First I want to say that if someone has told you what their pronouns are, the correct thing to do is to use them consistently and apologize if you make a mistake. Probably preaching to the crowd on that one, but I think it bears acknowledgement before I go on…

My question is, do you use they/them for everyone until you know what their actual pronouns are? Or do you make a judgement call based on their presentation and name and then adjust if corrected?

Example:

My partner (non-binary, she/he/they pronouns) and I were at a restaurant. Our server was dressed in dark colors — fitted jeans and a long sleeved t-shirt. I believe that they introduced themself with a masculine name, but I don’t recall what it was. Their voice seemed similar to a (stereotypically) gay man’s voice — slightly higher register and a little bit lilting.

When we got home, my partner and I both expressed our surprise when, at one point in our meal, our server had referred to my partner with he/him pronouns. Like I said above, my partner is fine with any (she, he, and they) pronouns, but it was a little surprising that our server chose “he,” given the fact that my partner was wearing a dress and our server seemed to be in some way connected to the queer community. I guess we both just had assumed that they would have defaulted to “they” given my partner’s clearly ambiguous appearance.

Anyway, so then in commenting on this, I said, “yeah, I was surprised when he said that too!” My partner was then surprised that I had gendered our server as “he” as well! I guess I had read our server as more male-coded than my partner had…especially since they had still defaulted to “he” when looking at a person in a dress.

So anyway, it got me thinking, what do other people do? Do you generally default to they/them for everyone? Do you stick to gendered pronouns for people who seem like they have a clear gender presentation and maybe would take offense at “they/them” — but go with neutral terms for people who are more androgynous? What’s your take on how to handle situations where you aren’t sure? If you were our server, would you have asked my partner for their pronouns? If you were me, would you have stuck with they/them for our server, since their pronouns hadn’t been explicitly stated?