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You Can’t Tell Someone’s Gender From Their Pronouns
25 Plays10 days ago
Most people automatically assume they know someone’s gender the moment they hear their pronouns.
But pronouns and gender identity are not always the same thing — and that mental shortcut can create a surprising amount of confusion, pressure, and harm.
In this episode, El and Kai unpack one of the most misunderstood conversations around pronouns and gender diversity. Together, they explore why people often try to “reverse engineer” someone’s gender from their pronouns, where that assumption comes from, and why separating pronouns from gender identity actually makes respectful communication much simpler.
🔍 In this episode, we unpack:
- Why pronouns and gender identity are not interchangeable
- The “autopilot” thinking that leads people to make assumptions about strangers
- Why some people use pronouns that others may not expect
- The exhausting reality of daily misgendering for many non-binary people
- How workplace systems accidentally create bad data and reinforce incorrect assumptions
- Why titles like Mr., Mrs., Ms., and Mx. can create unexpected issues in HR systems
- How organizations unintentionally create extra pressure for trans and non-binary staff
- Why respectful communication is often much simpler than people think
Kai also shares data from TransPulse Canada showing how frequently non-binary people experience incorrect assumptions about their gender in everyday life.
🔗 RESOURCES & LINKS
• Master Inclusive Communication: Want to build a confident, inclusive workplace culture? Explore the TransFocus On-Demand DEI Courses for actionable training on mistake recovery, navigating microaggressions, and respectful team interactions: https://transfocusacademy.thinkific.com/courses/gender-diversity-basics-course?th__ug=3f3cab1f&th__c=websitepromo
• The Data Source: Check out the community research and metrics collected by TransPulse Canada mentioned by Kai in today's episode: https://transpulsecanada.ca/wp-content/uploads/2023/01/WPATH-2022_Impact-of-Misgendering-on-Non-Binary-Peoples-Health-and-Wellbeing-in-Canada.pdf
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Transcript
Introduction to Pronouns and Gender Identity
00:00:05
Speaker
If you've ever listened to a gender and focus episode, you'll know that pronouns comes up pretty often. And so we're back again to confuse everyone today and then hopefully unconfuse you again, because today we're talking about pronouns, gender identity, and why those two things are not interchangeable. Pronouns and gender identity are often grouped together quite a lot as if they kind of automatically tell you the same information about somebody, but it's actually a little bit more complicated than that. um
00:00:39
Speaker
ah I don't know what I'm saying. Thank God Kai's here to make sense of it all. ah Hello. Hi. Thanks so much for introducing such a juicy topic.
00:00:50
Speaker
yeah Some people probably listening to that, they're like, what are you talking about? You know, it's just because they're so tightly interwoven. so it's really hard like I've I did a social media post about this and even writing it obviously I am aware that pronouns and gender identity are not the same thing but even writing it was really hard to like kind of unpick it and find a way to explain it it's really complicated so I should probably start then with what is gender identity first of all right
00:01:24
Speaker
Yes, want to define what we're talking about before jumping in and picking it apart.
Understanding Gender Identity
00:01:30
Speaker
Yeah, so gender identity is our, the really basic definition is our internal felt sense of our gender. And it exists along a spectrum. There's not just two. Usually we only talk in society about men and women, but there's actually non-binary folks or agender or gender fluid folks. So this is, you know, an internal experience of one's gender. So very simple.
00:01:57
Speaker
Sometimes it aligns with sex, sometimes it doesn't.
Exploring Pronouns
00:02:00
Speaker
So, okay, if gender identity is one thing, what what are pronouns then? Yeah, so this is a part of language that if you remember from your grade school years, any grammar lessons that maybe like me snoozed on oh it's how we talk with about one another, especially if we're talking about third-person pronouns, which is what we're, you know referencing here, is things like he, she.
00:02:32
Speaker
Also, some people are using gender-neutral they-them for one person or singular use of they-them. There's also neo-pronouns, which we won't go in today. There's other episodes that we can point to to further define that.
00:02:47
Speaker
But in essence, it's it's language. And I think this is ah a key part of distinguishing because it's a little bit more practical in nature and a bit more dynamic or fluid as, say, in contrast to gender identity.
00:03:04
Speaker
So just something to keep in mind. So then I kind of want to bring them together because that still kind of makes it sound like it it could be in relation to gender then.
Pronouns and Gender Identity: Misalignment
00:03:17
Speaker
So what's what's the difference? what's what's the difference how does it How does it differ in terms of how someone uses both of those things to express themselves? Right. So there's a lot at play when we think about pronouns because that is kind of an external aspect in that that's how we talk about one another and it's you know in the social environment. And as a result, some people are making decisions about how they want to represent that to other people. And there are many reasons why somebody might not um share ah pronouns that align with their gender identity. Sometimes it's a matter of safety, other times it's a matter of being that too familiar for somebody to use the pronouns that would be typically linked to somebody's gender identity. For others, it's not as important to have their pronouns be linked to their gender.
00:04:24
Speaker
Some people actually just want to break from pronouns or being gendered. So there's a lot happening in how people choose to um use pronouns in language because it's so adaptive, right?
00:04:41
Speaker
Mm-hmm. I feel like maybe it's worth having an example because I can imagine someone being like, what? Come again. Yeah.
Non-binary Experiences and Pronoun Use
00:04:49
Speaker
As an example, I'm a non-binary person.
00:04:53
Speaker
I do go by they, them, but I also go by she, her. And so if you were to just hear she, her being used for me, you would, if you were assuming pronouns and gender identity are kind of the same thing, you would assume that I were a woman and not a non-binary person.
00:05:10
Speaker
Well, because sometimes people, they they will get somebody's pronoun and then will automatically in their head start to want to reach conclusions, right? They'll almost want to reverse engineer somebody's gender. They're like, ooh, this person uses she, her pronouns. Ergo, therefore, this person is a woman, right? It's just like...
00:05:35
Speaker
That may be a correct guess for some, but the thing is that um sometimes it's incorrect and then leads to all kinds of other things that were unanticipated or make things awkward or then have that person has to correct the person who made the incorrect assumption. So it's just like not really helpful, right?
00:05:58
Speaker
to want to try to reverse engineer either way right? If you have somebody's gender, then automatically concluding their pronouns, or i have their pronouns, therefore I know their gender. Like, I think it's just dropping that, that tendency or that, that desire, because it doesn't really serve much and can cause more confusion than is necessary. Yeah.
00:06:21
Speaker
It's so hard, though. Like, it's um not to justify that. But it's like, it's really hard when it's like embedded in your in your thinking to just sure like, as with so many topics that we've discussed on the podcast, it's so hard to strip away this like, learning that we have absorbed without really even thinking about it see
Societal Norms and Challenges
00:06:43
Speaker
Oh, yeah. This is very habit forming in ways that are not just difficult for cisgender or non-trans people. It's actually also difficult for trans folks, trans and non-binary folks. we We're also having to kind of deprogram um in some instances. And yeah, they are tightly woven together, um mainly because in our society, we have typically only ever talked about men and women. And only people who have one set of pronouns, not multiple. And so because of all these things, it has kind of allowed for this, um the the notion that things are simple when actually they aren't, right? There's much more diversity and variety out there that, know,
00:07:35
Speaker
if those kind of are so tightly wound together it makes it very difficult for for people who have you know a different way of navigating pronouns and aren't always tied to their gender yeah i really like the way you said that that it there has been a perception that things are simple when it's not we have not to start beef with people in the comment section but we've had like comments that are like why are we complicating things and it's like no it's it's actually complicated Like it's just it just was complicated before. It's just that that maybe not a lot of airtime was given to see that. And so now it's just like a correction as opposed to introducing something
Visibility and Safe Environments
00:08:15
Speaker
new. People who go by different pronouns um have always existed or maybe they wanted to if they if they were in a position to be able to. And so it's never been simple. We've just been conditioned to think that it is.
00:08:31
Speaker
Is that what you are getting at? Yeah, it's a lack of visibility and or people realizing what the options are that they can that feel more authentic for them. um And also, i I feel like hopefully for some who hear this, there's a motivation to create more safe environments. because some of the ways that people share pronouns are to avoid safety issues, right? Like that's not the greatest thing because it may not be what they would actually want to use, but because of safety, they're having to misalign with their gender identity. Um,
00:09:10
Speaker
by by using pronouns that aren't actually theirs, but they just don't feel safe to do. So what if we created environments that were safer for folks, in which case there are more authentic uses of of pronouns.
00:09:25
Speaker
So um yeah. And also i think it's really important to keep in mind that not everybody wants to ah good Because we may not realize how much gendering happens with pronouns because we use pronouns so much.
00:09:44
Speaker
i It's when you start to because of perhaps a trans person or even not a trans person, we start to pay attention to just how often pronouns are used. And we realize like how much we've you know made this ever-present thing.
00:10:01
Speaker
which works for some people, which is great, but it doesn't for others, including cisgender people who are like, I don't want others to gender me. It doesn't feel good. And so that's where people might use pronouns that don't align with what we would expect for their gender identity. Right.
00:10:24
Speaker
But that's OK. That's a valid choice to be like, I am going to have somebody not use pronouns or maybe use they them pronouns. And they're not trans like they just want to For sure. Yeah. Yeah.
00:10:41
Speaker
To some who perhaps don't quite have that experience, it might be a bit baffling. But for some, it's just like too much. hmm.
Assumptions and Appearances
00:10:50
Speaker
Yeah, I kind of want to go a little step further because of course we're talking about how gender and pronouns are used interchangeably, but there is sort of on that step further, this kind of assumption that your appearance equals your gender and that equals your pronouns. And like I kind of want to go into that too on now we're getting into gender expression, but ah just where that assumption comes from.
00:11:16
Speaker
m Well, I think some of it is related to the fact that We want, our brains are programmed for expediency, right? We want shortcuts and little things that are easy and don't have to think about it a lot. We're kind of like, we're autopilot.
00:11:35
Speaker
And so we gravitate towards that on all topics, right? Not just this one. And so I think, especially some people who are a little bit more resistant even to this, they're Part of it is like, I want something easy. i don't want this. Like I have to pause or do other strategies. I want to just be like, I look at somebody, they're feminine, ergo, therefore they are a woman and I'm going to use she, her pronouns. That's it. I'm done. You know, like that feels like a lot to do anything other than that. And that's so ingrained in our society. Right.
00:12:12
Speaker
Yeah. like you were talking about that before is like such and it's so so like quick that we don't even maybe realize we do it until we slow down that frame to be like how did i get to that with this person i don't know right some stranger on the street i'm mapping all kinds of things not just gender um onto this person without actually really knowing at all and then we I mean step further as we react to them differently too right so there's lot of consequences to that I kind of then want to go into the the need to separate how I perceive someone from what that person has actually told me about themselves
00:13:01
Speaker
When we're doing the fast track, we are likely making assumptions. Some of them could be correct. Others might be incorrect. ah But unfortunately, we're actually not encountering the person. Like if you really think about it and that's a really sad thing because then we don't really get to know each other versus kind of listening for things that people are telling us and using that information which is coming from them directly from the source, right? No guess word.
00:13:33
Speaker
um If they're willing to share, don't have to share everything, you know, but if they're willing to share and they do, then we have that information directly from them. But it does require a different way of encountering people where we're paying more attention to what they're saying rather than mapping stuff onto them. yeah,
00:13:53
Speaker
it does take practice. I'm not saying that this is like an overnight flip a switch and, you know, you're over to this other operating system. Like, but there's so much more richness that comes from that in a way that that person actually can feel very seen, i'm safe, and it will respond to you in a very different way to, and that's not just on trans issues. Like that's on,
00:14:22
Speaker
any issue where we're not kind of going through a series of hoops of assumptions about somebody and we're just there listening and absorbing what they're saying.
Impact on Trans and Non-binary Individuals
00:14:35
Speaker
I think that could be extended so much further into pretty much everyone's experience, this idea that you are you are a certain way, therefore I'm going to make all these assumptions about who you are as opposed to listening to you as an individual. There's like so much frustration that a lot of people can really identify with regardless of whether they're trans or not. And it's just that in this particular instance, when it comes to gender, it disproportionately affects trans and non-binary people.
00:15:02
Speaker
Yeah, in a big way. We have stats on it too. So have survey of 3000 trans people in Canada, TransPulse Canada, shout out to them for collecting the data. We know that ah it's like 69% of non-binary folks get incorrect assumptions. They get misgendered. So the incorrect pronoun or gender specific term. and That's high on a daily basis, not just like once in a while, like every single day. Whoa, that's bananas. So that hopefully so inspires folks, yeah, to be a bit different on that.
00:15:39
Speaker
Sure. I kind of want to look at this in a sort of workplace lens now, um because there are plenty of scenarios in which organizations kind of accidentally reinforce those
Organizational Influence and Data Accuracy
00:15:52
Speaker
assumptions. And I was wondering if you could talk about those processes, especially on a wider, but also on an everyday process as well.
00:16:01
Speaker
Mm hmm. Oh yeah, we've got so many different examples that I can draw from. I'll give you a few here. Just looking at the ways that organizational systems or processes are set up to, um,
00:16:17
Speaker
make assumptions about individuals, what they're, if they're collecting gender, for example, they can then infer a bunch of other things. And sometimes even autofill where we're like, whoa, I wouldn't have autofilled that. Yikes. Yeah. So just like being a bit cautious. So some examples, you know, people can collect gender and then, or organizations can collect gender identity. And even if they collect it in a expanded form, suddenly they're now making assumptions, especially if it's like employees who have access to those records. They're like, oh, okay, this person said they're a man. Therefore, we're going to ascribe he, him pronouns to that person. Right.
00:17:05
Speaker
When, again, that could be the case for that person. It's not to say it never happens, but, or that even in the majority of cases it does, but it's when there's the incorrect assumption that that puts a far greater burden on that person to correct rather than the simply not jumping to conclusions is a lower effort. Right. Right. And so.
00:17:26
Speaker
That's really pernicious. and We see that kind of time and time again. Another one is titles. So Mr., Ms., Mrs., even if you have the gender neutral option of MX, still people are going, okay, we see that this person has filled out Mrs., and therefore that person uses she, her pronouns, done, you know? Right, yeah. On to the next thing. And you're like, whoa. Oh, and it gets a bit bit spicier.
00:17:56
Speaker
where I have seen organizations that didn't collect gender identity data and then just thought they could reuse titles to extrapolate to we're like, aye, aye, aye.
00:18:09
Speaker
Holy. And this is without an MX and it was a required field. So, you know, some people have it were forced to put the wrong title for themselves. so it's just like a bit of a mess. And so these are ways in which organizations also need I know.
00:18:28
Speaker
I know. We were uh-uh, sorry. Wow. That's really interesting about the repurposing, though. Can you go into that more, like the the idea of repurposing one piece of information and using it to make assumptions about another? Oh, yeah. That... that um I mean, i get the inclination because it feels efficient, right?
00:18:50
Speaker
We're like, we have a ah some information and, you know, leaders are perhaps, you know, breathing down somebody's neck to be like, we need this data, right? We've got a board. We got to make sure its composition is good, right? Balanced. So I get why people kind of grab for, they're like, okay, we got this. Let's, you know, convert that into gender data you know um And systems allow for simple conversions.
00:19:21
Speaker
I mean, they're not simple because they they're not reflective of reality if you don't ask somebody. But the the system can easily be mapped of like, Mr., then fill into this next field, Yeah.
00:19:35
Speaker
Like, h it's really simple to do that, but it's incorrect for some people, right? Like, and that's the unfortunate thing is that then it really puts, especially that trans person and or a non-binary person in a real pickle. Like, what do you do with an incorrect um gender category extrapolated from a title, you know? um Do you then correct them? Uh, maybe you're new to that organization.
00:20:07
Speaker
Oh gosh. Right. And then you have to talk to somebody, you have to out yourself, you have to explain the situation. and maybe people have no guarantee for how that, how others will take that information. So just like, and you have to think about like, you know, 50 moves down the, um, you know, line, it's a lot.
00:20:29
Speaker
And, um, For sure. And I can imagine that that causes some problems then with sort of the reasons that people might be collecting data in the first place. If you're collecting it, so for example, for like demographic tracking, um that's then it's wrong. Like you have the wrong data, so you can't then make any decisions.
00:20:48
Speaker
Yeah. So how does that then like, what does that look like? they didn't even consider that. When we find these things, when we review systems and are like, hey, what about this? What about that? And they're like, oh, shoot, we had no idea. They just automatically thought that every single entry of Mr. should be mapped over to man and no problems with it whatsoever. Because in people's mind, you know, title equals gender. It's just there. Yeah.
00:21:19
Speaker
They're always aligned and don't realize how the system limitation, especially if it's a required field and there's not enough options, that people are gonna be misentering data. And then you'll have down, if you extrapolate that data to other fields, it's gonna have downstream um problems like inaccuracies and it does not make the data reliable whatsoever so it's a problem yeah also I hate titles so much that's annoying that it's like but there's no opt-out that's annoying in that case what would be some ways that organizations are
00:22:03
Speaker
organizations and individuals, what they can do to reduce that kind of pressure on themselves and on other people to guess someone's pronouns correctly or guess someone's gender
System Design: Keeping Gender and Pronouns Separate
00:22:12
Speaker
correctly. Like what are ways that can be implemented?
00:22:15
Speaker
Yeah. So it's actually really simple, even though I will acknowledge it does take some practice because our habit is to make assumptions and it's okay if it's clunky at first, but is essentially keeping gender and pronouns or even titles separate.
00:22:33
Speaker
These are all distinct categories and we need the the person themselves are the ones to provide that information the if if it's collected as part of a system, there's a way to set that up in a proper way. So you're explaining why you're collecting it and what it'll be used for and what it won't be used for. So people can have that confidence in what's being collected. um But certainly for individual interactions in person, it's really important understand
00:23:07
Speaker
You know, not ask for gender to get to pronouns, you ask for pronouns, you know, i don't want to assume what are your pronouns or be looking for them. because Sometimes people provide them. And you don't need to, you know, guess guess.
00:23:22
Speaker
ask about them, they're already there and you just pick them up and use them, right? So it's being very clear about what you need and what you want and asking for that specifically and then not extrapolating to other things. And if you need additional information, then asking for that specifically.
00:23:41
Speaker
And then in that way, they're No errors. ah People aren't having to figure out how to correct you if they do at all. And there's not all this like safety and outing business. People can just be, which is way better. So. yeah For sure.
00:23:59
Speaker
And then I think maybe you might have already answered this now, but I wanted to end on ah just what you would want listeners to take away from this as a whole, if it was sort of one thing to focus on, the pronouns and gender identity.
Respectful Interactions
00:24:16
Speaker
I think what we're offering here is something far more simple. Sometimes people think something is new is complicated, but actually it's way simpler. Sometimes people who have kind of um collapsed gender and pronouns... They think they need to do all these things to understand somebody when actually the real thing that's a focus in interactions is somebody's name, priority number one. But second to that is our pronouns.
00:24:48
Speaker
And we actually don't need to know somebody's gender to be able to respectfully interact with them. We just need their pronouns if they have any at all, you know. And and this can make it that much more easy, actually.
00:25:03
Speaker
um It might be something to practice, but it's not something really difficult. In fact, it's simple it's simplified from what we do now, which is a lot of hoop jumping and a lot of things can go off the rails.
00:25:19
Speaker
For sure, fair enough. Well, thank you. so Oh, wait, sorry. We also have um the on-demand courses that I was wondering if you could talk about with regards to this.
00:25:31
Speaker
Yeah, so appreciating that for some, you know, maybe this is an interesting topic, but maybe you want to know a little bit more or go a little bit deeper. We do have on-demand courses that are available for individuals as well as organizations to offer to their employees.
00:25:48
Speaker
And we go through ah in more detail about pronouns and a bit more in terms of how to have respectful interactions. There's mistake recovery and, you know, how to respond to things like jokes or, you know, microaggressions and just really give you a lot more information that hopefully is helpful to being more confident in these types of situations.
00:26:12
Speaker
Amazing. Well, thank you so much, Kai, as always. Yeah. We'll see you next week. Thank Okay. Bye for now.