"First, I really want to validate and acknowledge how difficult it can be to talk about our pronouns.

I know for me when I was first asking people to use he/him pronouns to refer to me, I was terrified. In fact, correcting people was something I almost never did. I felt really scared, I was really vulnerable, and I was afraid they wouldn't respect me or believe me or use my pronouns at all.

So if you're feeling scared or vulnerable, I'm there with you. I understand, that makes a lot of sense.

Now logistically my recommendations are to be as simple and direct as possible. You might introduce yourself and say, 'Hi, I'm Schuyler, I use he/him pronouns" and have that be that. You can also send an email at the beginning of the semester just saying, "Hey, I just wanted to let you know, these are my pronouns, I would really appreciate if you respected them.

But of course no matter how clearly and compassionately we communicate what we need or what we want from others, we actually can't control what they do. So I would also be prepared with some backup steps. Maybe there's some administrator you can talk to help you and help advocate for you. Maybe there's a plan that you can have your other friends in the class help gender you correctly and correct the professor if they misgender you. Maybe there's a plan that doesn't involve anybody else but it's about you being able to validate yourself even when somebody else can't.

And that's the third and most important thing I want to communicate to you, which is that if other people are misgendering you, it doesn't mean that there's something wrong with your gender; it doesn't mean you gender is invalid. It means something about that other person and their view of you but not actually about your gender.

When people called me a woman, called me she/her pronouns, called me a girl, that told me a lot about how they saw me, but they didn't actually tell me anything about my own gender.

My gender is mine, always."