It was a clinical note so I had to choose, but I’m picky haha.

I just want to be correct, but it still seems like a white person who writes for the NY Times idea and not universal for all black people, and that seems… cringey.

I got myself into a tizzy last year as I was editing a document and it was on a person who uses they/them pronouns, and I wasn’t sure if I should use “themself” or “themselves” as themself isn’t a word, but plural also doesn’t sound right. Then I realized a person who uses they/them probably cared less about this than I do.

This was a decision that I think the NY Times made to start capitalizing, and I’ve never understood why, but editors of books and articles all use it now, I saw it in a Stephen King story recently.

Language does change, a book by the trans writer Jennifer Finney Boylan about her own transition published in 2001 used transgendered through the book simply because that’s what was used then, and now it’s proper to say transgender; Jenny’s book was released for an anniversary edition and she addressed that in the foreword, that she had left it as written but with some hesitation that people would be offended, which I think would be silly because it was never a slur, it simply was the language then, and before that trans people were called transsexual, and that also wasn’t a slur. So terminology can and does evolve, but it’s just so random in the case of capitalization and nobody has ever explained why.

I’m not American. I honestly just wondered because the first time I saw this used it was the NY Times saying they were doing it from now on.

I know, I am not very comfortable.

I just only seem to think it came from some idea from the NY Times, and I don’t think anyone says White, so it just seems, off kilter I guess I’d say. Of course I will say whatever is proper, but it’s just, odd.

Just please don’t bring back the metal seatbelt that branded you in the summer months.