A picture of me wearing a pink t-shirt that says “Gender Is A Social Construct” in black letters
Sometimes I love how terrible my memory is. It means that things from my past can pop back up and surprise me. Of course, there are downsides to having a terrible memory, but I love when Facebook Memories shows me something that I have almost no recollection of. Look at this screenshot from 10 years ago:
A cropped screenshot of a Facebook post from January 6, 2015, in which I said, “It's been a big day for me. Today I officially changed my gender to Genderqueer here on Facebook.”
I see things like that Facebook post, or my Dissidents drawing from 2014 with the Genderqueer Pride flag as its background, and it reminds me that this gender identity stuff has been going on for a long time now. I know I’ve made attempts to talk about it throughout the years but always ended up backing off and de-emphasizing it, and it’s really only been a little while now that I’ve felt comfortable really owning it and discussing it.
Still, the blog post I’ve been contemplating writing and am attempting to write here is a stretch for me. I’m pushing myself a little bit outside of my comfort zone on this one, and it’s primarily outside of my comfort zone because it might be challenging to some folks who are reading it. But I’m going to go ahead and write it anyways, because I think it might provide some insight into what it’s like for someone whose gender identity is evolving. I’m specifically going to talk about pronouns, which I know can be a heated topic for some people, but I think it’s important for me to say some of this stuff. So here goes.
People who are not cisgender (meaning, our gender identity does not match the gender we were assigned at birth) have to do a lot of thinking about how we want to be addressed as we move through the development of our gender identity. I am not a binary transgender person, meaning I am not someone who is transitioning from male to female. I have no intention of changing my appearance, undergoing any gender affirming surgeries or procedures, or even dressing differently. For all intents and purposes, I “look like a man”, and because I was also assigned male at birth, it is not only easy to understand why people would assume that I am a “he/him”, it’s actually (at least in our current society) a little silly to think that anyone would assume I’m not a man.
Because my gender expression (the way I choose to look) so closely aligns with my assigned gender at birth, AND because gender identity has become such a heated topic in our world, I do a ton of calculations about whether or not it’s even worth it to address my gender identity with the various people (and groups of people) I interact with. I recognize that this gives me a lot of privilege compared to the more obviously gender non-conforming or transgender people in the world, and I don’t take that for granted. So many people have become so hateful about just respecting another person’s identity, it almost never feels worth it to me to express the uniqueness of my identity to others. I’m not interested in fighting with people who think that “there’s no such thing as non-binary”, I’m not interested in convincing people that I am who I am, and - essentially - if you don’t respect me enough to acknowledge my identity, why should I respect you enough to care about what you think?
All that said, I’ve been thinking of myself using exclusively “they/them” pronouns for a while now. More and more, when someone refers to me with masculine terms, those terms feel like they don’t fit. And I’ve been wanting the people to whom I feel closest to use “they/them” pronouns for me. It’s been an evolution in my understanding of myself, which was all kind of prompted by someone in my life misgendering one of my very favorite people, Sweeney.
I was talking about Sweeney with someone, and that person referred to Sweeney by the pronouns associated with the gender Sweeney was assigned at birth. I got really confused about who that person was referring to - using any pronouns other than “they/them” for Sweeney would be like referring to my husband Russ as “she/her”. In the same way Russ is definitely not a “she”, Sweeney is definitely not a “he” or a “she”. The fact that I didn’t know who the person was talking about because that person was referring to Sweeney with the wrong pronouns made me understand that Sweeney’s gender (non-binary) is as essential a part of who they are as Russ’s gender (male) is essential to who he is. While Sweeney’s being non-binary doesn’t define them as a person (in the same way Russ’s being male doesn’t define him as a person), identifying Sweeney using the correct pronouns is just a normal part of understanding them as a person and even just understanding who I’m talking about in the course of a conversation.
Sometimes I need to look at how I react to the way the people I care about are being treated in order to understand how I want to be treated. Being part of this interaction where it seemed obvious to me that Sweeney should be gendered correctly made something click in my brain, and made me realize that I too deserve to be gendered correctly. But, like I said earlier, I also know myself well enough to know that I’m not willing to fight about it, and I’m not willing to invest much energy or care into the people who aren’t going to invest energy or care into me.
That made me realize just how much respect factors into the equation. Using the correct pronouns for someone is a matter of respect. If - for political grandstanding reasons or for some closed-minded worldview or simply because of laziness - a person isn’t willing to show respect to a person’s actual gender identity, then that person has demonstrated to me that they’re not worthy of respect either. And what’s interesting about the respect factor is that I really only care about the people who I already respect using the correct pronouns for me. I really don’t care about strangers knowing that I think of myself as “they/them”, I really don’t care about the opinion of the person who told me “I’m not willing to have to do all that work just to talk about a person” when I asked that person to use “they/them” pronouns for Sweeney, and I really don’t care if the people who used to be part of my life but really aren’t anymore talk about me using whatever pronouns they want. At this point in my gender identity journey, I really only think I’m going to insist that the people who I truly respect use the correct pronouns for me. Maybe that’s just because gender identity still feels very personal and vulnerable and intimate and introspective, and not so much public or expressive. Or maybe that’s how it will always be.
I think it’s also a matter of trust. I’ve had my trust betrayed many times in my life, enough times to know that it’s not safe to be vulnerable with just anyone. The only people in my life who I’ve already asked to use “they/them” pronouns for me are people who have demonstrated that it is truly safe to trust them. These are people who have shown great care and compassion for me throughout some of my biggest challenges, and people who have demonstrated that I am safe with them no matter what. The handful of people who have already been using “they/them” pronouns for me have shown me time and time again that they are willing to do the work to see me for who I really am, and who have expressed that the more I come into understanding who I really am, the more they love the person I am. I know I can trust these people no matter what.
If I haven’t already asked someone to use “they/them” pronouns for me, that does not necessarily mean I don’t trust that person. It could just mean that they are not one of the people I talk to on a daily basis. It could also mean that their role in my life is complicated, or that they’re associated with a context that doesn’t feel private enough to safely be myself. It can take some time to explain the complexities of pronouns, and especially how context specific they are.
For example, part of my job is customer facing, and I do not at all feel that it’s important for the customers I interact with to gender me correctly. Even for the part of my job that’s not customer facing, I do not have close enough relationships with the vast majority of my coworkers to care about whether or not they use the correct language for me. I also don’t even truly feel up to the conversation of explaining my pronouns to most of my coworkers because of how vulnerable gender identity still feels, so I would not want to be referred to as “they” or “them” in a team meeting because that would just mean having to explain something about myself to people to whom I don’t feel close enough to share that part of myself. So in the context of my job, my pronouns are - and probably will remain - “he/him”. This is just one example of an environment or context in which certain pronouns are used, or in which being gendered correctly is less essential - and actually feels like more work than anything else, and more exposure of vulnerability than feels safe.
I guess all this is to say, you have a choice. If you are asked to use the correct pronouns for a person, that person is demonstrating that they respect and trust you enough to give you the opportunity to see something about them that is essential to who they are, and perhaps really vulnerable. Your choice is to demonstrate that trust and respect back to those people, or you can choose laziness, closed-mindedness, disrespect, and a lack of trustworthiness, and misgender that person. At this point in my gender identity journey, my not having asked someone to gender me correctly does not necessarily indicate that that person is untrustworthy, but for a lot of people who are more public or open about their pronouns and gender identity, not asking people to gender them correctly often DOES mean that they deem those people not respectable or trustworthy enough to even bother.
I recently saw news about a teacher here in Ohio who refused to gender two of her students correctly. A lawsuit was brought against her, and somehow, she won the lawsuit. She made money off of her decision to misgender young people, and by demonstrating how untrustworthy and unworthy of respect she is. That’s the climate we live in. Somehow, asking people to respect us for who we are has become a toxic topic, and has become so divisive that the incoming POTUS used it as a hate-mongering tactic to drum up votes. Seeing the climate around me as I come to better understand my gender identity, it is becoming clearer and clearer to me that it truly is just not worth the effort and energy it will take to ask the majority of people to even engage in the conversation or do the work of seeing me for who I am. Maybe this is a cop-out, but sometimes I’m just not willing to hear how “hard” it is to use the right language for someone like me.
But it is hard! We live in a world and use a language that is incredibly gendered! It’s almost impossible to not use gendered language, and we are conditioned to automatically divide people and assign language and characteristics by gender. And even that handful of people who use “they/them” for me who I mentioned often slip into gendered language for me. The difference is, there’s a felt sense of trust and respect with those people. Russ has known me for over 20 years, so it’s going to be hard for him to eliminate all gendered language for me, and I don’t even necessarily want him to, because I know how much he sees me for who I am, and I love the way he expresses how he sees me. So if you’re trying to use the right words or trying to respect people like me for who we are, but you find words too gendered or limiting or you slip up sometimes, believe me when I say that people like me see the effort you’re putting into it and love you for it. We know your heart, and we appreciate it.
So what are your action items? Well, if you want to practice talking about someone using “they/them” pronouns because you’ve never been able to practice that before, try talking about me with someone you’re close to. You’re going to slip up, but try not to feel bad about it, just keep practicing. Another action item would be to not make people have to fight by ourselves to be respected. If you hear someone talking about a person and misgendering them, feel empowered to correct the person who is doing the misgendering. If you meet a person who willingly shares their pronouns with you, take that as an opportunity to earn the respect and trust that the person is placing in you. Even if you don’t get it, use it as a learning opportunity. If a person asks you to use different pronouns in different contexts, understand that it may be out of a desire to preserve our energy, but it also may be a safety concern, because like I said, it’s getting scary out there. Lastly, know that if your heart is in the right place when it comes to this stuff, we almost certainly see it, and even if you mess up, the fact that you’re trying means a ton.
There will almost certainly be more Gender Identity posts on this blog. This is still an evolving part of my life, although I have come to understand that I truly always have been genderqueer and just didn’t have a way of understanding it before. Maybe some day I will feel safe and self-assured enough to ask everyone I come into contact with to use one set of pronouns for me, regardless of context. Right now I doubt it, but I guess it’s possible. Thanks, as always, for reading. I don’t get tons of visits to this blog, but I appreciate every single person who takes the time to read and shoot me a note or a comment or a text message. Have a great day.