When you’ve had a rough day of being misgendered at the supermarket, it’s a huge relief to come home to a partner or family member who’ll drop you a cute gender-neutral compliment as you come in the door.
Sometimes a simple text can brighten your day when your loved ones really truly ‘get’ it, as Twitter user @blondbutch found out:
If you’re struggling with pronouns and pet names for the enby and genderfluid folks in your life, look no further, because the community has come through for you.
Thankfully most terms of endearment are gender neutral by default; try ‘babe’, ‘sweetie’, or ‘honey’ on for size.
Reddit users on r/NonBinary have a few more… uh… unique examples. User Noctuema’s boyfriend calls them “datemate”. User queerandbarelyhere said: “[M]y lovely partner calls me his ‘little nip’ – ‘nip’ standing for ‘nothing in particular’ (when he asked me what I’d feel comfortable being labelled as gender-wise in pet names, I said ‘nothing in particular’”.
Random food items or objects are also a go-to for people who identify as non-binary, a-gender or genderfluid, which really cements Leslie Knope from Parks and Rec as the ultimate queer ally.
Clamperls on Tumblr recounts a weird dream they had, but I can see it working IRL:
The ultimate resource for nailing the right pronouns has to be Gender Queeries on Tumblr, who have put together a comprehensive list of familial, relationship and everyday titles to use. They even have a gender-neutral protocol for Game of Thrones – ‘Khalof’ is, in fact, a canon descriptor for a non-binary Dothraki war commander.
And if you’re really despairing, you could always take inspiration from Tumblr user sparkleruffles, who reckons you can basically just pluck lyrics from an early 00s cartoon and run with that:
Take it from Leslie:
You got this.