Memory tips for pronouns
March 4, 2016 12:25 PM Subscribe
I have a terrible memory and I don't want to misgender anyone! Do you have any memory tips for getting correct gender pronouns faster or more consistently?
I very much want to use the correct pronouns for a person I am starting to work with, but my memory is overall awful and I am finding it difficult to override my misgendering perception of him. I want to unlearn this incorrect impression or at least shut it down before it escapes my mouth! I put a reminder for myself in my phone for before our next meeting, but I'm wondering if anyone else has thought of useful things that worked for you in this scenario. All I'm finding on Google are tips to remember names (not the problem) and how important it is not to misgender people (I know!).
I very much want to use the correct pronouns for a person I am starting to work with, but my memory is overall awful and I am finding it difficult to override my misgendering perception of him. I want to unlearn this incorrect impression or at least shut it down before it escapes my mouth! I put a reminder for myself in my phone for before our next meeting, but I'm wondering if anyone else has thought of useful things that worked for you in this scenario. All I'm finding on Google are tips to remember names (not the problem) and how important it is not to misgender people (I know!).
Best answer: I would take five minutes to write/read/say a short paragraph script story about him. As stupidly preschool storyline as you want, but just alternate use of the name and the pronoun you want to remember. Important to keep a mental image of that person in your head the whole time. Write it down and read it out loud, or just make stuff up on the fly as you chant it in the car on your drive home - but you want to be able to say the pronoun while thinking of his face, so do the exercise out loud if possible.
"Pat is my coworker. He likes red. Pat is wearing red shoes, I like his red shoes. Pat sits 10 desks away from me and I can hear him talking on the phone. I'm on a project team with Pat and he's in charge of logistics for our project. I'll be in a meeting with Pat tomorrow and I want to be sure to thank him for handling that. Please give Pat his copy of the report. ... "
posted by aimedwander at 12:36 PM on March 4, 2016 [16 favorites]
"Pat is my coworker. He likes red. Pat is wearing red shoes, I like his red shoes. Pat sits 10 desks away from me and I can hear him talking on the phone. I'm on a project team with Pat and he's in charge of logistics for our project. I'll be in a meeting with Pat tomorrow and I want to be sure to thank him for handling that. Please give Pat his copy of the report. ... "
posted by aimedwander at 12:36 PM on March 4, 2016 [16 favorites]
Practice with his Facebook posts (or tweets or whatever you have access to) -- summarize them aloud in the third person.
posted by sleepingcbw at 12:39 PM on March 4, 2016
posted by sleepingcbw at 12:39 PM on March 4, 2016
The fastest way for me is when there are conversations about this person, make sure to correct your conversation partner if THEY are using the wrong pronoun. It's a double whammy and you are trying to work on remembering it and making it concrete, while doing the work of helping them not be misgendered.
Also, this is not something I prefer doing, but if I'm really struggling, I use "they/them" and keep nudging myself towards getting the proper pronoun 100%, since I won't at least make the mistake of stepping back into what I misperceived about their gender.
posted by yueliang at 12:43 PM on March 4, 2016 [2 favorites]
Also, this is not something I prefer doing, but if I'm really struggling, I use "they/them" and keep nudging myself towards getting the proper pronoun 100%, since I won't at least make the mistake of stepping back into what I misperceived about their gender.
posted by yueliang at 12:43 PM on March 4, 2016 [2 favorites]
And I'll add, if this is someone you've never met, make sure to find as many photos as possible. I'm imagining you saw a name in document and assumed Erin meant female, or read a foreign name and just guessed, or you heard the name and thought they were saying Adrienne when it's actually Adrian. At that point you probably created a mental image, i.e. when somebody says their name, you think of something, except it turns out not to be accurate. So your challenge is to build a new impression, something more accurate. But if you've still never met them, that's hard. Look on social media and see if you can find a photo that shows what they actually look like (assuming they present strongly as the gender of their pronoun), or pick a strongly-gendered character or celebrity with the same name or something you can associate with them. Anything to get an image in your head while you think about them and their pronoun.
posted by aimedwander at 12:48 PM on March 4, 2016 [1 favorite]
posted by aimedwander at 12:48 PM on March 4, 2016 [1 favorite]
Best answer: Similar to how I try to remember names - I would look at their photo or think of him and say "Bob is him, he is bob, he he he. him him him. he said X in our last meeting. He is good at [job]." etc for like five minutes. Think of their pronoun as their name - because it's an identifier like a name.
Maybe make a mnemonic trick like making "he" their middle name in your head. "Bob He Jones." That's similar to what I've done when trying to remember someone's location in my last position where you need to know what store they own. So in my head their name was tied to their location.
In my last job a client type person transitioned and so I had to also suddenly switch gender pronouns suddenly. I just sat with it in my brain for a few minutes, especially before emailing or calling.
posted by Crystalinne at 12:55 PM on March 4, 2016
Maybe make a mnemonic trick like making "he" their middle name in your head. "Bob He Jones." That's similar to what I've done when trying to remember someone's location in my last position where you need to know what store they own. So in my head their name was tied to their location.
In my last job a client type person transitioned and so I had to also suddenly switch gender pronouns suddenly. I just sat with it in my brain for a few minutes, especially before emailing or calling.
posted by Crystalinne at 12:55 PM on March 4, 2016
Best answer: I put a reminder for myself in my phone for before our next meeting
I find it really helpful to remember why it's important to the other person and have that be impetus for me to work harder. Like, my partner is notorious for misgendering other people's pets. I have no idea why he does it but it's just a thing for him. And pets don't care but I think being casual about that sort of thing, like it doesn't matter, can lead to sloppy thinking in situations where it very much does matter.
And I think to most people with a consistent gender identity or cisgender life, the issue of being misgendered would be personally sort of irksome but not that big a deal. Someone calls me "sir by accident I don't mind. However, that is not at all true (by and large, some generalizations of course) for people in different situations. It may be a hassle, a struggle, may be an issue that comes up in situations where they are concerned for their safety, where other people claim to know their business, etc. So I have to get myself forcibly out of the casual and possibly lazy mindset of "Oh it must be like what it would feel like to me!" It's not.
I like to consider myself a person-with-manners most of the time and part of etiquette is going out of ones way (if necessary) to make the other person feel at ease and comfortable. So the extent to which you can gender them appropriately--I don't know if the person you are interacting with is a transgender person or just someone you don't know personally and misgendered in the past--and make it fluid and effortless and NOT A THING is a kindness. Even turning it into an outwardly "Oh I am trying so hard!" situation is not really the goal state as much as just making it a non-thing and that is what you should be working towards.
posted by jessamyn at 1:04 PM on March 4, 2016 [1 favorite]
I find it really helpful to remember why it's important to the other person and have that be impetus for me to work harder. Like, my partner is notorious for misgendering other people's pets. I have no idea why he does it but it's just a thing for him. And pets don't care but I think being casual about that sort of thing, like it doesn't matter, can lead to sloppy thinking in situations where it very much does matter.
And I think to most people with a consistent gender identity or cisgender life, the issue of being misgendered would be personally sort of irksome but not that big a deal. Someone calls me "sir by accident I don't mind. However, that is not at all true (by and large, some generalizations of course) for people in different situations. It may be a hassle, a struggle, may be an issue that comes up in situations where they are concerned for their safety, where other people claim to know their business, etc. So I have to get myself forcibly out of the casual and possibly lazy mindset of "Oh it must be like what it would feel like to me!" It's not.
I like to consider myself a person-with-manners most of the time and part of etiquette is going out of ones way (if necessary) to make the other person feel at ease and comfortable. So the extent to which you can gender them appropriately--I don't know if the person you are interacting with is a transgender person or just someone you don't know personally and misgendered in the past--and make it fluid and effortless and NOT A THING is a kindness. Even turning it into an outwardly "Oh I am trying so hard!" situation is not really the goal state as much as just making it a non-thing and that is what you should be working towards.
posted by jessamyn at 1:04 PM on March 4, 2016 [1 favorite]
Best answer: I put a reminder for myself in my phone for before our next meeting
Memory is influenced by all kinds of things, so prompts sometimes aren't very effective because it comes in the wrong way or at the wrong time or whatever.
A couple of things that influence memory: state and place.
Studies show that if you run into someone "out of context", about half the time, you may not recognize them. In other words, you know who John is when you see him at work, but you can potentially run into him elsewhere and fail to recognize him.
So, where do you typically meet this person? Is it possible to go to that exact place alone and do some of the suggested mental exercises in this thread? If you can go to the exact meeting room/place, sit in the correct chair, etc, and mentally practice there, it may stick better.
Is there something particular about the state you are normally in when you interact with him? Is it typically early morning? Or while eating? Or out of breathe from a jog? Is there any way you can recreate both the state and place during your "study" times? If you can, it may stick a lot better.
Best of luck and hi 5s on putting in the effort to be decent!
posted by Michele in California at 2:08 PM on March 4, 2016
Memory is influenced by all kinds of things, so prompts sometimes aren't very effective because it comes in the wrong way or at the wrong time or whatever.
A couple of things that influence memory: state and place.
Studies show that if you run into someone "out of context", about half the time, you may not recognize them. In other words, you know who John is when you see him at work, but you can potentially run into him elsewhere and fail to recognize him.
So, where do you typically meet this person? Is it possible to go to that exact place alone and do some of the suggested mental exercises in this thread? If you can go to the exact meeting room/place, sit in the correct chair, etc, and mentally practice there, it may stick better.
Is there something particular about the state you are normally in when you interact with him? Is it typically early morning? Or while eating? Or out of breathe from a jog? Is there any way you can recreate both the state and place during your "study" times? If you can, it may stick a lot better.
Best of luck and hi 5s on putting in the effort to be decent!
posted by Michele in California at 2:08 PM on March 4, 2016
Best answer: One of my friends presents as a cis-female, but uses male pronouns. Another of my friends presents as a cis-male, but uses plural pronouns. I find it much easier to use correct pronouns, oddly, when they are not in front of me, because when I see them my mind automatically associates the presentation with the incorrect gender...and then I feel terrible. They are pretty nice about it, though, and I do my best to correct myself right away if I mis-gender them.
I have to really Stop And Think before I say anything. When I'm spending time with them, I will repeat their pronouns to myself silently to kind of prime my brain to use the correct one. It works most of the time. Speaking more slowly helps too.
posted by ananci at 2:30 PM on March 4, 2016 [1 favorite]
I have to really Stop And Think before I say anything. When I'm spending time with them, I will repeat their pronouns to myself silently to kind of prime my brain to use the correct one. It works most of the time. Speaking more slowly helps too.
posted by ananci at 2:30 PM on March 4, 2016 [1 favorite]
Response by poster: These suggestions are great! I don't have access to his pictures/social media, but I've spent time with him twice in group settings. Success with this means to me that he doesn't have to waste any more thoughts on this with me because I'll have done my homework (with help from you lovely people)! I am definitely going to try out the story thing and mentally run through it in our meeting space when it's empty. I'll also change that phone reminder to prompt me with something specific to encoding (maybe something like "notice how x is expressing his masculinity today"). Thanks all for the input so far.
posted by monkeys with typewriters at 2:30 PM on March 4, 2016 [2 favorites]
posted by monkeys with typewriters at 2:30 PM on March 4, 2016 [2 favorites]
When I was first transitioning and my wife was adjusting to my new pronouns, she found writing journal entries about me really helpful.
posted by nebulawindphone at 6:58 PM on March 4, 2016 [2 favorites]
posted by nebulawindphone at 6:58 PM on March 4, 2016 [2 favorites]
I put a reminder for myself in my phone for before our next meeting
When you need to remember the proper he/she pronoun is when you are talking to others, when you are speaking directly with the person in question one would generally use you/your. Remind yourself before you would have occasion to talk to others about this person.
posted by yohko at 2:56 PM on March 7, 2016
When you need to remember the proper he/she pronoun is when you are talking to others, when you are speaking directly with the person in question one would generally use you/your. Remind yourself before you would have occasion to talk to others about this person.
posted by yohko at 2:56 PM on March 7, 2016
This thread is closed to new comments.
posted by cotton dress sock at 12:33 PM on March 4, 2016