pronouns

Unblogged February

by
Two valentines day cards. The one on the left says 'I'm so glad you seduced me with your charming awkwardness' and is mostly red with a heart at the bottom; the one on the right says 'My sexy husband, I love you with all my boobs. I would say heart, but my boobs are bigger'.

I suppose I can’t really say ‘wow, we’re at the end of February already’ seeing as how it’s the shortest month of the year. Here’s my round-up of things that have happened this month that haven’t made it into core blog posts; January’s round-up was here.

Valentines Day

Christine and I spent a romantic Valentines Day… at the White Rose Shopping Centre. With Valentines Day falling on a Saturday, there would be no hope of us getting a table in any restaurant in the evening. Plus, we had our ten-year-old with us, who’s very much at the ‘ewww, romance is icky’ stage. Instead, we picked up a M&S Valentines meal deal and came home.

Pictured above are the cards we exchanged.

The Boy From Elsewhere by Kestral Gaian

I recently reconnected with a friend from university, Kestral Gaian. Whilst I originally knew them under a different name, they are now an author of several books of fiction, non-fiction and poetry. Their latest book is The Boy From Elsewhere, a young adult story about a boy who finds himself washed up on a beach in a parallel world version of his home town. I haven’t read it yet, but if you like sci-fi and/or books with queer characters, consider picking up a copy. It’s available direct from the publisher, and from Amazon of course (sponsored link).

A replacement Bluesky pronoun labeller

I’ve updated my how to view and share pronouns on Bluesky post from December 2024. The developer of the original pronoun labeller took theirs offline, and so the blog post now points to a replacement which works in the same way. If you used the old labeller to share your pronouns, you’ll need to subscribe to this new labeller and re-add your pronouns.

And that’s about it for this month. A short blog post for a short month.

How to: view and share pronouns on Bluesky

by
A screenshot of a skeet that I posted recently on Bluesky, which displays my pronouns (he/him) under my name. The skeet says 'Huh, accidentally pressed Alt+D whilst Spotify (desktop version) was open, and opened a hidden Chrome menu. None of the options seem to do anything, but yes, it seems like just about everything is based on Chromium nowadays.'

If you want to share your pronouns on Bluesky, and/or want to be able to see others’ pronouns, then you can use the Pronouns labeller to show these in the Bluesky app. In the screenshot above, you can see that, under my username, it shows my he/him pronouns.

This post was updated in February 2026 as the original pronouns labeller disappeared. The links now point to a new labeller which works in the same way.

Step 1: Viewing pronouns

If you want to be able to view others pronouns, go to the Pronouns labeller profile, and click the ‘Subscribe’ button. Now, you’ll be able to view the pronouns of other Bluesky users, where they’ve elected to share them, as a label attached their posts and on their profiles.

Step 2: Sharing your pronouns

So now that you can see the pronouns of other users, you can also share your own pronouns. Open this thread, scroll down to find your preferred pronouns, and then ‘like’ the corresponding Bluesky post. For example, I liked this post because my pronouns are he/him.

Within a minute or two, those pronouns will appear as a label on your profile. You can select up to four pronouns to share.

If you make a mistake, you can ‘like’ this post, and all of your pronouns will be removed. Once this takes effect, you can then start again.

Just a note that you can’t complete this step in isolation. In other words, you must have the labeller turned on and showing the pronouns of others, before you can share yours.

It’s all opt-in

Whilst I’m a member of the LGBTQ+ community, I think it’s important to share your pronouns regardless. As well as showing that you’re an ally, it normalises the act of sharing pronouns when you introduce yourself, and makes LGBTQ+ people like myself feel more included. At work, our standard email signature template includes a pronouns section, and it’s used at all levels including senior management to set a good example.

This doesn’t mean that you can’t share your pronouns manually in your Bluesky bio. This profile labeller is opt-in, and, as yet, Bluesky doesn’t have a great way of letting users discover profile labellers. In my experience, it tends to be the early adopters of Bluesky who use the pronouns profile labeller; recent arrivals haven’t found it yet.