(“After all, hair is hair,” says the letter I beg to disagree.)
Earlier this year, the Museum of Sex sent a promotional email with the subject line “Valentine’s Day Gift Ideas for 2022 - LOVE LOCK DOWN for Womxn, Men, He, She, Him, Her, They, Them, Xe, Xyr, Yyrself and Xirself.” Another promotional email subject line: “Men’s & Non-Binary Engagement & Wedding Bands.” (You know what doesn’t sound at all romantic? A nonbinary engagement ring.) A publicist sent me - addressing me on the mailing label as BROCK COLYAR, THEY/THEM - a free sample of what are supposed to be nonbinary razors. There are THEY/THEM face masks available on Etsy. It’s on $15 T-shirts for Target’s 2022 Pride collection that read SHE HER THEY THEM HE HIM US. There’s a Manhattan Mini Storage billboard that reads MAN-HATTAN, SHE-HATTAN, THEY-HATTAN, WE-HATTAN. You certainly can’t avoid it during this year’s Pride Month.
Peacock announces a new horror flick called They/Them starring a bunch of he/hims and she/hers and describes the movie as a “queer empowerment story.” It’s on the reboot of Sex and the City, Star Trek: Discovery, Grey’s Anatomy, and the animated cartoons Steven Universe and She-Ra and the Princesses of Power. And capitalism and the culture industry have been happy to co-opt it. Joe Biden (“he/him”) and Kamala Harris (“she/her”) have billboarded theirs in television interviews. Your resistance-leaning co-workers feature their pronouns in their Slack bios and email signatures and Zoom panels. The “pronoun go-round” is the new icebreaker in schools and at the office. Just a few years later, they/themness is everywhere. This all seemed very exciting in the Trump-tainted years, during which I was a gender-studies major in college, determined, as one is at that age, to find themself and stick it to the toxic Man. There is a certain satisfaction in making this confusion you seem to be having - What box to put Brock in? - your problem, not mine. There’s power in sloughing off both of them, and some fun, especially when I see how befuddled the whole thing can make people. In this case, starting with some of the most basic elements of the English language: the pronouns he and she. I have been using they/them pronouns for about four years now, since I started identifying as nonbinary ( enby, to use the jargon) as an undergraduate, and am a little proud to say that my generation was the one that forced - finally - the entire world, or at least the good-intentioned, progressive part of it that I am fortunate enough to reside in, to acknowledge something many queer people (and feminists and restless square pegs of many varieties) have long sought: freedom from the bright-line tyranny of gender and its accompanying expectations. You almost certainly would when I’m not standing right in front of you. And if I had to guess, you’d still probably fuck up my pronouns the next time you use them. By the end of the ten-word exchange, I’d be a little exhausted and you’d be a little on edge. If I’m feeling game, I might even ask for your pronouns, though chances are, unless perhaps you’re my age or younger - I’m 24 - they will be exactly what I’d expect.
Maybe a somewhat forced smile, because I’ve come to dread this whole interaction. And so you’d ask what pronouns I use because it’s considered the polite thing to do now - an accepted part of our perilous new social-justice social contract - and you don’t want to offend me with your ignorance and you do want to flatter yourself with your deft ally-ness, all the while probably thinking, especially if you’re over 30, Oh goodness, the world is so different now.Īnd I’d politely respond, “ They/them is fine,” with a smile. You might assume, based in part on my voice and disposition, that I date and sleep with men, like a gay man (also correct). And yet, if you heard me speak, you’d probably assume (correctly) that I was assigned male at birth (AMAB, in the current jargon I was also, of course, assigned the name Brock). I wear light makeup and paint my nails and, depending on the occasion, might be in a slip dress with a kitten heel.
You’d ask me because my gender identity is not that clear - to you, at least. If you met me, you’d probably ask what pronouns I use.