Finding the Right Pronoun

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Laura, and I had a question.

Hey, Laura, where are you calling from?

I’m calling from San Diego.

Okay, great. Welcome to the show.

Thank you.

With more and more people identifying as transgender, what’s the future of the pronoun? I mean, if the binary he and she doesn’t fit everybody, how does language adapt to that?

That’s a great question. Why is this on your mind?

Well, my son is transgender. My older son is 21, and I had a conversation with him about it. And he said, you know, there’s a movement where they’re pushing for use of a separate pronoun, like Z or Zer, that’s like a neutral pronoun that would include everybody, regardless of where they fall on the gender spectrum.

So we talked about that, and he wanted, you know, he said, well, that’s what should happen. And I said, well, it’s very hard to just, you know, put a pronoun into the language. I was telling him how when I was younger, the term Miz was introduced and people kind of fought back against that. And then now it’s kind of a standard thing. But we were talking about what is the evolution and how does that happen? Do you just have to start introducing it and then it becomes codified or what? So that was how we started talking about it.

That’s pretty much the only way. So this is a pronoun for people who are in between the typical binary genders, right?

Right, yes. And there’s a big spectrum. You know, there are people who identify all different ways on that spectrum. So, you know, the he and she binary doesn’t really fit them. And it’s difficult to know unless you ask the person, you know, which they prefer, which I guess, you know, he was saying that you can do that. And I said, well, yeah, that’s true, but it’s really kind of awkward when you meet a person to say, so do you prefer he or she? I don’t know. I just thought it was a really interesting question.

Yeah, you kind of wait for the gentle correction. You hope that if you get it wrong that they’re forgiving, right?

Yeah, I guess so. Yeah. But I just thought it was a really fascinating idea and question about language.

It really is. And I can remember when Ms. was introduced and it was just thought of as this radical thing.

Well, there’s still pushback. There’s still pushback against Ms. in some quarters.

Yeah, absolutely. There’s some, but I mean, you see it now on forums and you often have that option. But I remember at that moment when I first heard about it thinking, yes, finally, a word for the way I want to identify myself. And so I completely relate to that idea of wanting to have, because language is so powerful, right? And it’s powerful to find a word that names what you want to be described as. So I totally relate to that.

And the transgender community has come up with a bunch of suggestions. The ones you mentioned, Z and Zer, are the most common at this point, but it’s been going on for decades, and none of them are really stuck very well.

Right. I think those are so basic to our language, you know, he and she, that it’s very hard to—I mean, Ms. is kind of different because that’s not your gender identity. It’s more your attachment to another person, so I think it’s a little bit less, you know, to the heart of your essence, if you know what I mean.

Right. It’s about your marital status. And it’s a title that refers to half the population or a portion of half the population. Whereas with people who are transgender, that’s a much smaller sample.

Yeah. Well, I have, you know, I think he and she also have definite baggage, you know, that come with them. We have ideas in our culture about what that means, you know, what a he is, what a she is. And, you know, I write books, too, and I wrote a book called Out, and I used parallel and perpendicular instead of gay and straight for that same reason. Because, you know, gay and straight have such freight and baggage with them.

Absolutely. And I think anything with gender and sexuality in our culture, especially in America, has that problem.

I just read that Sweden actually just – I don’t know if they passed a law or what they did, but they codified a gender-neutral pronoun.

Yeah, hen, right? H-E-N?

Yeah, hen, right, exactly. Yeah, I thought that was really interesting. They made it part of the established government language.

Well, they can do that because they have that language body in Sweden that we don’t have for the English language.

Right. Well, yeah, we don’t all have a homogenous language, and everybody’s different, so it would be tough. You know, English has tackled this problem before transgender was a thing that we were all talking about in the form of the epicene pronoun. And this is a pronoun that has no gender attached to it. And more than 100 have been proposed back as far as the 1800s.

Wow. I didn’t know that.

And none of them have really stuck. And many of them, they didn’t stick because they’re hard to say or hard to spell. Some of them didn’t stick because they were pushed by people who had other agendas. And so they had their own new baggage with them. Some of them didn’t stick because the culture wasn’t ready for this. And you just think how long it’s taken us to not go on to the metric system. There’s a lot of things that we stick with just because we’ve always done them this way.

Although, of course, they is becoming more commonly used. It’s hard, though, because they as a gender-neutral pronoun works when you don’t know the gender of the other person or when you know that it’s both genders. And it doesn’t work very well when you are talking to a person or referring to somebody who is present. What do they want? If Martha, if you’re sitting there next to somebody whose gender I don’t know and I say, are they ready to order, it doesn’t really work.

Well, it’s a plural pronoun, too.

Yeah. I mean, we’ve always been – as a former English teacher, whenever I hear someone use it that way, I just kind of cringe and go, plural.

It’s universal.

That fight is over, though.

It totally – Laura, that fight is over. It’s universal. It’s done. But it doesn’t work when you actually know the person in question.

Right. It works when they are unknown. It’s awkward.

Yeah.

Yeah. I have no answer. I just want to get it. I just had a question. That was all. I don’t know. I don’t know how to fix it. I know it’s an issue, though. And definitely as more and more people identify that way and it becomes more acceptable, you know, I think it’s going to come up more and more.

Right, right. I think we’re still working that out. And I think what applies to the situation is what I often say when I’m giving talks on diversity, which is that we’re all works in progress. Nobody’s perfect. We’re all going to make mistakes. We’re all going to say things that offend the other person. But the point is to start listening, right?

Right, and communicating.

Yes, listening and communicating and listening to understand rather than listening to respond.

Transgender people have a lot to tell other people.

Yes, and they have very specific stories that haven’t been told a lot.

Right, right. Because they’ve been hiding for a lot of the time that they’ve been, in our culture at least.

Yeah, and I really think there needs to be more conversation. And I look at, like, you know, if I’m – people call me Mrs. frequently because I’m married, but I go by Ms. because I didn’t change my name. So that’s confusing to people, but I don’t get upset about it. I don’t say, oh, you know, I’m mad that you think I’m a Mrs. I just say, oh, I go by Ms., you know, and I just – that’s how I do it.

So I think that eventually that’s where we’ll go with this. I think people who are transgender will just say, oh, you know what, I don’t prefer she. I prefer he or I prefer Z or Z or just use my name or whatever, you know. But it’s hard to keep that straight with a lot of people, I think. And particularly because you encounter so many new people in your life.

It’s constantly something you’re always going to have to say for your whole life.

My son, who is eight, has long hair. And because he’s eight, he hasn’t had puberty yet. And so he looks like a girl sometimes. And he frequently gets referred to as she or her. And he has learned just to say, it’s he. I’m a boy. And that’s it. And not take it as a personal insult. No, he doesn’t take it as an insult. We just all move on and maybe laugh a little bit or make a, like, oh, that’s four times today, you know. Yeah. That’s what you have to do, I think. Yeah. Because you can’t you can’t just push culture on people.

Exactly. Yeah. I’m wondering about your son’s experience. Well, he’s had a very interesting experience. He’s 21 now and he’s just going to graduate from college in May at Pace University in New York. His name’s Austin. And he he came out in the eighth grade as gay. And we were absolutely cool with that. And he was you know, that’s how he identified for most of high school. And then when he went to college, more and more he started to identify as transgender. And so, you know, we’ve had several conversations about that and talked about, well, so what does that mean exactly in terms of, like, who you date or what you’re called? Or, you know, and we just kind of got to the point where I just say Austin, you know, I don’t specify what gender he is. And really it doesn’t matter because he’s Austin. And, you know, he’s fantastic the way he is, and I don’t really care. He doesn’t care. He’s very open about it. And he’s okay with he.

Yeah. I mean, he doesn’t like it, but he also doesn’t, I don’t think he has settled on what he would like to be called either, you know, really. I don’t know if he has. I mean, for a while he was really pushing Z and Zer, but then I think that it’s awkward and people have a problem with understanding what you mean when you say it, because most people don’t know what that is unless they’re in the community or they know someone in the community. If you just say it to a random person in, you know, a state where that’s not talked about like it is here, they’d be like, what are you talking about? What is that? I don’t know what that is. It’s always difficult on the frontier. You know, we may reach the point 30 years down the road where we’ve forgotten that people like your son were fighting this battle. Right. Because everybody’s using the new phone now.

Well, Laura, you’ve raised some really great questions, and I hope we get a lot more voices on this topic because it’s really fascinating. I hope so, too. I think it is, too. I think it’s really interesting. Thank you so much for sharing your story and your son’s story. Absolutely. Yeah, best to your son. Great love to my son, too. He’s a fantastic kid. Yay. Hi, Austin. Hi there. Hi, Austin. Okay. Bye-bye. Take care. Take care. Thanks so much for talking about it. Sure. Bye-bye. Bye.

I feel like we could have done another hour with Laura talking about the subject of pronouns. Oh, I know. Yeah. I would love to hear, as I said, I would love to hear more voices on this. There’s an awkwardness there on all parts, from all parties, when you have this encounter where you’re not sure how they want to be referred to. Right. Well, I think, again, that’s a good opportunity for dialogue and conversation. But it’s hard to ask as well. Well, from what I’ve read and the few transgender people I know, they appreciate asking if you’re asking in a way where you’re listening to understand. Right. And not just to make a comment.

Also online, you can watch the entire video of a documentary called Laverne Cox Presents the T-Word. It’s with Laverne Cox from Orange is the New Black, and it’s really an excellent introduction to all these kinds of issues. I highly recommend it. 877-929-9673. Email words@waywordradio.org. Start the conversation on Facebook or Twitter.