I have a question about gender-neutral family references

[florahart]

So, I am all over gender-neutral pronouns, and I want to call people what they want to be called and stuff, but I am wondering if there is a term which is widely preferred among people who identify as non-gender-binary, not for pronouns but for third-party references to them as family members. For example, my children both are male, so I call them

Comments

[tripperfunster]

I'll be watching this post. I'm interested as to what people have to say.

Sometimes, when your pronouns are too vague, people make completely different assumptions.

I once dealt with a woman who referred to her significant other as her 'partner' and I assumed she was a lesbian. I hope I didn't gawk too much when her HUSBAND showed up one day. :D That was just her term for him, and I couldn't have been more wrong about it.

[channonyarrow]

My mother has been referring to my father as her husband (and he her as his wife) because even though they're divorced, it's a lot easier than partner, not least because they have had that exact experience. (I hope you were not at SIFF and were not talking to my mother, but if you were, she thought you were very nice!)

[tripperfunster]

Hee! No. This was a customer of mine, who I'd had several dealings with, over the course of several months, before her husband arrived. ;) Ex-husband doesn't work as a term for her?

[channonyarrow]

Well, they live together, so I think it's mostly that it causes some head-explodey for a lot of people to try to explain it. Plus, they're both older, and my mother does have a strong streak of the conventional. Even though my dad's been trying to get her to remarry him for about 12 years, she's not going to, but she won't take the step of referring to him as her partner.

It was pretty funny that one of the neighbors (super religious family) stopped really speaking to her for about a year when they found out that my parents aren't married. It was a lot less funny that they did not stop speaking to my dad.

[danceswchopstck]

Not an expert, at all, but the word "offspring" comes to mind as one possibility.

[uk_sef]

Or "this one is my fault". ;-)

In reality, I do use both offspring and sibling. Around here, another option for partner is "significant other". Spouse is fairly conventional for the contractually married subset.

Grandparents can be covered by "ancestor". From which I suppose it would be possible to refer to a grandchild or even a child gender-neutrally as a "descendant".

Aunt and uncle (and nephew and niece) are the ones for which I haven't encountered a gender-neutral alternative. I suppose one could more liberally adapt the extensions of cousin with "once removed" and second-cousin and so forth. Most people don't even bother with uncle-in-law and aunt-in-law for the non-blood relations-by-marriage and I think the other direction is completely ignored when a nephew or niece has a partner.

[pauraque]

After replying to tripperfunster, I realized I never really answered the question!

Awareness of non-binary gender identities is probably too new for anything to be truly standard or expected yet, so if you're asking purely hypothetically, I don't think there's an answer. However, you can't go too far wrong by simply asking any non-binary people in your life what terms they would like used in reference to them. As a trans person I appreciate polite inquiries about the proper way to refer to me far more than random guesses, and I've heard several non-binary people say the same.

[tripperfunster]

So, if you were shopping in a store (or any other somewhat impersonal situation) would you be offended if I asked you which pronouns you prefer?

I generally try to use the pronouns that it appears the trans person is presenting as, but sometimes it's not clear, and then I try to use very gender neutral phrases, but I'm sure I've stumbled over them occasionally.

I suppose it's more about respect and acceptance, but it would sure be nice if there was a simple answer! :D

[pauraque]

So, if you were shopping in a store (or any other somewhat impersonal situation) would you be offended if I asked you which pronouns you prefer?Well, context matters. If a random stranger approached me and started asking about my gender just because they were curious, I would probably be offended. But if an acquaintance brought it up because they needed to know in order to interact with me (you can't construct sentences without gender references forever) I'd be fine with it

[aunty_marion]

My niece identifies as asexual (and possibly agender, though I'm not sure), and has changed her first name to an ambiguous one and her middle name to a masculine one. My mother died last year, and as a result my sisters and I all really need to change our wills, so my younger sister (my niece's mother) sent me a copy of hers, in which she refers to my niece as 'my child $name$'.

[ngaio]

I use 'child' for my child (logically enough!), or 'the not-so-little-un'. Unfortunately due to the small size of my family I can't really give any other gender neutral terms off the top of my head.

Have asked the family and been given sarcastic answers! And the more serious answers of: Nieph or nibling (for nephew/niece) and pibling (for parent's sibling).

[uk_sef]

I could see nibling catching on. :-D

I'm less convinced by pibling - purely because it's a diminutive type word being applied upwards to people who probably expect to be taken seriously or accorded some respect. However, it would totally work for a somewhat non-standard extended family where the aunt or uncle was actually a very much younger child than the parent of the children/adults who would be their nieces or nephews.

[ngaio]

Yeah, I agree that pibling isn't the best term really. It's interesting though seeing language evolve to accommodate this way of looking at the world which sometimes excludes gender. Maybe in 100 years everyone will know the terms to use because it'll be something accepted into life and language.