Hello! What are your pronouns? I always feel weird when I’m asked this. I was very cagey for a long time, even when I was plainly non-binary, because I didn’t want to rock the boat and give anyone the emotional labour of referring to me by the right words. I would say, ‘oh, I’m easy. I don’t expect you to use the same ones I use for myself’, and when asked what those were, I’d answer ‘I/me/mine’, which as well as being a Beatles song, was a facetious way to evade the question. My English teacher used to say I was facetious, and as a budding etymologist I thought it must be related to faeces. Listener, it was not.

But I’m already way off the point. Do you struggle with your trans friends’ pronouns, and keep reaching for the wrong ones. The best possible way to practice someone’s pronouns is to pray for them. Your daughter now uses she/her pronouns? Good for her. I’m glad she felt safe enough and brave enough to tell you. So pray God, thank you for Mindy, thank you for her. I pray you’d bless her, grant her peace and protection, and help her with the things she needs. Help me to give her a hand with her needs, and so on and so forth, amen!

Your spouse goes by they/them these days? Magnficent! Father God, thank you for Brogan. Bless them, may they know your peace and your presence. Help them in their big job interview. Even if this job isn’t the one, help them find the one that is theirs, and not to despair, Amen!

With neopronouns - unfamiliar or recently developed ones like ze or per, this is the perfect way to practice. I have a friend who I’ll refer to as Articuno, and ve goes by the lesser-known ve/vim/vir pronouns. Father, grant vim aid during this difficult year. May ve come to know your love in vir life. As the song says, Beatus Vir.

Prayer is perfect for this, because everybody needs more prayer, and it none of it goes to waste - and because it helps you practice with all the various forms of the pronoun in a personal, conversational way with a famously forgiving audience. Make your slip-ups in prayer and improve there.

(The other hint, if you keep getting the wrong pronouns is, don’t think ‘my aunt uses ‘him’ pronouns now’, think ‘my uncle uses ‘him’ pronouns now’. It’s a very obvious thing to say, but if the pronouns are the only mental adjustment you’ve made, if you accept that you *have to* use someone’s pronouns but you’re not also accepting the whole gender and kaboodle, you’ll keep going awry).

If you want a more secular place to try someone’s pronouns, let’s talk about John Shaft. Isaac Hayes’ Oscar-winning ‘Theme from Shaft’ tells us ‘I heard that Shaft’s a bad mother...’ — au contraire, he’s an estranged father, though that isn’t apparent until the fifth film in the series. But another line in the song is an excellent format for pronouns: ‘He’s a complicated man, but no-one understands him but his woman’. Leaving aside the baffling first use of ‘but’, this sentence is perfect: it lays out ‘he, him, his’, in that order, as well as telling us his gender - man - and even a hint to his romantic orientation. Try it out! Oh, Jenny? She’s a complicated woman, but no-one understands her but her woman’. Benjamilian? They’re a complicated person but no-one understands them but themself’. I’m quite narcissistic and/or asexual, as you’ll percieve. Articuno? Ve’s a complicated friend but no-one understands vim but vir chickens’. Purely platonic. Ve’s not Gonzo, you know.

I often look at John Shaft as an example of manhood, against which to contrast and compare aspects of myself. He came in handy when I was learning German. German nouns have three genders, which each have their own form of ‘the’: der, die, das. Male, female, neutral. Der Mann, die Frau, das Pferd. That’s ‘the man, the woman, the horse’. I always remember it’s ‘das Pferd’, cos horses are all non-binary. That’s why you have to ask them their Pferd pronouns. I actually don’t like the phrase ‘preferred pronouns’. They’re not preferred. They’re just my pronouns. They’re not optional. Well, mine are, but I’m easy.

Anyway, there’s very little in German vocab to tell you which gender a word is, so you’ve just got to learn them all. I have a notebook where I drew up three very long lists, those things belonging to John Shaft, to Béyoncé, and to myself, aligned by gender. If I’m assigning a ring, a bat and a boat, Shaft owns der Ring, Béyoncé owns die Fledermaus, and I own Das Boot on DVD and Blu-Ray.

There is one other thing I will say about pronouns. Some people aren’t keen on ‘they/them’ as singular, and obviously those people tend to be tediously conservative grammar fools. They/them has a long history, and I go by it myself, but a former vicar of mine actually made an interesting point. If the Bible says ‘God loves every believer and looks after them’ it sounds less personal than ‘God loves every believer and looks after him, or her’, which makes it clear it’s care for you as an individual, not just care for the group. I can sort-of see that point. Human language as it stands, is imperfect, but I’m glad people are seeking ways to improve that. That example above isn’t actually Biblical, I can’t off-hand think of the one he used to make the point. The example I always think of is apocryphal. ‘To each according to his ability, from each according to his needs’ is the usual English translation of Karl Marx, but it’s very male-skewed. Then again ‘to each according to their ability, from each according to their need’ is more all-embracing and neutral, but it could refer to groups, societies, whole demographics, which doesn’t quite represent Marx’s point, though it’s neutral in the original: ‘Jeder nach seinen Fähigkeiten, jedem nach seinen Bedürfnissen.’

But yes, the answer I should give, is that I use they/them/their/theirs. I can’t be sure it’s my forever pronoun, which may be yet to be coined or come to prominence. I’m not too particular. If someone uses ‘he’ it doesn’t grieve me in my heart. It gives me a tiny pedantic irk, as if they had called New York the capital of America. In both cases, I can see why you’ve looked at the evidence and made that assumption, but like everything in this world it’s a curate’s egg. One day we will have more comfortable pronouns and there will be no more death, so there are really two things to look forward to.