Is 僕 (boku) only appropriate for cisgendered men?


I'm enrolled in Japanese at my university, and we recently had a review of
personal pronouns. The professor encourage us to understand and practice
casual speech, and as part of that, to try finding personal pronouns that we
feel comfortable with in different situations.

I identify as male, and I want to use 僕 (boku) as my personal pronoun, but my
professor said that it's totally inappropriate, and said I need to use 私
(watashi) or あたし (atashi). I was a bit offended by that, because I don't
identify as female.

I don't like to call my professor out as wrong, but this seems totally wrong.

Is 僕 (boku) only appropriate for cisgendered men?

What are the ramifications of using 僕 (boku) when you are male, but not
cisgendered?




You'd do better to not look at personal pronouns from a gender-association
perspective, despite the misleading idea that they always go hand in hand. The
truth is that personal pronouns have more to do with assertion versus
humility. The fact that gender has anything to do with it is merely by proxy.

As Japanese culture would have it, a male person is expected to have traits of
assertion, and a female person should show reservation and humility. This
fact, however, does not immediately dictate that a specific pronoun is
reserved for a specific gender; oftentimes, you see women using 僕 and even 俺
but not often, in order to assert something (or being a joking braggart), and
men using 私 and very rarely あたし because it is on the opposite end towards
reservation.

In reality, it has more to do with the relationship with the other party. This
is why men will likely say 俺 with friends, 僕 with their family and respected
elders, and 私 to company officials. Women by default are expected to be
reserved and humble, so the female gender tends to resort to 私 and
humbler/more reserved personal pronouns.

For this reason, I don't disagree with your instructor entirely - gender
identity certainly plays a part in how you express yourself, but so does
exhibiting reserve and humility, for example, before a prospective employer.
It is, in a way, a power play, and not a gendered one, specifically. As a
cisgender male, I would use 私 in an interview environment, say, but not あたし.
Therefore, I would suggest you use 私 though not for the sake of promoting
yourself as a female, but for the humility and reservation that goes along
with and is tactful and required of the situation. However, in informal
situations, I think 僕 is acceptable and understandable.

