#this is not not a tirade against the expectation of perfect language online. but

[bellshazes]

man. had a convo with my fave [state] coworker and she is so, so lovely. i love her, truly, from the bottom of my heart. you can just tell how much she cares about our members and I learn so much from her. and she comes across as blunt often, but she's always saying things that need heard. sometimes, it's with imperfect language. we were just talking about a trans member who had stopped seeing his gynecologist because, in his words, he's trans and didn't need to see a gyno - and had discovered he had ovarian cancer. my coworker was using she/her pronouns for him - not great! - but she was trying to get the group to focus on what barriers there were to that gynecological care, the ovarian cancer. they kept getting on her for the pronoun thing, which, yes, i also told her that if you're unable to hear the preference from the person themself, opting for the gender they're transitioning to (and this isn't "optimal language" i'm using, but it's where my coworker is at) is better. but she was right about trying to focus on helping the actual situation.

i talked it through with her and about my experiences with being out at work but not with my family, about whether there's trans-friendly gynecologists at all in the member's area or if there was trauma there (how likely that is!). and she immediately lit up talking about how awful it is that providers will claim they are trauma-informed or whatever and then fall short. she cares. she gets it, on some level. her use of she/her was a misguided attempt to express in the only way she knew how to focus on the issue of a person not receiving adequate care and needing support through cancer treatment. despite her ignorance, she was doing her damnedest to be this person's best advocate.

and she was so grateful and open to talking through the complexities! it is in fact important to validate to allies that it is hard sometimes to know what pronouns to use when a coworker is out at work but not in the community but that's part of why we do it anyway, because it's hard and important. she cares so much about trying to keep up with terminology she's unfamiliar with and not being seen as bigoted but she's not got a lot of experience talking to people in contexts where she can really learn. and she talked about being black and knowing as an adult culturally her family and friends just didn't openly talk about being trans or queer but she knows there were and are people who are and were. i brought up the complexities of how race plays into gender and transness, where black women can be denied "true" (quote unquote) womanhood because of their race and so how does that factor into being familiar or not with trans experiences? and if you're not white and you're trans, the ways in which you might be denied a gender you're not IDing with, but that's, well, intersectionality. and she had a lightbulb moment, i think, because i don't know she's ever had anyone say it in a way she's allowed to have something in common with. solidarity forever is the way.

there are a lot of willfully ignorant people, but if you connect with someone who's falling short on the "right" words and language and feelings, there are plenty who want to understand better but don't, who want to keep practicing, who care about you even if they don't know how best to show it. i'm really lucky to know people who keep reminding me of that, and who i know want a better world for the youth they serve.