“Preferred” Pronoun

Every once in a while when I’m doing Trans 101 I have this split second where I’m saying something standard that all of a sudden rings in my ears as blatantly false. Tonight it was this whole “preferred pronoun” business, which strikes me as kind of goofy.

It’s an accurate pronoun. Not preferred. Preference is like whether you like chocolate or vanilla ice cream. We don’t use it often to talk about queer sexual orientations anymore, so why use it for pronouns?