I use he/him in meatspace. I was born that way, I am comfortable in my body, I am used to that.

Online, I recently took to using he/they.

Why? Well, there are two main reasons, let’s get into them.

For one, I know it’s been a fairly common practice for a while now, but as a straight man, it just felt a bit strange to broadcast my pronouns. It was as if I am appropriating something that isn’t really mine. But that changed when I read a post by someone that made a really good point - Less marginalized folk using pronouns make the whole practice more normalized and acceptable. It’s worth adopting it to me, so my friends can hopefully feel more comfortable.

For the second reason, and why the split: For long, I have felt like my online persona sort of “transcends” gender, it really doesn’t matter. Here, I am a being made of bits and bytes and it feels almost silly to assign a gender to that. Yet, the internet is a very human construct and we often use human languages to communicate and using pronouns to refer to someone is useful. That’s why I adopted pronouns somewhat different from the real-life self, and they might change further as I explore these thoughts more.