Call Me “They.” Eventually.
As we consider pronouns, we need patience for the process of discovering what to call ourselves.
After reading Christen McCurdy’s piece on gender neutral pronouns, I am struck by just how downright practical Christen’s approach is. For years I’ve pined for a universal acceptance of gender neutral pronouns. Recently though, I came to the realization that what I was really (in that deep down kind of way) pinning for was a universal acceptance of me. I don’t identify as much of anything; even the terms genderqueer or gender non-conforming feel a bit restrictive. I’m not knocking those terms, I just feel most comfortable not putting a word on the way I live. A friend always refers to their attractions as “me-sexual,” and that feels like a great metaphor for my gender identity. I’m me-gendered. That’s not a cop-out or a way to avoid the subject, it’s just my little attempt to convey the broadness, the both and all and none way gender feels to me. Growing up, every time someone used the word “he” to refer to me, it felt like a personal slight, like they couldn’t see and didn’t care to see all of me.
But at the end of the day, I actually haven’t been looking for universal acceptance of me per se. I’ve been looking for total self-acceptance. And, as I’ve done my spiritual homework in life, as I’ve practiced self-acceptance, the idea of a gender neutral pronoun hasn’t seemed as important as it once did. I know it is a matter of respect for a lot of people, but as Christen implies, we aren’t there yet linguistically, and that no longer upsets me. If we’re going to have wide adoption of something like “they” to refer to ourselves, the transition will take some time. Maybe it will take a lot of time.
Kids on Vine always ask what my “preferred pronoun” is, and that speaks to the changes that are already taking place for us and our language, in terms of a lot of people wanting to challenge word habits and help others feel comfortable. When kids ask that, it’s a taste of the acceptance I was craving as a kid. As an adult, I have discovered that it is first and foremost my job to help myself feel comfortable. Then (if I wish) I can work on helping others feel comfortable with me. Maybe it’s unfair; maybe it should feel like a burden to have to teach people that you exist, that some of us feel like outsiders to the two gender check boxes. But I enjoy the connection talking to others about it brings. I never felt like I would get very far trying to shame people within and without of our community into “using the right words.” Yes, true, a lot of “conventionally gendered” people have tried to heap shame on me over the years. That’s exactly why I know shame doesn’t work. Or, at least, it’s not the way I want to do things.
Also, so much of the separation and social categorization of gender facilitates inequality. The foolish notion that men are better than women is built on a foundational concept that humanity is appropriately divided into “men” and “women.” As we begin to look at people first as people (“me-genders”), the better-than arguments appear utterly flimsy and needlessly fracturing. If everyone is a “they,” everyone is equal. To me, this idea of gender neutral language, which has deep roots as a feminist tool, is really a humanist tool. We all deserve the chance to feel free of the gendered expectations language throws on us. And eventually, it will be helpful to let ourselves and the people we talk, write, and read about make impressions based on their own merits, not through a linguistically gendered filter of assumptions.
It’s pie-in-the-sky. I get it. It’s hard to change. It seems way Pollyanna Principle to expect that we could break a literary and conversational habit as deep and old as this one. To quote one of my best and most popular Vines, “People tell me, ‘You act like a girl,’ and I say, ‘Thank you.’” Seeing myself in this gender-free way means I get to embrace a trait we usually associate with girls: optimism. There is nothing wrong with hoping and wishing. And there is certainly nothing wrong with working together toward a more inclusive use of our language.
That’s the thing: my real hope is that we can work on this together. My hope is that we can see the good in tweaking our language for the benefit of everybody, and that we can be patient and admit that things won’t change overnight.
Jeffrey Marsh is Vine famous with over 133 million views.
