Misgendered.

Our son has been expressing himself as a boy for the past year. But gender expression is not gender identity so I don’t blame those who inadvertently misgender him. 

Imagine you are looking at someone and can’t tell what pronouns to use. 

A binder, male clothes, and male haircut, sometimes isn’t enough for an average person to look at our boy and determine his pronouns. 

Knowing that it either makes or breaks his day, my husband and I tried one simple thing on our recent family vacation – we referred to first born as our son immediately in ALL of our public interactions.

Snorkeling, luau, restaurants, shopping. We made sure to call attention to his pronouns upon introduction so no one would be confused. 

Ok, that sounds over-the-top. It wasn’t like we shouted “boy! this is a boy you are interacting with!” 

We just said things like “Son, what do you want to eat?” or “our son really wants to snorkel” or “This would look so cute on our son!”

I can happily say that it not only worked, but I could see the relief on many unsure faces.

On our five-hour boat ride for our snorkeling experience, I heard several crew members refer to him as “dude” and “man.” 

While not every restaurant server made it a point to reach out to him with proper pronouns, the few who did were amazing! We heard ‘sir’ and ‘gentleman’ which pleased us all. 

I’ve decided to continue this practice until his gender is no longer unclear. 

Maybe I’ll do it for the rest of my life. But my hope is that one day, in the near future, it’s obvious to the world that he is a boy.