Displaying pronouns isn’t just smoke and mirrors. It’s a functional boundary (one that saves a client from spending the first 10 minutes of a session having to explain who they are). For cisgender people, it can provide a tool to demonstrate allieship and an understanding of the impact of language and respect for how another person feels about their gender. Sure, it is known that corporations are using it as a form of pinkwashing to signal a progressive workforce.
But it is more than that. When I meet a client for the first time and ask for their pronouns, getting a ‘whatever’ or ‘any’ tells me a lot. Allowing the external world to apply whatever gender they deem necessary can indicate a fawning response to avoid conflict, often born from a fear of rejection (‘I do not look like a…’, where whichever word comes after is the actual felt gender). When clients know that even some respected practitioners openly refuse to work with people who use non-traditional pronouns, a casual ‘whatever’ isn’t just apathy, it’s risk assessment. It’s a way of testing the water to see if being fully seen is even safe here.
In other clients, it marks a genuine fluidity or an indifference where gender simply does not affect their self, or a true, apathetic lack of interest.
Rather than assuming what it means, it simply offers a gentle entry point to explore how that person experiences being seen, named, or defined on their own terms.
Asking for pronouns isn’t about earning a progressive badge. It is about opening a door… and the answer reveals just how safe a person feels to be seen.