After talking to S17 last night I wondered when other kids really had their eyes opened to gender issues or faux pas they may have made. We discussed this many times but it took an incident to make it real to him.
We are from TX and he was brought up in private school and then a highly academic public high school (neither terribly diverse). He had friends that were gay but really didn’t see any other end of the gender spectrum. In college he realized that he needed to learn more and as President of his fraternity he wanted a higher awareness so he could educate the chapter on diversity better. Last year he took an ethnic studies class and enjoyed it. He and the VP (probably the next president) decided to take a Women/Gender and Sexuality class as an elective. The first day of class my son said “Yes Ma’am” to his professor. He said that probably guaranteed him a B in the class. LOL. They went on to explain that their preferred pronouns were they and their and that they consider themselves gender neutral. S totally accepts this but it is hard for him to break years of Yes Sir and Yes Ma’am when it comes to authority figures. He said he is learning a lot already and glad he took the class (other than the 10 page paper on feminism he has to write - kid hates papers).