Recently I joined a new social group online, a VRChat community. There, I learned of a new trend of introducing yourself with pronouns. As I am learning, transgenderism and gender fluidity, which during my childhood were virtually unknown, have now become so mainstream that it is considered insensitive to assume someone’s “gender”.
So anyways, here I was, on introduction night, person after person introducing themselves. “Hi, my name is […], my pronouns are she/they, and I ….”, “Hi, I’m […], my pronouns are he/him”, etc. etc.
It was a good night, but I couldn’t help feeling a bit melancholy from this new tradition, and it’s taken me some time to figure out why. First, a bit of background about me:
I am all about gender being a spectrum. Besides my support of others in this regard, I can also talk from personal experience.
I have had more close relationships with males than females. My enjoyment of programming and gaming have often dropped me in male dominated surroundings. As a kid I always had dirt under my fingernails. I loved catching frogs and snakes. At summer camp, I was the “spy” for the boys, in a girls cabin vs boys cabin plot. Sure there were “girly” things about me too, but my point is I was definitely not a girly-girl.
And, I don’t think I’ve put this in text before but here it goes…I’m very likely bisexual. Geez, it’s funny how that’s emotional to put down. I’m not exactly hiding that information, but it’s not exactly something that has had reason to come up in conversation often. I’m happily married. I have a husband and three amazing kids. I’ve never dated a woman. However, I can say that I do definitely find certain women attractive. I played spin the bottle once in college, kissed a couple girls, and can say I enjoyed that. There is a part of me, that had at that time been hopeful of getting an excuse to explore that side of me more, but that opportunity never presented itself. So, here I am. Anyways, I always knew I wanted to get married to a man and have kids, so I wouldn’t have been able to devote myself fully to anyone female anyways. Over my life though, I have had various dreams where I’ve been the male in relationships. Perhaps that’s me playing that out in some way.
So yeah…I guess, putting that in text here publicly on the internet is scary, because I’ve always had a bad habit of filtering myself to the audience I’m speaking to, and here I am not filtering. But I suppose there are other things on this blog which could receive equal distain if shown to the right audience. Perhaps this blog is my baby step to being me in front of people who are not going to approve of me.
Ok, pronouns. So, I get it. There’s a lot of pressure in our culture to be a certain way if you’re male, or if you’re female. Recently I’ve been struggling with what to do about that with my six year old son, because, he sees his big sister get dressed in pink, glitter, and fuzzy things, and so he wants to copy and get the same. And, why shouldn’t he be able to?
At this age, we’ve been discouraging it because we don’t think he’s old enough to grasp the social implications of those decisions. That said, our plan is that when he’s older, has more of his own preferences beyond copying his sister, and gets how the world works a bit more, that he can decide then for himself what he wants to represent for himself.
It’s hard though, because it doesn’t feel right still. Any child or adult alike should be able to like what they like and dislike whatever they like without it shoving them over some invisible line in the sand of “who they are”.
And that’s my point, really. The thing I don’t like about the new use of pronouns, is that I feel like people have given up the struggle to remove the line in the sand. Stay with me:
With the feminist movement, women fought for their right to do the same things men were allowed to do, while still being a woman. They could wear pants, have careers, be tom-boys, etc., and still be a proud female figure.
Now-a-days, I feel like if you’re that same tom-boy, instead of learning to be proud of who you are, you’re instead handed this idea that your genitalia are “wrong”, that you need to jump over that line in the sand and join the other team to be accepted into society. In other words, instead of accepting the beautiful fluidity of personalities that can all come under one set of genitalia, we’re teaching this new generation that they need to “pick a team” even if that team is not a perfect fit.
“But what about the ‘they’ pronoun??” I’m sure one of you is asking at this point. The thing is, the group of non-gender pronouns just makes one third “I’m not picking a team, don’t pick one for me” bucket. But it’s still a vote for using gender terms as a personality definition rather than the original genetic origin of the term. And the problem with that is, you can’t define in spoken language a person’s femininity or masculinity in one word. We’re too complicated for that.
It’s like deciding that from now on, everyone has to change their name to one word that defines their personality. Sure, you could pick a word that “feels closest” for you at that moment, but is that one word going to truly convey to the people you meet who you are? Most likely not, because you’re a beautiful and complicated person built up layer after layer into a person that is not only unique but constantly changing.
So, why are we trying to give people the “too long didn’t read” versions of ourselves, in the form of a pronoun, instead of fighting for our right to have our genitalia not define us?
Love your body. Love what you were born with. Inside and out. Our genes are not our definition, they are part of our origin, that is all. Just like telling people the country we’re from.
I’m American. I was born and raised in the United States. Sure, there are people who might make assumptions about “Americans” the stereotype, but is that me? Me, who has swam against the crowd most of my life in pretty much everything I do? I haven’t even lived in the US the last 13 years. I’ll still introduce myself as American though if people ask. Why? Because that’s part of who I am. It’s where I started.
Most people these days, though, get that a person’s country of origin is only a small piece of who they are. Hence, we do not usually feel the need to hide this information about ourselves. Yes, there is still racism going on in the world in places, but overall, having that pride in where we came from usually gives us a strength that outweighs any negative that might result from exposing that part us. That’s a great thing. Let’s do that with gender, and get our pride in our full selves back. Reproductive bits and all.
Hi, my name is Karen, and my pronouns are what I was born with (she/her), but that’s not the whole story.