You may refer to me as 'he' and 'him'

I recently read a couple of excellent science fiction novels by Ada Palmer, Too Like the Lightning, and its sequel, Seven Surrenders.If you are serious about literary science fiction, i.e. you are the kind of person who reads Gene Wolfe, you should check out Palmer. Too Like the Lighning has just been nominated for the Hugo Award. One of the features of Palmer's future society, a utopia in many respects, is that to avoid the oppression of gender expectations, people are routinely referred to by gender-neutral pronouns, e.g., "Barack Obama is no longer the president, they are now a private citizen."I thought this was just science fiction until I spent the weekend at an avant-garde science fiction convention, Penguicon, in the Detroit area. An apparent former man, now presenting as a woman, had "she/her" on her badge. An apparent woman had a sticker on her badge explaining that the person's preferred pronouns are "they" and "them."A couple of speakers at the convention announced their preferred pronouns. At one of the programs, Cory Doctorow (a really good writer of science fiction and nonfiction, one of my favorite writers) took a couple of questions from (apparent) men, then said he'd like to take a couple of questions from people who "identify as female." I had a question, but I had to pull my hand down for a few minutes. (In case there's any question about it, I'm fine with "he" and "him.") Have you noticed that reality these days increasingly resembles a Samuel R. Delany science fiction novel? (I'm currently listening to an audiobook of his classic "Babel-17.")All of this finally got through to me, so I did a little research on the Internet. If you are not up to speed on "personal gender pronouns," this web site from the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender Resource Center from the University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee should be helpful. (If you are reading this in the paper, go to https://uwm.edu/lgbtrc/support/gender-pronouns/).There's a FAQ with a list of commonly-used personal gender pronouns and an explanation of why all this is important: "You can't always know what someone's PGP is by looking at them."So true, these days.The FAQ explains, "It is a privilege to not have to worry about which pronoun someone is going to use for you based on how they perceive your gender. If you have this privilege, yet fail to respect someone else's gender identity, it is not only disrespectful and hurtful, but also oppressive."So I suppose you could say I spent the weekend learning about an additional privilege I didn't realize I had. I'm apparently catching up, because the reporter next to me (a "she" and a "her") knew all about this stuff.I've illustrated this blog posts with some of my favorite costumes from the convention. In each case, I asked for permission before taking the picture. But I didn't get the unicorn's personal gender pronoun. Reach reporter Tom Jackson at jackson@sanduskyregister.com and follow him on Twitter @jacksontom.