Being gender non-conforming, right down to their pronouns, is how they choose to identify. For others, it’s a form of protest: they contest rigid gender expectations and would rather live without them. Some people do it because they don’t feel they fit into a gender.

Reasons for choosing gender neutral pronouns are complex and personal. Last year, Merriam-Webster made the singular gender-neutral use of “they” its word of the year, based on the fact that it had seen a 313% increase in searches for its definition that year. In 2015, of 4,000 students at Harvard who had submitted preferred pronouns, around 1% chose pronouns other than “he” or “she”. More and more people are using gender-neutral pronouns. It really isn’t that hard, however, to get it right. But I admit to having made mistakes – even avoiding using pronouns in the past, for fear of getting it wrong. Putting someone’s dignity before my shyness about how to use a pronoun is, of course, the bare minimum. As someone who is new to using them (a number of my friends have recently started to identify as non-binary), I confess it can be intimidating when you want to respect someone’s wishes without making any blunders. If gender neutral pronouns intimidate you, you’re not the only one. Non-binary people tend to prefer using they/them pronouns (although not exclusively – some use she and he interchangeably).

What pronoun is we