Pronouns

What is in a pronoun?  Not much, really.  My computer's dictionary defines it as 'a word that can function by itself as a noun phrase and that refers either to the participants in the discourse (e.g., I, you) or to someone or something mentioned elsewhere in the discourse (e.g., she, it, this).'  'He' and 'she' are third person singular pronouns, used to refer to those of a particular visible sex.  That said, how many times a day is it unclear what to call someone?  The dictionary even uses 'is that a he or a she?' as an example of one of the uses of 'he'.  Our desire to categorize and understand what's under somebody's britches is as important to us as living near others of our species.  I think it's a primal drive, one feels one must know so that one might react to an individual accordingly.  Is that person over there competition, or a potential breeding partner?  If we don't know, we're instinctively curious.  I think in many cases the curiosity is translated rapidly into fear.

I am not comfortable addressing a person presenting a gender as the opposite pronoun.  For instance, a person who was born a woman, who is presenting a female body and female attributes, is in my mind 'she' and 'her'.  Which is why I don't mind at the moment being addressed by those pronouns.  At some point, my skill at binding and my weight loss will have shrunk the breast tissue and I will feel more comfortable with the effort to pass.

Working on weight loss and muscle gain lately.  So far, everything's been more or less equal as far as weight loss goes.  I'll choose to interpret that as my muscle gain equaling my weight loss.