[Content note: brief mention of suicide.]
Being nonbinary has one hell of a negative externality.
Which is to say: for most people I encounter, I’m the first person they’ve met who uses gender-neutral pronouns. Normally, pronouns are a part of speech we don’t think much about, similar to “the” or “and.” Having to consciously think about the scaffolding of language is awkward, makes speech less fluent, and makes people feel guilty when they mess it up.
Is this a huge cost for most native speakers of English who don’t have a language disability? No. But when you’re me, and looking at sixty years of causing other peoplt to go “she, uh, I mean, they”… well, it adds up.
It occurs to me, though, that no one has a similar problem with “he” and “she”. No one has any difficulties calling Alice “she” and Bob “he”; the problem only arises when they must call Eve “they”. And this isn’t a product of any Inherent Gender Sense in the human brain which excludes nonbinaries– native Chinese speakers, who don’t have gendered pronouns in speech, have equal difficulty with “he” and “she”. The important variable here is whether people have used the pronouns multiple times a day since they were small.
The best estimates suggest about 0.3% of the population is trans. Only a fraction of those people are nonbinary. The average person may go years between talking to nonbinary people. The problem seems insoluble.
However, gender dysphoria isn’t a binary Yes or No variable. Some people say “either I transition or I kill myself; there’s no third option.” Other people are like “I am miserable as my assigned gender, but I can survive.” Still others are like “I’m less happy than I would be if I transitioned, but I can be okay in my assigned gender.” And many people– perhaps a group larger than the rest combined– are like “I am happy now but I would be even happier if people viewed me as a different gender.”
Right now, it seems like the plurality of people who transition are in the second group, with a large minority of the first group and a smattering of the third. But if we want nonbinary genders to be normal— if we want people to be used to calling people “they”, to have it roll off the tongue as easily as “she” and “he”– we are going to have to welcome a whole bunch of people in the third and fourth groups.
We’re never going to get there to be as many nonbinary people as there are men and women. We’re probably never going to break ten percent. But if we get one in a hundred people to identify as nonbinary, then the average person is going to interact with a nonbinary person at least once a week.
And then– we develop a way to signal that we use gender-neutral pronouns. We have an “Other” option on forms. We get gender-neutral restrooms. And no one stumbles on our pronouns again.
While I’ve been using “nonbinary” and “uses gender-neutral pronouns” interchangeably in this post, they aren’t the same thing. Many nonbinary people use “he” pronouns or “she” pronouns. And some cisgender people use gender-neutral pronouns. A lot of nonbinary people tend to frown on cisgender people who use gender-neutral pronouns; however, I don’t think we should. They’re doing us a favor, getting more people to use and become comfortable with our pronouns, helping us hit that one percent.
In conclusion: if you want to use gender-neutral pronouns, please do– whether you’re cis, trans, questioning, or breaking down the cis/trans binary. All it can do is help. Thank you.
Thing of Things 
How is a cisgender person using nonbinary pronouns not appropriating the trans experience?
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Because (as I argue in this post) it’s probably actually helping nonbinary people.
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“Helpful” and “appropriative” aren’t opposites, though.
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I don’t see how it’s appropriative to use the pronouns you’re most comfortable with. Preferring gender-neutral pronouns isn’t inherently a trans thing; it might just be what makes you feel the most like yourself.
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The question “is a cis person comfortable with this” isn’t a very good test. I’m sure there are plenty of cis people who feel comfortable wearing Sioux headdresses at Halloween.
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Yes, but that causes harm– the harm of reinforcing an ethnic stereotype by dressing up as it, and the harm of frivolously using something sacred. As I argue in this post, cis people using gender-neutral pronouns is probably *helpful*.
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@Ozy: Well, maybe you wouldn’t, but a hell of a lot of nonbinary people would feel this was extremely harmful, and I think we need to respect their beliefs and feelings about their own identities.
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@Ortvin Sarapuu: [Citation Needed]
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Because the concept of “appropriation” is a bunch of self-appointed gatekeeping nonsense. See: “fake geek girls”. Bah.
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If it’s helpful, who gives a damn whether it’s appropriative? A) The only reason ‘cultural appropriation’ is considered a bad thing is The Worst Argument In The World. B) Appropriative is not a natural category anyway.
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I don’t think ‘they’ is necessarily a non-binary pronoun – it’s used for binary people whose gender isn’t known all the time. The position of “I’d rather minimise the attention drawn to my gender” doesn’t seem particularly appropriative to me.
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The only problem therewith is that it maximises attention drawn to minimisation of attention drawn to gender.
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@Lambert:
Only until such time as Ozy wins and the conversation no longer references gender at all.
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I don’t think appropriation works that way for 2 reasons:
1 – trans-culture didn’t originate the term they/them, so it’s not theft of their culture.
2 – if we don’t give people options for their pronouns, we’re distinctly limiting their preferences because of their assigned gender.
If we wanted to try to turn your argument around to be internally consistent, wouldn’t we also have to hold that trans-people are appropriating the pronouns of men/women? That doesn’t seem like a line of reasoning I want to uphold. As far as I can tell, there’s no reason why cis-people shouldn’t be able to select their own pronouns like everyone else does.
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The language problem (ie, most people not encountering singular pronouns other than “he” or “she”) is basically an English linguistic problem — English basically failed to solve the problem of a third person gender neutral singular pronoun, even though a bunch of other languages have them. All the attempted work-arounds don’t “fit” as cleanly into the language as “he”/”she’, yet — due to lack of (hundreds of) years of usage.
But it’s important to remember that this lack of “cleanly fitting” gender neutral singular pronouns does not just affect non-binary. It also affects every single sentence where the gender of the person being referred to is unknown, unspecified, or irrelevant. Historically this was “solved” in the frankly terribly way of using “he” as an “all inclusive when we want it to be” pronoun; more recently it is solved with a variety of other contrivances including “he/she”, “s/he”, rewording in plural (and using “they”), rewording in passive voice, etc. And, occasionally, by using some word/usage created for the purpose — singular “they”, zie/zir, etc.
So even without more people using gender neutral pronouns for _themselves_ (which seems like a perfectly fine thing if they want to, BTW), there’s a great opportunity to ride on the coat-tails of the need for gender neutral singular third person pronouns for the many many situations where the gender of the person is irrelevant, unspecified, or unknown. If people are used to using gender neutral singular pronouns all the time in any situation where they don’t already know/need to know the gender, it’s but a small leap to also carry on using them where they do know the relevant gender is a “none of the above” (ie, non-binary) option and the person prefers that gender neutral pronoun.
Ewen
PS: It’d probably help with familiarity if there were one de facto standard gender neutral third person English pronoun. The situation of there being many possible pronouns someone might prefer…. increases the likelyhood that someone will not have encountered that precise one before and be all “OMG, that’s so radical” about it.
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Your characterization of the use of “he” as “historical” while singular “they” is “occasional” is a little misleading, since the use of “they” in English with an indefinitely singular referent goes back to at least the 14th century.
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“they” as a singular third person definitely has historical precedence, going back hundreds of years as you say, which is one of the reasons why I’m quite happy to adopt it as my gender neutral third person singular. My argument is simply that it was not *common enough* to be considered “generally accepted” at this point — one has to hunt for usages of “they”. Compared with “he” being used all over the place in “the male gender includes the female gender” sorts of ways (eg, law). Thus one ends up having grammar arguments about “singular they” that one does not end up having over, eg, “he/she”. (Of course the problems with “he/she” are greater than just being non-inclusive — it’s also terribly clumsy to write, let alone try to read.)
FTR, I’d be happy to live in a world where “they” was considered unquestionably *the* third person gender neutral pronoun. I’m just sad not to be living in that world yet.
Ewen
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You english(-speaking) dare to complain!
I have yet to see an attempt in german that doesn’t make me roll my eyes extra-hard. My personal favorite is “xier” (say it out loud, I dare you!)
Also, lacking the historical use of gender-neutral pronouns, the resistance to their use is much higher around here. That stuff gets you lauged out of the room outright.
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Yup. The canonical “I don’t know” version in German is using the generic masculine, which pisses off transpeople and feminists alike. Technically, you could use the neutral, but that would piss off everyone.
And French, for example, doesn’t even have a neutral case. You English-speaking folks don’t know how good you have it.
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“I am happy now but I would be even happier if people viewed me as a different gender.” (Emphasis mine.)
Just to double-check an assumption I’m making- you don’t mean ‘passing’ here, right? You mean something more along the lines of ‘if I had a way to signal to people that they should internally categorize me as [x] instead of [y], and then they did without making a fuss’?
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Yes. (It’s a bit hard to pass as nonbinary.)
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This is the part that I don’t get. I can understand asking for certain external behaviors, but isn’t demanding they internally categorize you in a certain way a bit domineering?
If I’m insecure about my weight I’m not going to want people to rub it in by calling me fat, but I’m not going to ask them to call me thin let alone ask them to internally categorize me as thin.
I’m assuming that Ozy et al don’t see it this way, but I’m curious about what key difference they see because it genuinely looks analogous to me. I don’t want to offend anyone so when it goes beyond normal politeness and it feels like I am not allowed to have my own beliefs and mental categories, I feel intimidated out of participating. If this is intended result, that’s okay. I am not entitled to be here.
I’m just not sure if that’s the intended result. Is it?
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I respond to this pretty viscerally as well- George Orwell and others spent a lifetime spreading antibodies against exactly this kind of political strategy. If Ozy is uncomfortable with me learning from the world in my own way and thinking of it on my own terms, then the conflict may be fundamental. It’s coming dangerously close to saying that they are harmed by my existence.
But, y’know, nobody said the universe is obliged to present us with problems that can be solved cleanly. If there’s a little ritual like pronoun usage that can allow both of us to exist without conflict, then let’s take advantage of it and call it a win. Wouldn’t be the first uneasy compromise that liberal democracy made in the name of pluralism.
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“If I’m insecure about my weight I’m not going to want people to rub it in by calling me fat, but I’m not going to ask them to call me thin let alone ask them to internally categorize me as thin. ”
The difference between the analogy you provided is that nonbinary folk are asking you to mentally classify them as something that they are, rather than something they are not. Your analogy suggests that when you mentally classify nonbinary people, it’s in the vein of ‘you say you’re x, but really you’re y’.
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@morethanx; Isn’t it kinda the point of “nonbinary” that the two default categories don’t apply? (Not a rhetorical question; I know very little about this.)
In those edge cases where clear rules break down, everyone should make their internal(!) judgement on their own*. The alternative has, like Toggle pointed out, a slightly Orwellian touch to it. You should still use the pronouns that make the other person least uncomfortable (if you know them), but that’s a matter of politeness, not philosophy.
*My internal solution is to file all that doesn’t fit under “misc”. But others seem to have problems with leaving a question open and need to put a label on everything. And I feel they should be able to do so on their own terms.
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I don’t actually care about the phonemes people use to refer to me; I care about them seeing me as nonbinary. Unfortunately, most people cannot change what gender they classify other people as. So they use particular pronouns for me to avoid rubbing my face in it.
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“I don’t actually care about the phonemes people use to refer to me; I care about them seeing me as nonbinary.”
Pardon my ignorance, but what beliefs or concepts or dispositions does one need to hold to see someone as nonbinary in this sense, beyond believing that they so self-identify?
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Okay, you know how you look at things and go “that is a chair” or “that is a lamp” or “that is a tree”? Many people look at people and go “that is a girl” or “that is a boy”. These are instinctive reactions. If someone says “it is VERY IMPORTANT that you think of that lamp as a chair”, you will probably manage to refer to the lamp as a chair, but you will not manage to stop yourself from having that split-second instinctive classification of it as a lamp.
I would like people to instinctively classify me as nonbinary.
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Ozy,
What sort of changes do you think would have to occur for that to happen? Given that nonbinary people are a tiny fraction of the population, and most people can be visually identified as being a particular gender without much difficulty, I can’t quite envision a world that operates the way you would like.
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Ideally, there would be some way I could convey nonbinary-ness through clothing, similarly to how people can convey they’re female by wearing a skirt. But I do come closer to this goal than one would expect (thanks mostly to genetics)– many people initially read me as “androgynous” or “?????”, which is very flattering. In addition, medical transition can produce mixed sex signifiers (the classic “breasts and a beard”).
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Neutral they is a crucial preparatory step for talking about our future robot overlords
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Why “they”, instead of a made up pronoun that isn’t ambiguous about number?
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For better or worse, it seems harder to get people to accept new “made up” words in English than it is to get them to accept additional uses of existing words. This leads to the meanings of many many English words having far too many meanings for their own good. (People have been making up third person singular gender neutral pronouns for at least 25 years, without any of them really catching on in the mainstream.)
I’d be happy with any *widely accepted* third person gender neutral singular pronoun. I agree it’d be nice to maintain the pronoun unambiguously indicating number too. But for natural language, I’ll take “widely accepted” over perfectly unambiguous.
Ewen
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Lack of a Schelling point I guess 😦
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The same reason as ‘you’ instead of a made up pronoun which isn’t ambiguous about number?
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Southerners solved that problem long ago with “y’all”. (And many other English dialects: “youse”, “yinz” “you lot”, etc.)
I’m hopeful that “yo” will become popular as a gender-neutral, third-person singular.
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@stillnotking: Whoah, Americans don’t say “you lot”?
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@Ortvin Sarapuu: I’m pretty sure we do not
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At least in some cases the problem is subsequently un-solved, eg “all y’all”.
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I’d argue in favour of the former because pronouns are a closed word class in English, a class of word that very rarely accepts new additions. Generation on generation and even year on year plenty of new English nouns, verbs, and adjectives are coined successfully, but attempts to coin new gender-neutral pronouns over the last century or so have not been successful. This is generally true of function words in natural language.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Part_of_speech#Open_and_closed_classes
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In some languages the situation is worse. In Hebrew and Russian all verbs get inflected according to gender. That is, if you translate “John smelled a flower” and “Jane smelled a flower” to Hebrew/Russian, the word for “smelled” will be different in each case. I have no idea what to do with non-binary genders except inventing a whole new grammar which will take ages to get people to understand / use.
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And then there are languages that doubly don’t have a gender problem. Like finnish speakers. Not only do we have only one gender neutral pronoun to begin with, but we also never use it and refer to everyone as “it”.
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Fun exercise: talk to/about a nonbinary person in Russian without misgendering or outing them! It’s actually sort of doable:
– “Где ты была?” vs. “Где вы были?” (if the person went somewhere in a group)
– “Ты знал” vs. “Тебе было известно”
– “Ты голодная?” vs. “Ты хочешь есть?”
– “Ты хотел” vs. “Тебе хотелось”
So Russian creates difficulties for you and then gives you the tools to solve them with impersonal constructions and plurals and stuff.
OTOH, part of the problem is that even if outing someone isn’t an issue, there’s still no good solution. The equivalent of “they”, “они”, is really really only plural (though I as an English-influenced speaker keep wanting to use it where I’d use “singular they” in English). Russian even has a neuter gender!!, but it is absolutely only for inanimate things. I don’t know if anyone has solved this.
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Ha. Those were creative, but how would you translate “Ozy wrote a blog post”?
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“У Ози на блоге новый пост”? 🙂
I have to apply these constraints in real life sometimes, and they do sometimes result in me saying something subtly different than I would otherwise say. Sometimes I just trail off in the middle of the sentence if the next word would be obligatorily gendered but is clear from context. In the worst case, I sometimes don’t say something I would otherwise say, or if it’s a really important thing to say, then I do sometimes have to misgender the person (which is unfortunate but still better than misgendering them ALL the time, especially since they know I try to avoid it).
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This problem is even worse in Spanish, which pretty much lacks a neuter gender entirely…
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French has the same problem.
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“if we want people to be used to calling people “they”, to have it roll off the tongue as easily as “she” and “he”– we are going to have to welcome a whole bunch of people in the third and fourth groups.”
This argument feels kinda weird because the utility gained from accepting people from the third and fourth groups seems much higher than what’s gained from people being used to the word ‘they’. I mean, it’s not invalid, but it seem like it would make more sense to formulate it as “people getting used to calling people “they” is going to be a nice side-effect of welcoming a whole bunch of people in the third and fourth groups.”
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Some people, mostly in the first but maybe also the second group, seem to think that people in the third and fourth groups are distracting from their concerns or making them look bad to cis people. There has been, in the past several years, a noticeable change in focus away from transition related care (how to access it, expanding access, funding peoples access to it, harm reduction for people accessing it outside official channels, etc) in the trans community online and towards media representation, intra-trans conflicts, neopronouns, and other stuff related more to speech acts than material conditions. And people who feel like their lives are in danger if they can’t transition are likely to feel left out by those topics. For the record I think this shift has nothing to do with the trans community becoming more inclusive, if it even has.
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…I’ve been using “they” pretty regularly when referring to a third person singular whose gender may be anything, and I want to remain neutral. I mean, isn’t that pretty normal in English. Like, say, in an informal informational text. Formal stuff I usually use the passive voice if necessary, or use “one” rather than “he” or “she” when referring to “Every(wo)man”.
Fun fact: in Dutch “she” and “they” are the same words, and you have to look at the verb to see if it’s plural or singular 🙂
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I once had a chinese co-worker who would randomly swap he/she when speaking english. It was confusing for about 6 months. Then my brain grew an exception handler to automatically reparse and confusing statement without gender. After a year, I would not even notice that I had been called ‘she’ (I am a cis-man).
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