Word Salad

WILLOW: I-I don't know, I was trying to program in some new puns and I kinda ended up with word salad.

I recently watched a prominent member of LGBTQ literary circles struggle with the preferred pronouns of an author while presenting hir at a reading. (That's not a typo word processing program, it's a pronoun.) The author in question is non-binary identified and prefers the pronouns ze and hir. It was embarrassing to witness.

I was embarrassed for the author being mis-pronouned and therefore dismissed as a person with a right to hir own identity. And I was embarrassed for the presenter who ended up looking clueless and out of touch with modern queer culture. Side note: I hate watching people be embarrassed. I have been known to leave the room during scenes of embarrassment in movies rather then deal with the anxiety they cause me.

Fault here lays solely on the presenter. They had clear instructions and still botched it. Even more fascinating, how had this person who has presumingly been involved in LGBTQ communities, and in specific LGBTQ writers and artists, for years never run into anyone else who was genderqueer? The mind boggles.

And yet, before I climb on to that tall equine and risk plummeting to the ground I have to confess that I've screwed it up too. Not in a situation like that mind you, but in regular conversation.

Mis-pronouning is all too easy and insidious. From the time we are little and learning to speak we are given gendered words and gendered pronouns. Alternatives are not taught when our brains are in that perfect time to learn such things. It's like secondary languages, the later you try to learn one the harder it often is. I wonder if folks who did get foreign language training as children are better able to deal with unfamiliar pronouns than others. This may be different if your first language isn't English but if it is, it's a problem.

Sometimes it's easier. Persons A and B go from one gender to another. Simple. A was he and is now she. B was she and is now he. We know he and she so the change is not so difficult. Not really any different than remembering a new job title or last name. There are often name and appearance changes that go along with it that help to reinforce the switch. Sometimes you meet a person who has already transitioned and never knew them as anything else. Then it should be even easier.

And yet people can still screw it up. I'm most fascinated and appalled when it's someone who didn't know the transperson pre-tranistion, as though just the knowledge of what they were assigned at birth colours how the person deals with them more than how they dress or how hormones or surgery or what have you has shaped them. It's almost surreal in its dismissiveness.

The more complicated and therefore more land mine ridden issue are those people who, including myself, don't fit neatly into male or female, she or he. All the intersex, genderqueer, non-binary, bigender, intergender, androgyns, third gender and ad infinitum folks out there. A great deal of these people have chosen to use gender-neutral pronouns to represent their existence outside the binary. Good for them.

Gender-neutral pronouns are a big source of debate for a lot of people. Part of the problem is that there isn't a single set of agreed upon g-n pronouns out there. Googleing the topic brings up lots of different theories and permutations. In the end, all you can really do is ask a person. Hard to do in some contexts, stupidly easy in others. Meanwhile, I'm training myself to use the singular they with everyone until otherwise informed.

And it is a matter of training. If I screw up a pronoun, it's cause my brain was programmed binary and breaking programing takes time. What's sad is I'm not binary myself and still have trouble remembering all this. Worse still the forensics and physically anthropology training I had mean I automatically note those physical traits used to identify the 'sex' of human remains. I often wonder how much the bodies of trans and intersex people screw with those measurements. But anthropology also taught me about cultures where third, fourth and more genders beyond male and female exists.

So what about me? What pronouns do I prefer? Even with the wife I don't tend to push the identity thing but I probably should. Part of it's that I hate to inconvenience people but more it's a low self esteem thing. I'm not sure I deserve to be identified properly. And what would proper identification be any way? Since I'm not really bothered by he or she and both are equally right and wrong, I don't think about it much. Maybe I should.

I'm leaning toward the singular they personally. It's simple. They is already a word folks know. The Spivak system has some merit in my opinion; e or ey, em and eir but I've also seen it said that since em is already used as a colloquial shortening of them that somehow creates confusion. Not sure how but whatever.

So for now, with me that is, go with the singular they. I'll tell you'll if that changes.