Last Saturday I went for a 5K walk/jog to help raise money for a nonprofit organization. A small group of us from my church got together to do this. I walked/jogged with our pastor. It was nice to be able to do this, not only did I get to see people from my church in person and do one of the things that I love so much.
Not even halfway into this I fell. I didn’t lift my left leg up high enough going up on a curb. I’m lucky I wear a helmet when I walk/jog, because of my seizure disorder. I could have just stopped right there and been done, however I sat for a second and got up and finished. I tried my best not to beat myself or get mad, however that isn’t what happened. I got frustrated and worried. My thoughts went to why does this keep happening and thank god I had my helmet.
Why am I write about this in a blog that deals with being non-binar? Well how many times have you used the wrong pronoun for someone that is transgender and beaten yourself up? I’m sure it has been more times than I have fallen during a walk/jog and each time you do so you feel bad and go out of your way to let the person know you are sorry. You might even tell that person sorry over and over. Or use words like, “I can’t believe I did that, I know better.“ The other thing you might do is catch it right away that you made a mistake, so you correct yourself. However, you don’t stop there you go on and say, “Yeah I corrected myself.” It’s good that you recognized you mistakes, however making a big show about it most likely isn;’t good for the other person.
I started going to family therapy a couple of months ago. We told the therapist I was non-binary and explained my pronouns to her. We have only seen her 3 times. Last week when we saw her, she used the wrong pronoun when referring to me. She caught it right away and corrected herself. The way she corrected herself made me feel awkward. She put her hand over her mouth, her eyes got big, then she made the correction. I am aware that these are natural responses when someone makes a mistake and they are embarrassed and they are hard not to do. If that was all that she did I would probably been ok. However, after that she said, “I caught myself.” By doing this it made this more about her mistake and not about my pronoun.
Mistakes are going to happen. Humans are not perfect. To make things better for you and the person you misgendered try your best to not make such a big deal about it. When I fell, I sat for a second, got up and continued running. I explained to my pastor why I feel when we started back running. I would suggest that you might be able to do the same thing with your mistake. Make the mistake, correct yourself, and wait when you and the person are alone to apologize and also talk about what you could do to maybe get it right next time.
This is what I would like for people to do. I also wanna say all non-binary people are not the same, so you might wanna have a private discussion with the non-binary person in your life to see what would make them comfortable.
Love how you wove it all together, Mer. And your closing advice, to check in privately with the nonbinary person/s in your life to see what is most helpful to them when you err in pronoun use. It's a growing edge, but in the moment, it needs to be about the person who has been misgendered; later, the "offender" can work out their embarrassment, shame, guilt, frustration, whatever (unless the misgendered person has a particular sense of call to helping others work it through).