Thanks for taking the time to talk to me about it even though you might be sick of it! I appreciate the work you’re putting into the community.

this actually means a lot given my day. thank you.

This makes a lot of sense to me - I think I’ve had previously a more naive view of neopronouns like “choose the pronouns that conform most closely to the way you want society to view you”

yeah, you'll hear this described as the notion of gender as a performance. that idea is obviously very hard on NB people and trans people who can't pass because it demands recognition by an other to be yourself.

Looking at it from the lens of “I’d like to be called this even if you don’t understand what that means” makes doe make a lot more sense to me

it goes deeper than that. I can't even properly justify, even were a gun to be put to my head, why I'm a woman, why I prefer she/her pronouns over even they/them, or much else about it. for me, these are fundamentally experiential truths about myself.

Yes, but lots of other aspects of identity that are arguably just as important to some people as gender aren’t elevated to having their own pronouns,

yeah, it's the one where our languages push that categorization on us. but consider, are are our languages structured that way because of societal choices or because people naturally tend towards gendered expression? can that question even be answered?

making pronouns gendered makes gender an effectively obligate activity when not everyone wants that necessarily

absolutely, which is why people should always be free to choose what suits them.