Not worrying about the pronouns

People who are threatened by change can react in ways that are unbecoming, to put it mildly. For the most change-challenged people, it is validating to harken back to an illusory day long ago when things were simple, people were just “good folks”, and decency permeated the community in all its interactions. More importantly, men were men, women were women, and there was never any confusion beyond the occasional tomboy girl or “sensitive” boy.

That world, of course, never existed. Throughout history, the convenient default to the gender binary has always imposed casualties on those who did not conform, mostly by pushing them - us - to a place on the coldest margins of society. That’s a place of ridicule, humiliation, subordination, invisibility, or – at best – of temporary tolerance for someone “just going through a phase”. You may well argue that gender assigned at birth based on sexual characteristics is just so obvious...that it has been that way for – well, forever. Why would anyone in their right mind have the temerity to tinker with the bedrock organizational structure of human society, especially after societies had spent millennia creating strictly differing role models assigned to male and to female?

Many of us out on those coldest margins have risen to answer that question. Our lives speak with courage, conviction, and sincerity, often at considerable risk to ourselves, to help people see our world as we see and live in it. Our curious reality remains directly relevant, however, only to the very few of us who find ourselves unseen or rejected by the majority of people whose identity and much of their meaning in life aligns comfortably with their sense of wholeness in the gender as assigned to them at birth.

We have even had the audacity to give them a label: cisgender (we had to have a way to talk about them!).

Our individual quests for gender authenticity have always met resistance, from mild annoyance and condescension to outright rejection, hostility, and violence. This takes place on a societal backdrop of deeply engrained hierarchies and the mixture of privileges and oppressions (e.g., patriarchy, anti-LGBTQI+, colonialism, transphobia, sexism) that come about whenever each society awards rank and status to their members. Were it only social slights and arrogance, we might have endured quietly for much longer, since the alternative of claiming our authenticity is just so damn hard.

That isn’t the case, however. Ranking and status, and the roles and opportunities, freedoms and resources, solidarity and respect, and the clearly delineated trail up the mountain toward economic, political, social, and professional success all depend on staying within your lane. Those lanes have been decidedly gendered, and to a very large extent they remain so.

Our life journeys as transgender, intersex, or nonbinary people follow different paths, and they are often poorly marked, filled with impediments, and the paths are sometimes nearly impassible. Most of us on such treks have come to expect this scramble over rough terrain. We know that many boulders (e.g., “people who menstruate”) will be pushed in our way. When we get to the point of exhaustion or despair, as we do, they are few who are there to comfort or support us.

The hecklers are always present, and their loud harangues and clamor as we doggedly make our way along our life pathways can be distracting or far, far worse. Perhaps they take some perverse pleasure in seeing us struggle, as we move those boulders of invalidation out of our path, demonstrating a resilience and inner strength that a few of them will at least acknowledge is noteworthy. Perhaps watching us work so hard to claim our authenticity validates them in their own sense of natural superiority as people who live as God created them (remember, God never makes mistakes), as they snuggle down comfortably and mostly without a second thought into the easier expectations and delights of their nicely aligned genders. No one has to question their pronouns.

Whatever comfort and smug entertainment they take in witnessing our sometimes awkward and occasionally outwardly implausible gender identity claims, that isn’t enough. Now we are also legislated against, made into outlaws and threats to social order, and discredited as delusional fanatics or fumbling, bewildered, or otherwise deranged characters. Still, we have this confounding persistence to adhere to our own sense of our own truth, rejecting the preponderant weight of public opinion telling us who we are supposed to be…or who we are not supposed to be.

We never asked for any of this.

Instead, all that we have sought has been and continues to be to claim a little elbow room to be ourselves. We acknowledge that our presence and our identities may disrupt and unsettle some people, but we mean them no harm. We only ask – demand - that which is the birthright of every human being everywhere, in equal measure: to be recognized and respected for our dignity and our humanity. We want to get on with our lives.

I want to concentrate less on being, and more on doing. I already know who I am. And what I am currently doing as a development ethicist at the Center for Values in International Development (C4V) is radical stuff, trying to bring explicit and accountable moral judgment into the mainstream of international development and humanitarian response. Compared to that “doing”, why should my being a transgender woman with she and her pronouns attract so much unwelcome attention?

Apparently, in asking to get on with our lives, we are asking for too much. Many conservatives, whether driven by religion, political opportunism, peer-group pressure, or simply by flagrant ignorance, are pushing back strongly against the very existence of me and other transgender, intersex, or nonbinary people. We now find ourselves into the crosshairs of their anger, rejection, cruelty, condescension, and arrogance, becoming a central target in the current culture wars embroiling not just the United States but now in countries around the world. The youngest of us are now faced with laws in 28 states that limit our core freedoms to access necessary health care, to participate in sports, or to use certain restrooms, among other constraints. Those of us a little older find increasing levels of discrimination as we seek decent employment, housing, and yes, health care. And the older ones among us, in which I now count myself, are at best seen as troublesome oddities (especially by our cisgender generational peers) whenever we advocate for basic respect and decency – which we often do not receive. The few political gestures of good will toward us are not often repeated; consider that in 2011, I became the first transgender political appointee (under President Obama) ever to serve in any of the federal foreign affairs agencies. There has never been another.

Most people who are transgender, intersex, or nonbinary have had to become tough, as a way to survive and get on in life. We can do this, despite the overwhelming (and, sadly, growing) numbers of people who condemn or disparage us. For me, I also sport that same hard shell. Still, I will admit that the smugness, sarcasm, and unkind behavior of those who now trumpet their refusal to “worry about the pronouns” sometimes cuts me deeply. Using the correct pronouns for another person (including, whenever in doubt, asking about their preferred pronouns) is as basic a gesture of recognition and respect for another’s equal dignity as any interaction can be in any society that has a language with gendered pronouns. Our gender matters just as much as yours.

Using the correct pronouns is asking for so little from you, but it means so much to us. You can smugly use that cisgender arrogance in misgendering us or disrespecting our pronoun preferences if it amuses you or gives you status among your tribe. It will hurt many of us, sometimes deeply, but probably not mortally (although suicidal ideation has been the travelling companion of far too many of us).

So what are our demands?

We are asking you to be a decent, caring, kind human being. We are also asking you not to take pleasure, validation, or seek public acclaim by arrogantly rejecting our pronoun preferences. Don’t worry about pronouns. But do ask us which we prefer - and then use them.

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