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Does She Hate Me For The Day I Misgendered Her?

I feel awful about this.

Oren Cohen

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It’s still Pride month. I’ve been thinking about sharing this bit for a while. Now, as the month draws to a close — I decided to get this off my chest and move on. I don’t have many LGBTQ friends in real life, but I’ve been engaging with the community online. I’ve been keeping their pronouns and respecting their relationships and mostly enjoyed them very much.

It might be obvious to people who speak English natively, but for me, whose mother language is Hebrew, it’s not so obvious. Did you know Hebrew is a gender-oriented language? For example, the word “think” in Hebrew is not genderless as it is in English. The only way to say ‘think’ in Hebrew is to orient it to the gender of the related person: she-thinks or ‘Hoshevethe-thinks or ‘Hoshev’.

I have yet to meet a Hebrew-speaking nonbinary person, and I’m curious to understand how pronouns work for them.

What can I say? One of the most incredible artists I saw on Twitter is a nonbinary person. Some comedians that I love are also nonbinary or queer. They are wonderful people who want to enjoy life.

And unfortunately, I made life very miserable for one transgender woman.

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