(quick clarification: this post is specifically about neurodivergent transmeds refusing to use people's neos out of an apparent disrespect and using their neurodivergence as an excuse to legitimately be mean. feel free to add more stuff onto this in the replies!)

hey guys don't mean to be queer on main but i think people using their neurodivergency as an excuse to misgender people isn't ok actually.

i've seen stories of quite a few people who use the fact that they have ADHD (or some other condition that may cause memory issues) and can't remember things well as an excuse to "forget" someone's neopronouns, even after being asked by that person multiple times to refer to them with those pronouns. this isn't ok on so many levels.

first of all, i think it's incredibly guilt-trippy to make someone feel bad about accidentally being ableist by expressing themselves, when in reality, they haven't done anything wrong at all. using funky and obscure pronouns is not ableist in any way just because some people might have issues remembering them, and i think the take that neopronouns are ableist, especially for that reason, is an incredibly ridiculous and purely situational excuse to be mean.

that's like if someone told you their name, and then you got mad at them for using that name because you struggle to remember it and you demanded them to use a name that's easier and more convenient for you to use, rather than the name that the other person feels comfortable with. that's not an accommodation, that's just being an asshole.

second of all, some neurodivergent people (such as autistic people for example) struggle with change and complex concepts like language and pronouns. it's hard to get used to using neopronouns or someone changing their pronouns sometimes, especially when it happens for the first time because you're so used to it. however. finding change hard is NOT an excuse to misgender someone for your own comfort. someone's deeply personal identity should not be the cost of your own convenience, and refusing to acknowledge and respect that identity by not doing the bare minimum that is using their pronouns is incredibly close-minded and harmful.

third of all, the way someone chooses to express themselves is literally none of your business. someone uses pronouns that are confusing and seem grammatically incorrect to you? none of your business. someone's using "stereotypical" pronouns that "make the queer/autistic community look silly"? not your problem. we're all a little silly.

if you're neurodivergent and you find neopronouns, or any pronouns, difficult to remember or understand, here are some tips you can try instead of being mean:

make a fun little chart of people's names, their pronouns and how to pronounce them (ex. Name | Pronouns | Pronounce)! colour code them, use stickers and drawings, anything that will help you remember which pronouns someone uses. stuff like whiteboards and docs can work well for people who frequently change their pronouns or have a lot of them. making the chart fun, personalised and memorable can help a lot with memory issues for a lot of people.

try practising saying or typing their pronouns, whether that's in the mirror or in group chats. there's some really good pronoun dressing room websites that help illustrate how to use more obscure pronouns in conversation.

feel free to ask people! if you can, ask them what their pronouns are and how to pronounce them. i'm sure they will not be mad and will gladly help you learn :) (though please remember to not out someone and their pronouns if they are in an unsafe place. make sure they feel comfortable first before asking/telling someone about their pronouns because some spaces can be really bigoted and unsafe unfortunately.)

make a character that has neopronouns! making an OC that you get attached to can help you familiarise yourself with the concept and referring to that character frequently with their pronouns!

hopefully this is helpful. if you end up seeing anyone in the neurodivergent community use their neurodivergence and an excuse to misgender someone, please block them and don't start an argument. bigotry will not be tolerated in this community or on my blog.

disclaimer: this post is NOT saying that having memory issues/issues with change makes you a bad person, nor does it make you intentionally ignorant and rude. this post is specifically about people who willfully refuse to respect and use someone's correct pronouns on the basis that they're neurodivergent and find them confusing, and choose to intentionally misgender people for their own comfort/convenience.

edit: also!! i should add that this post isn't saying that nd people who legitimately find neopronouns as a concept difficult to grasp (such as people with learning disabilities) are bad people either! that was something i didn't think of when writing this because this post is more about neurodivergent transmeds/transphobes i've seen in the queer and nd communities specifically, but yeah!! i think accommodations absolutely should be made if a neurodivergent person finds themselves having communication difficulties related to neopronouns because some disabled people actually cannot use them. for extra clarification i have added a disclaimer at the beginning of this post. (thanks to @zolf for pointing this out in the notes)

I’m doing my English final on media’s representation of the LGBT+ community, or lack thereof, and was wondering if you could provide me with your opinion on this topic? Thank you so much!

Hey anon!

While I don’t pretend to be an expert on this subject, I definitely think media’s representation of the LGBT+ community is underwhelming at best (and down right discriminatory a lot of the time if I’m being more accurate), and I don’t think I’d be wrong is assuming most LGBT+ people would agree with me on this. Before I start, I just want to say that there’s nothing wrong with real people being any of the things I mention that do actually get some kind of representation, it just gets a little frustrating for the rest of us when they’re the only ones being represented in media.

Not only do we have to fight tooth and nail for even the tiniest amount of representation, when we do actually get that representation it’s often negative (Did anyone say queer coding every villain until it gets old and then some?) or tokenised with one white, middle class, able bodied, neurotypical, cis gay man bearing the weight of representing the whole community. A task he is definitely not up to doing, to the disappointment of all of us who don’t fit that exact mould and even to some who do.

The media completely disregard intersectionality and a majority of the LGBT+ community, and they rarely, if ever, use their token gay character to talk about actual LGBT+ issues.The also seriously lack originality with few of their LGBT+ characters straying beyond the two polarised ends of their stereotypical pole. They are always either the flamboyant gay that usually ends up being the brunt of the jokes of the exact opposite so the media can toot their horn about how forward thinking they are, revelling that the character no one could’ve thought was gay (because they displayed absolutely no homosexual tendencies), is actually gay! Usually, conveniently for them, at the end of the whole thing so they don’t actually have to address it. While this can be taken as a positive, because it forces people to make a judgement on the character rather than their sexuality, it’s pretty convenient for media companies that this means they don’t actually have to follow through with representing that sexuality within the character.

And that’s just the tip of the iceberg! It’s also painfully obvious that most lesbian representation we see in media is put there for a male audience with two conventionally attractive, feminine women who usually have a loud, revelling sex scene that’s generally inaccurate to actual lesbian sex. But it sure looks good if you’re trying to get off to it and don’t know what two women having sex really looks like. This could (almost) be forgiven, however, if it weren’t for the trope of killing off at least one of the women involved, usually just when it seems like things could be getting better, at least for the LGBT+ viewer looking for representation. Anyone else remembering The 100 right now? It’s like queerbaiting’s (which, don’t even get me started on) older, more soul-destroying cousin. Just when we think our voices are finally being heard, they’re finally giving us a fraction of the representation we deserve, it’s ripped away from us, kicking us while we’re down with the remaining character’s sorrow. A sorrow that will often, in the case of movies, last until the end of story because a happy ending for wlw is just too much to ask, right?

Then there’s the out and out refusal of the media to use the word bisexual. I think I’ve heard of one show (serious props to Grey’s Anatomy) that has a character explicitly state that they are bisexual, instead of someone who “doesn’t like to use labels”. Which again, is fine and a totally valid way for people to identify, but it’s obviously a cop-out for media companies, one they use so they don’t have to use the world bisexual. Or pansexual or polysexual for that matter but I think pigs will fly before media companies acknowledge even the BT in a meaningful, positive way (more than once every ten years), nevermind any of us who fall under the +.

And let’s not forget their trend of having cis men play trans women. There are plenty of trans women out there they could cast in these roles, and yet they’re still being given to cis men. Cis men who know nothing about trans people, or even the LGBT+ in general. Not only does it completely defeat the purpose of telling trans people’s stories to have a cis person play a trans character, it’s a real slap in the face for trans women to have their stories told by male actors. Here we are trying to tell people that trans women are women and media companies are out there validating the arguments of bigots saying that trans women are just men in dress. It’s transphobic, insulting, and downright infuriating. But you know what else is infuriating? The absolute lack of trans men in mainstream media. Unless you go digging in the far reaches of the internet, you’re not gonna find representation for trans men and if you do, it’ll probably be just as inaccurate and insulting as the limited amount of representation for trans women we’re treated to by these companies.

Finally (because this is getting a bit long and I could go on for a while), we get situations like the one with Jughead at the minute, where mainstream media take a canon LGBT+ character from another form of media and erase their gender/sexuality in the process of making their own ‘version’ of this piece of media. In this case, we have aroace Jughead turned straight, despite the already seriously limited representation we get in any kind of media. This erasure of LGBT+ identities is yet another slap in the face for the community and it’s made worse by the insistence that their changes are just their interpretation of the material, which would be fine if it weren’t for the fact that other than the erasure, everything is pretty canon compliant. This makes it pretty obvious that the only ‘alternative interpretations’ they have are ones that make it easier to swallow for bigots. Because why stay true to a character and give LGBT+ people representation when you can avoid the wrath of anti-LGBT+ activists, who have more of an impact on the opinions of the straight, white, middle class majority than we ever could?

Sorry this got so long and passive aggressive (or just aggressive), I have a lot of feelings about this.

I hope this answers your question, feel free to message me so we can talk more about this or anything else. ^.^