It was bathrooms, then girls’ sports programs. Drag queen story hours remain a red-button issue, but pronouns are the new battleground. For people who neither understand nor support trans rights, new objections must be stirred up to keep the wedge issue hot. Haters can get bored, after all. In an atmosphere where politics has become an arena sport, tossing the villain to the mat loses its wow factor; you have to add a new move tantamount to throwing the enemy out of the ring. “They” is the latest buzzword to cause an all-out smackdown.
I’m going to focus on another pronoun though: We. By that, I mean all of us in the queer community. We have got to get it together. We have got to speak up. We have got to be united.
I could provide a historically focused testimonial about how the LGBTQ community was far from united as I was coming out in Texas and California in the 80s and 90s. (That’s right, I needed two decades to come out. Such a drama queen!) Back then, it was gays and lesbians first. Bisexuals were widely disparaged and dismissed since wanting to have it both ways came off as clinging to a safety net. They were whom we spoke of as in transition. Per thinking of the time, eventually they’d grow their full faerie wings.
Transgender people were an afterthought at best. I recall highly political gays regarding them as a distraction. If America didn’t know what to do with its fags and dykes, how would they ever get their heads around people who claimed to have the wrong genitalia? Some rationalized turning away from transgender rights by saying lesbians and gays were defined by sexuality while trans issues pertained to gender. At best, it seemed that a fight for trans rights would come later.
As objectionable as that was, it’s how things have played out. Conservatives are foaming over trans rights because it’s the last queer frontier. Yesterday, President Biden signed the Respect for Marriage Act into law. Political and legal fights regarding gays and lesbians are slipping away. Rather than concede, conservatives are rallying against all things trans.
The fears of men claiming to be trans infiltrating women’s restrooms haven’t materialized. I haven’t read about ten-year-old kids born as Wayne or Chuck winning blue ribbons in girls’ potato sack races or taking the final spot on the girls high school basketball team. Waynes and Chucks don’t change gender willy nilly for the sake of a faux bronze medal that’ll be stuffed at the bottom of a sock drawer in three years’ time.
Trans resisters oversimplify things to ridiculous levels because their disciples don’t know anyone who identifies as trans. Saying little boys want to take over girls’ sports gets digested as easily as telling them unicorns eat honey lavender croissants. (Wow, unicorns have good taste! That should be a thing…for non-unicorns, too.) Suddenly, a swarm of people who’ve never bothered to watch a single WNBA game or women’s soccer match feign concern over girls’ athletics. Hogwash.
So it’s pronouns. It’s so easy to stir the pot. It doesn’t even matter that too many people don’t know what pronouns are. Yesterday, someone named Brigitte Gabriel tweeted, “Gender pronouns are just another form of communism.” Um, what? She didn’t stop there. “My pronouns are Impeach/Biden.” Oh, Brigitte. Political humor? My side is not splitting. So off the mark. She—oops, not her pronoun—Impeach/Biden could easily be dismissed as a random kook on Twitter, but Impeach/Biden has 741.9K followers. Her tweets got 9,897 and 19.3K likes, respectively. (Incidentally, Impeach/Biden also identifies as a National Security Expert. I’ll leave you to process that on your own.)
This could devolve into a post about grammar. I must focus.
We must focus. I believe we’re at a point in time when 99% of the LGBTQ community supports trans rights. Sometimes, however, we meander down unhelpful pronoun paths, especially those of us who are older. I used to criticize old cranks who couldn’t change with the times, but now I’m having to check myself more often. I’m aging into the Old Crank Zone. A few cases in point come instantly to mind: (1) I’m not going to call Facebook Meta; (2) Sorry, Johnny Depp, but Gene Wilder will always be Willy Wonka; and (3) I’m never having pumpkin-spiced coffee. Others may muck up their coffee if they so choose. (Don’t even get me started on matcha.)
Note to self: Breathe. Shake it out.
I’ve sat around too many café and pizza joint tables listening to gay guys my age resist the expanding menu of labels to consider regarding sexual orientation and gender identity. The basic argument: “In my day and time, I walked ten miles in the snow to school, got bullied as a plain ol’ faggot and finally came out as gay. I figured things out just fine without any demis, pans, aces or other cards. I was he/him, but friends could call me she or her after a couple martinis. It was always a good laugh…mostly because of the martinis.” Yep, my guys are sounding old.
Some of the newer terms may very well fit me better than the basic GAY label. I’ve been reading and processing things, but I may stick with “gay” simply because it was the only term that made sense when I went through that prolonged work and angst in coming out. I came out many times to various people with varying results. Coming out anew with some clarifying modifications feels exhausting. Maybe that’s the age thing again.
I will admit that I initially tripped up on having to announce my pronouns during Zoom meetings and during in-person events. It even brought back bad memories. I imagined myself back in high school in East Texas. If I’d had to state my name and pronouns during one of the many classes taught by disinterested football coaches, there’d have been unchecked snickers after I identified as “he/him.” I can even picture my nemesis, Keith, raising his hand once a week and saying, “Coach, can we sit in a circle and reintroduce ourselves with our pronouns again. I’m real bad with names.” It’d be a setup for the old he/him joke again. Almost more hysterical than someone fake(?) farting to Keith and his gang. As a highly anxious/sensitive kid, fear of pronoun putdowns would have been to blame for acne breakouts. (Surely it couldn’t have been all the Diet Dr. Pepper.)
I also struggled for a moment with “they/them,” not because I wanted to deny someone’s trans, nonbinary or gender-fluid status, but because of the grammatical adjustment. It was about singular versus plural. Long before some queer people adopted they/them, I denied a growing acceptance for “they” representing a single person. I clung to the awkward “he/she” instead of “they” in sentences like, “If someone wants a pumpkin-spiced latte, he/she can at least drink it without slurping or resorting to orgasmic moans.” I can now admit that “they” sounds better than “he/she” in that sentence. We’ve been using the traditionally plural pronoun “they” to refer to a single, unknown person of either or any gender for a long time now. Why does everyone forget that?
Language evolves, grammar changes and, yes, pronouns aren’t static either. I don’t think I’ve used “thee” or “thou” in conversation all year and I’m hoping the royal we continues its slow death. (Ah, yes. Another example of a typically plural pronoun taking on a singular persona. I wish for its demise not on the basis of a singular versus plural stance but rather due to the stuffy arrogance it conveys.) Personally, I’d have preferred that the pronouns ze/zir gained more traction for trans, nonbinary and gender-fluid folks. New pronouns, new recognition. Why co-opt an existing pronoun, causing added confusion and overwrought resistance? Alas, I’m not the pronoun police. Furthermore, even though I’m not much of a he-man, I’m not typically viewed as someone who might check “Other” for gender on a questionnaire. Regarding their preferred pronouns, it’s not my choice to make.
When we continue to bitch about the awkwardness of using “they/them” for people who don’t identify as cisgender, we play into the hands of trans haters and, more broadly, queer haters. A conservative who flatly rejects the possibility that God may have bestowed the wrong genitalia at birth, will cite the cranky fifty-year-old gay who purports to be frazzled, inconvenienced and even affronted by “they/them” as chosen pronouns. “I’m not a hater,” Vern will say. “The gays don’t like these pronoun contortions either.” All the while, nonbinary, gender-fluid and trans individuals remain subject to cheap shots, ridicule and far worse.
Make the change. Practice during commercials while “The Andy Griffith Show” each afternoon. For fun, pretend Opie is nonbinary. Or Barney Fife. Maybe Auntie Bee. Heck, refer to each of them as they. It’s a way to add some zing to watching reruns.
Recognize you’ll mess up sometimes. You’ll be corrected, sometimes in a manner that seems to be delivered with impatience and contempt. I seem to recall taking a similar tone when my mother would suggest I try dating girls. When we flub, they may very well view us as being contrary or not trying hard enough.
I’m certain that any offense I take in being corrected for a pronoun flub pales to the hardships they have encountered and will continue to encounter. I’ll strive to get it right more. Much more. I know using “they/them” represents acceptance. Let only the true haters bemoan pronoun updates.
To those of you who identify as queer or an LGBTQ ally, it’s time we fully support them, a pronoun in this case I’m using both singularly and plurally.
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