Have you ever misgendered someone?

Had a whole conversation where you thought, oh, he was nice.

And then maybe you say that out loud.

And then you get that sinking feeling.

This happened to me a few weeks back with a guest on this show, Farhad Manju.

The last time you were on, I remember I went to your Twitter bio to like maybe

retweet something you, you had done, you had said, and I looked at your Twitter bio and I

thought, oh, no.

Yeah. Right at the top of Farhad's Twitter bio, and I thought, oh, no. Yeah.

Right at the top of Farhad's Twitter bio was a simple note, they slash them.

And I sent it to my producer, and I was just like, did we mess up here?

And basically, I guess you could say you kind of messed up because you just didn't ask.

So I messaged Farhad. I said, hey, I think we misgendered you here. I'm so sorry. And even as I wrote

this, I was like, did I miss a memo here? Farhad's a columnist for the New York Times,

probably the first one to go by they-them pronouns.

I should have known about this. It turns out Farhad had a plan. Last week in a column titled,

Call Me They, Farhad officially unveiled their new pronouns and asked everyone else to consider going gender neutral too. And that started some conversations.

There were sort of two reactions. One, I think, I guess, some people wondering if I was coming out or just what I was doing. And then two, whether I was being in some way faddish about it or just trying to be cool. That was the kind of the conversation that I had with

the few people who responded. Unlike a lot of people going by they or them, Farhad's decision

isn't about feeling more comfortable in their own skin. It's about this bigger point. Farhad's sick of

the sorting and the pink versus blue binary.

Sick of it for themselves.

...