These days, I expect people to ask me what my pronouns are, and to tell me theirs.

Maybe it's a regional thing. Maybe it's an industry thing. In journalism, it's now a standard

that I ask people their pronouns instead of assuming

them. Sometimes I feel like I've behaved distastefully when I haven't asked someone for their

pronouns when I meet them even socially. I don't want to offend anybody by making guesses.

This is the opposite of the etiquette of my suburban hometown in the 1990s when I was growing up.

Back then, asking somebody about their gender identity might have been interpreted as offensive or as an intentional dig.

That by saying, what are your pronouns, you'd be suggesting that the answer wasn't obvious.

Back then, asking might have been the ultimate insult. I love that we are in a new era that is less binary and more respectful

about how fluid gender can be. Elise, one of our youngest listeners, who's a teen in the Midwest, also loves that the world has changed.

After all, she's the one growing up in it. The only thing is, when Elise has asked for her pronouns,

she wants people to know, the answer can be complicated, and it might change, sometimes with the seasons.

She tells me at this point in her life,

sometimes she feels like she her in the summer, but he, him in the winter. It can be confusing.

I think just the biggest issue has been dating because so many people have found that they don't know who I am and so the only way people have liked me is being friends with me for like four months or more and being comfortable with me

because if it's just someone in the hallway they immediately see me changing from fall to summer to winter.

And they are uncomfortable with that because they don't know if I'm lesbian or if I'm straight, you know, or if I'm a man or woman.

As Elise's gender has changed, sometimes radically, one year to the next, She actually wonders, am I really changing at all?

From the Boston Globe, this is Love Letters. I'm Meredith Goldstein. Welcome to what I'll call a season finale, a last episode of the year.

I do have some important and exciting announcements about next year. I'll give them at last episode of the year. I do have some important and exciting announcements

about next year. I'll give them at the end of the episode. For now, let's get into a story.

Over the summer, I got a letter from Elise, who you heard from at the start of the episode.

...