The Pronoun Puzzle Nobody Talks About

Here's a curious pattern: ask a room of trans people how they feel about ditching he/she for something gender-neutral, and the pushback disproportionately comes from trans women. Not trans men. Not enthusiastically from anyone, really, but especially not from trans women. Why?

Turns out there's a tidy little game theory explanation hiding in here.

Imagine you're a stranger, mildly uncertain or uncomfortable about someone's gender, and you don't want the awkwardness of getting it "wrong." Singular they is a wonderful escape hatch. No commitment, no risk, no offense taken — probably.

But here's the catch: society doesn't apply that discomfort evenly. People are, broadly, far more hesitant to call a trans woman "she" than to call a trans man "he." Transmisogyny does that. Womanhood is treated as something you have to earn access to; manhood, less so. So when they becomes available as a polite dodge, guess who ends up getting dodged the most?

For trans women, the fight to be called "she" is the fight to be recognized as a woman at all. Neutral pronouns don't feel neutral — they feel like a