I refuse to call a person pronouns they haven’t publicly identified with. I apply this practice to everybody whether they’re celebrities or people I know irl; whether they’re alive or dead. Not doing so is simply misgendering, which is disrespectful and harmful even if you are proven correct. It doesn’t matter if I buy into a theory about someone’s identity or not, I can’t decide another person’s gender.
We can’t definitively say Cobain was cis, and it’s really fucking sad that the person themselves can never fully answer that question. We only have the information that currently exists, and it’s not enough to say for sure. For all we know, Kurt would’ve rejected binary pronouns entirely; it’s just not our place to say.
I refuse to call a person pronouns they haven’t publicly identified with. I apply this practice to everybody whether they’re celebrities or people I know irl; whether they’re alive or dead. Not doing so is simply misgendering, which is disrespectful and harmful even if you are proven correct. It doesn’t matter if I buy into a theory about someone’s identity or not, I can’t decide another person’s gender.
We can’t definitively say Cobain was cis, and it’s really fucking sad that the person themselves can never fully answer that question. We only have the information that currently exists, and it’s not enough to say for sure. For all we know, Kurt would’ve rejected binary pronouns entirely; it’s just not our place to say.