendered again (there’s a decent chance they have forgotten)
      • you are likely to be centring yourself and your guilt over making sure that the trans person is ok

A huge misconception about trans people is that we will yell at you if we are misgendered. This is not the case.

Trans people simply want to be respected – misgendering usually makes us feel sad, disrespected, unseen, etc. instead of angry (though if it happens frequently enough despite efforts to present more aligned with your gender you do tend to get frustrated with it). In almost all cases, the only time a trans person will actually be upset at you for misgendering them is if it is a pattern of behaviour and it is obvious to them that you are not putting in any effort.

Safety

Unfortunately, being trans can be unsafe, even in places where it is legal and broadly socially accepted. Safety ALWAYS comes first, no matter what.

Sometimes, trans people will ask you to misgender them in front of family members or colleagues they are not ‘out’ to. Please follow these wishes, even if you think or know that these people are trans-safe. The decision is up to the trans person, not you.

Similarly, NEVER disclose that someone is trans without their explicit permission. Even if someone is ‘out’ as trans, disclosing their medical information (i.e. if they are on hormones, or if they have had surgeries, or are intersex) is NEVER ok. Would you talk about your coworker’s circumcision status or fertility? Almost certainly not, so why would you talk about a trans person’s personal medical information? Again, the decision is up to the trans person to disclose, not you.

Summary

There has been a lot of technical information in this guide, but the main point boils down to:

respect everybody’s autonomy and identity!

Life looks different for everybody, and being trans is no exception. Your trans friends, colleagues, or family members simply want to be seen as who they are on the inside, and asking them about their preferences shows that you care about them.

A brief list:

doi: https://doi.org/10.34834/2019.0030