By V. Obazuaye
Who knew a simple pronoun series would cause such controversy?
I can see it in their eyes, the moments in which they glaze over my pronouns. I weigh the weight of the words in my mouth, introducing myself as a person who uses they/them/theirs and prefers masculine and gender-neutral language. Eyes dazed, mouths unmoving. Either they sit and stare in silence, or they ask, “They/them?” and nod vigorously. I am going to be misgendered for the rest of my relationship with this person.
In class, teachers pretend to care. We ask for pronouns at the beginning of the school year, and I listen to another student misgender me in conversation. My teacher does not intervene. I suppose they did not hear my introduction. I do not speak for the rest of the semester, watching my participation grade slowly drop with each sewing stitch I self-embed into my lips. I would rather stay silent than be misrepresented. I would rather not speak than contribute to the ruse of a gender-inclusive campus environment.
The misgendering of me is often met with requests for conversation and correction. Practice and patience. I am educating, sending emails about harmful language, and clutching my chest ten times a day on campus. The same campus is claimed to be the most inclusive for queer and transgender students, no matter what sector of the umbrella they fall under. They do not feel how the dysphoria blooms under my GC2B chest binder, how the “she/her” or “ladies” or “miss” burns through my blood like liquid fire. I am misgendered once, and I can blink away the stabbing pain. Twice, and I am outside of my body, cradling the industrial Adams Hall ceiling rather than the rough soles of my Converse touching the ground. The entire first half of the spring semester? I am contemplating my exit route to my few spaces of queer affirmation and euphoria.
These spaces of affirmation and euphoria often come from the same spaces I often spend my time running from – language. Growing up in a West African household, my parents would call me every name besides mine, cycling through my younger brothers and my mother’s name before ending up on the one I was born with. They would sometimes use they/them/theirs for me, or even a rare he/him, and I would bask in this moment. In these moments, I was not relegated to boy or girl but something other. Something larger than life, too large that I could not be trapped into patterns of literary consistency for someone else’s consumption. Their variation meant I was something other, or in my terms, that I was free. Their languages, Edo and Urhobo from the Edo and Delta States of southern Nigeria, respectively, did not have gendered pronouns, they would explain. One standard pronoun was used for everyone, which sounded a lot like he/him/his in English, and in translation, that is what they often used for me.
For my parents, it was a slip of the tongue, but for me, I was figuring out my gender identity. It was a rare experience of gender euphoria. My pronouns changed with time, and I, too, with them, into the person I am today. A person who is something other, or just a person who is free.
Contrary to popular opinion, gender non-conforming people such as myself are not new. Unlike my experience, the current conversation about gender identity and language is not one of freedom but of restriction. As a former queer educator, I would often ask people to deconstruct the gendered language they use. I’d encourage a reframe of thought, a re-correction and redirection of the way we referred to people – “ladies and gentlemen,” “guys,” and “ladies” to a group of feminine presenting students could be quickly modified. Treat it like a word you wanted to say less – immediately correcting with “y’all,” “everyone,” or “folks.” Hold others to these standards as well, challenging them to bend and twist their language to the times.
Many think of these prompts to adjust and reevaluate as restrictions, not as providing freedom of expression through not categorizing people. As this conversation unfolds around the English language, we are accustomed to the buzz, not realizing that many other languages have skipped this debate. In Mandarin, for example, the pronoun pronounced tā is used to describe another person, similarly to how we use he/she/they pronouns. In my parents’ language as well, one blanket pronoun refers to everyone without means for specific, isolationary gendering. Languages like Tagalog and Armenian, Swahili and Turkish all feature a gender non-specific third-person pronoun. Other examples include Afrikaans, Yoruba, Tamil, and so much more.
What has been described as threatening our language and altering English past comprehension might be much closer to our lived experience than what we think. For those of us who are second-generation immigrants, trace back the roots of your ancestors. They might have arrived in the United States jaded, homophobic, and transphobic, but the proof is within their mother tongue. We did not come into this world gendering each person, forcing them into small boxes without room for secure questioning of one’s gender identity. With ancient androgynous gods and a history that points to a strong diversity in queerness, perhaps we are much closer to queer and transgender visibility in our native tongues than we think.
Do not abandon our legacies and our histories when we arrive in the States, watering down our languages when generations fail to teach the ones who follow them. We drop our language and adopt this new one, English words snaking into our vocabulary in an almost pidgin combination. We take on gender and its weight, the weight of he and she and they, the implicit labeling power that once was never deemed our responsibility to bear.
Do not forget the significance of non-gendered terms in the conversation around queerness in English. Absence is proof of our existence, proof of societies where perceived gender was not the most important thing to categorize other humans by. It is not a mistake or an omission but a need that was not present in the curation and refinement of 20+ languages used worldwide. Queer and transgender people have always existed and will continue until the end of time. We prevail in a society that does not have the language to justify our existence, and I hope that our queer ancestors thrived in one where neutrality was the default.
Even when the English language was not designed to be a home for us, we built one in the crevices of your native lands and sounds.
Heed their call when we introduce ourselves to you. When we offer our pronouns, and thus our most intimate ruminations and realizations of gender with you, beckoning you to see us as our true selves. Listen when we ask for a deconstruction of gender, not simply through language, but the expectations and interpretations we make of the people around us. Unlike those who came before us, we do not have the language curated for us, but we can curate it to return to the inclusivity they held so dear.
Listen to the voices and sounds that settled in your heart and bloodline long before English was considered the language of the world. I figure that you might find answers to the pronoun series controversy there.