Respecting Trans People's Pronouns / THEY Said

About

Respecting Trans People's Pronouns or THEY Said is an infographic cartoon that addresses the proper way of correcting preferred pronouns when someone misgenders a nonbinary transgender person in conversation. Originally posted by Pink News on Twitter in mid-2020, the webcomic became an exploitable image macro where meme creators replaced what was being said in the speech bubbles. Overall, the meme shows a white, green-haired character and a Black feminine character discussing their trans friend James who uses they/them pronouns.

Origin

On August 10th, 2020, the Twitter^[1] account of LGBTQ+ news outlet Pink News posted a tweet that captioned a cartoon it created with, "Respecting trans people's pronouns – even when they're not around – makes a huge difference 👏." The cartoon depicted two friends having a conversation about their trans friend James, wherein, the green-haired friend refers to James as "he," prompting the Black friend to correct them by saying, "They said." Over the course of two years, the tweet received over 360 likes (shown below).

Spread

The infographic was reposted to platforms like iFunny ^[2] early on after its initial posting in August 2020. It spread to Tumblr soon after, where sometime in early October 2020, a Tumblr^[3] user named sir-franz-of-the-grape (since deleted) recaptioned the green-haired character's speech bubble, inserting a joke about their friend James being a racist (shown below). The original post received an unknown amount of likes, however, the earliest known repost was made on October 11th, 2020, on Kiwi Farms. ^[4]

The aforementioned iteration was reposted to multiple social media platforms going into 2021, however, it received increased attention after the Chris-Chan Mother Incest Allegations in July 2021 after Twitter^[5] user SophNar0747 posted an iteration borrowed from their Discord server about the Chris-Chan allegations, earning roughly 6,700 likes in one year (shown below, left).

On August 14th, 2021, a Political Compass meme was posted to Reddit's /r/PoliticalCompassMemes,^[6] earning roughly 5,900 upvotes in 10 months (shown below, right).

Going into 2022, the template continued to be remixed across platforms. For instance, on June 9th, 2022, Twitter^[7] user LeadeAbrys posted a version that referenced The Flash actor Ezra Miller, specifically and the Tokata Iron Eyes "Minor" Allegations. Over the course of five days, the tweet and meme received roughly 2,900 likes (shown below). This Ezra Miller iteration inspired backlash as well regarding the misgendering of someone who's unlikable being passed as acceptable through the meme's punchline.

Various Examples

Template

Search Interest

Unavailable.

External References