To start, I’m generally apathetic when my mom misgenders me. When I was first coming out, it felt special for my family to use she/her for me and to be publicly known as they/them because it was like “home gender” and “public gender” if that makes sense lol. But, over time, it kind of flipped and I stopped caring if strangers at a grocery store or people I’m not close to gender me as she/her and preferred my close relations to use they/them, including employers and professors.

However, my mom has a HUGE trigger about being corrected about anything. Not just my pronouns. She misspeaks and forgets the names of people and things all the time. Ex. She can’t pronounce Idris Alba’s name correctly even though she loves him as an actor and talks about him occasionally. She’ll say something like “Ildris Alaba”. It’s definitely some kind of cognitive thing she’s had her whole life, but she was bullied and humiliated as a result, so I usually just give her some time to work out who she’s talking about and fill in the blanks “Oh, you mean Idris Alba?” and that usually keeps the flow of the convo going.

I noticed it’s worse if I say something like “by the way, it’s pronounced Idris Alba.” Because now we’re talking about her mistake and she gets defensive even though I assure her it’s not a big deal. That’s how I now it’s a proper trigger because it applies to things that aren’t my personal pronouns, pronouns in general, and her reaction is disproportionate to my tone and intent.

All that said, I’m still apathetic about her misgendering me because it’s kind of in the same box of “it’s pronounced they, but I get what you mean” because she does understand that I’m non-binary. And she’s working on it.

Not sure what I want from posting this, but I just needed to get it out I guess.