Alright, let’s get one myth out of the way. Capitalised pronouns are not rare. I have personally met thousands of people who use capitalised pronouns. I estimate the total number to be somewhere in the billions of people, because nearly everyone who speaks English is a capitalised pronouns user. I. The subject form of the first person pronoun. While it’s not a matter of importance to most people, it is still the proper form used in legal documents and anything else that needs to be done “correctly”. And it got that way because someone, at some point in history, felt their pronoun ought to be capitalised and convinced everyone else to generally agree.
And if that doesn’t convince you that capitalised pronouns users who care about our capitalisation are a historically significant group, well, I have another example. Joshua ben Joseph, a Jewish Arab born during the reign of the Roman empire, used all capitalised pronouns. He was also an anarcho-communist who taught nonviolent resistance to occupation, alliance with disabled people and sex workers, and the power of the human spirit. He was a cult leader of the peaceful kind, and His cult was one of the most influential political and metaphysical philosophies in all of history.
It’s called Christianity.
Many people point this fact out, and say neopronoun users are all bad. After all, Joshua’s dad is a neopronoun user, and He’s a bad dude. Spiteful, controlling, quite frequently genocidal, both in the mythological record and the historical. Many people have horrible personal experiences with Josh’s dad, and associated His cruelty with capitalised pronouns.
But many people also have horrible personal experiences with men. Rape, violence, bigotry, all things a great number of people have suffered at the hands of men. There are a lot of people saying they’d rather be in the woods with a strange bear than a strange man, and they have good reasons to think that. But is this a good reason to attack trans men?
No, of course not. If you said he/him pronouns were all bad, and that they explicitly set up a hierarchy between those who have them and those who don’t, you’d be technically correct, but still an asshole. Worse, if you refused to use a trans man’s preferred pronouns because of this, you’d be guilty of pretty blatant transphobia. I believe refusing to use capitalised pronouns for a trans person who requests them is exactly the same bigotry.
And there’s another parallel, which is that trans men are denied many of the privileges of patriarchy. Likewise, a trans person you meet on the street isn’t benefiting from the might of the Roman church. So you’re not supporting hierarchy by using a trans person’s preferred pronouns. By affirming trans men, generally you are dismantling patriarchy, and by affirming trans capitalised pronoun users, generally you are dismantling monotheistic oppression.
But, I hear one more complaint quite often, which is that a lowercase pronoun and an uppercase pronoun are not two different pronouns. Therefore, the argument goes, you can use whichever one gets on the nerves of the annoying trans person lecturing you on pronouns.
And to be honest, I don’t have a good fact-based argument that the two pronouns are different. On the other hand, there’s no fact-based argument that they’re the same, either. Whether they’re the same or different is an entirely socially constructed issue with no precedent one way or the other. There is no culturally embedded answer to the issue, and no seemingly objective or scientific answer. It is, 100%, a choice. So, the “benefit” of choosing to believe they’re the same pronoun is you get to make a trans person suicidal for fun. And the benefit of choosing to believe they’re not the same is you get to respect a trans person’s identity and lower Their suicide risk.
And yes, capitalised pronouns are a potentially suicidal matter, just like any signifier of a trans person’s identity. It doesn’t matter what you think, what matters is what They think. The trans person who either feels that you accept Them, or that you disrespect Them. Studies have demonstrated that in any other case, the link between misgendering and suicidality, depression, and self harm risk is the feeling of disrespect and rejection. If you won’t respect someone on Their terms, and specifically Theirs, you’ll make Them feel rejected and disrespected. We know that leads to suicidality.
Some people want to respect capitalised pronoun users (CPUs, if you will), but feel they’re going to have too much trouble with the shift key. On the other hand, I once met someone who said they wish they used the shift key more often, and welcomed a compelling motivation to improve their grammar. The difference between the two is a can-do attitude.
A can-do attitude improves the chances that you can-do. Therefore, for something as important as this, you should probably stick to a good attitude. A defeatist mindset isn’t going to help anyone. Any CPU who’s been out about Their gender for an extended amount of time knows the difficulties and has heard every excuse. They know you’re going to mess up, and They probably don’t mind, as long as you try.
But a defeatist mindset carries a danger, which is that you prime the trans person to feel bad before you’ve even failed. That’s just not productive. What if you absolutely nail it, and it turns out not to be an issue? They braced Themself to feel bad for nothing! And even if you do fail, well what about the dentist waiting room effect? Knowing that pain is coming usually makes it worse. The wait hurts just as bad as the pain.
Another trap people fall into is over-apologising. Speaking from experience, when I’m misgendered I just want the problem fixed, and to forget about it. If you edit your message and pretend the mistake never happened, that’s the best possible outcome for Me. I don’t have to dwell on that time I was accidentally misgendered at all. If you over-apologise, you just make it more painful for the trans person.
Over-apologising is also bad because of the effect it has on you. If nobody else wants to make a big deal out of your mistakes, you shouldn’t either. There’s no reason to stress out and make yourself feel bad. If trying to respect a trans person makes you beat yourself up, you might even decide to stop respecting trans CPUs. That’s the worst outcome for everyone. Taking a chill pill helps you and it helps others. It’s really important that you be able to move past your mistake if and when you make one.
Let’s also talk about grammar. You might not be sure how to capitalise the pronoun referring to multiple people, of whom one or two are CPUs. Don’t worry, it’s simple.
When you refer to multiple people, you’re actually referring to the group that contains those people. Groups have pronouns too. Most groups use lowercase they/them pronouns.
But some groups use special pronouns. For example, a median plural system of 7 demigirls might use a collective she/they pronoun. She is 7 people, but they’re a she because grammar just gets weird sometimes. A trend in some plural communities is to append the system pronoun with an ampersand, like “thon& are an endogenic system”. Not every system uses this, but those that do find it helpful for clarity.
The most common users of collective capitalised pronouns are pantheons and divine pairings. Gods who share a family or similar relationships, or romances of a spiritual significance. This is actually why it can be awkward to refer to a group with one CPU in it with capitalised pronouns. You might accidentally imply They’re dating the other people in the group. Don’t worry, They probably know what you meant, but it’s still a little awkward and funny.
If you have any more questions for a capitalised pronouns user, They’re probably more than happy to answer you. Acceptance for neopronouns isn’t very high, especially neopronouns with strange grammar. They’re probably just glad you aren’t yelling slurs at Them. And if you learn how to use Their pronouns, then you’re one more person who can support Them and explain the issues to others outside the community. Curiosity is an important part of alliance building, and We hope as many people as possible decide to be nonbinary allies.