In 2018, I was working at a camp and met a lawyer with some white man name - Jeffrey, Jeremy, who knows, let's call him Jeffremy - who was on camp as a visitor, the spouse of a faculty member. At the time, I was working as the camp's inaugural (and only) LGBTQ+ Inclusion Coordinator, a title I carried with pride and joy. Unfortunately, other people didn't take that title particularly seriously, and Jeffremy was no exception.
Jeffremy, a middle-aged cishet white man with a law degree and apparently no understanding of the basic rules of English pronouns, helpfully informed me that my pronouns were grammatically incorrect and that I should stop using them. I noted an abandoned water bottle nearby and pointed out that if he were to ask whose it was, he might say that someone left their water bottle; he responded that he always said "his or her." (I don't believe this for a second.) When I told him that singular "they" predates singular "you" and that it was used by writers including Shakespeare and Jane Austen, he straight up did not believe me. I excused myself from that conversation pretty quickly, since nothing productive was happening.
Jeffremy came up to me the next day to tell me that he had looked into it, and what do you know, Shakespeare did use singular "they"! It was older than singular "you"! Who knew? (Me. I knew.) Thanks, Jeffremy!
The next year, I was a guest presenter at a conference of the Women Cantors Network, an organization of largely women doing Jewish clergy work - sheer nepotism, I'll admit, since my mother was the co-organizer and needed a diversity and inclusion speaker. I went in and spoke to a room packed with dozens of women, many of whom had known me since I was a baby, about what it means to be trans. I started with an exercise that has become a core part of my programs: I printed out cards with various sets of pronouns and guides on pronunciation and usage, and then I handed them out.
"For the next forty-five minutes," I told them, "these are your pronouns."
I had them introduce themselves to their neighbors with their names, new pronouns, where they were from, and favorite ice cream flavor. Then we reconvened and I asked everyone to introduce their conversational partners.
I anticipated real pushback. At the very least, I anticipated a lot of benign noncompliance with the assignment - after all, many of these women were my mother's age or older and had never interacted with a nonbinary person before, let alone used voi/void pronouns. But instead, to my utter shock and delight, almost every woman in the circle introduced her conversational partner with the pronouns I had assigned, albeit with a few remaining struggles on usage and pronunciation. Writing this now, three years later almost to the day, I'm tearing up remembering that circle.
I was beside myself, but I had to keep going. I asked the group: how did it feel to be referred to in a way that didn't match their identity? Most of the group admitted that it felt uncomfortable or strange. Then I asked a question I had almost removed from my outline the week before: did anyone find that their assigned pronouns fit them better than the ones they normally used?
To this day, that question remains in my outline every single time I run this program, because one woman raised her hand and told the group that yes, actually, she found that she really liked being referred to with they/them pronouns. Six months later, I would discover that she was now using both "she" and "they", even in professional spaces - an enormously impactful move for a clergyperson.
In the whole program, only one uncomfortable question was asked, and I will admit that I don't remember what it was. Before I could even formulate an answer, another attendee cut in and gently but firmly corrected the questioner, taking on the exact allyship role I had spoken about minutes earlier. Two other people added to what she had said, and I sat and watched the immediate impact of my work.
That program was the first time I ever did the work I do and felt seen and heard, not by other queer people, but by my target audience. I will never forget how it felt to be 22 years old and speaking to people up to three times my age, and to have them truly hear what I was saying. I went home the next day with a pretty mug - the guest speaker gift, and one that I adore and still use regularly - and the newfound knowledge that my work had had an impact.
When I talk about the process of exploring one's sexuality and gender terms, I talk about shopping for clothes. I talk about how no two people have quite the same body and style, about how bodies change, about how some people can't wear straight sizes at all. I talk about the process of trying on a pile of shirts, figuring out which ones fit perfectly, which ones are just okay, and which don't fit at all. I talk about how some people dress differently in different situations, and about how when we dress the way we want to, we feel the most like ourselves.
Pronouns are hard. They're hard for other people to adjust to, and they're hard for us to explore. In order to get the most out of our lives, we have to "dress" ourselves - in our pronouns, our labels, the terms we use for ourselves and allow others to use for us - in the ways that make us feel safe and happy. And we have to let the people around us do the same.
Language isn't static. The concept of "email," for example, was nonexistent until 1961, when the first electronic messages could be sent from computer to computer. In 1973, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, Electronics journal coined the term "e-mail" in the context of a new system within the United States Postal Service; the USPS had designed a system in which people could send electronic mail to the post office, where it would be printed and mailed as a hard copy. CompuServe renamed its own electronic messaging "EMAIL" in 1981, and from there, the term became common usage. Now, sixty years after the advent of electronic messages, email is not only an accepted word, but a basic communication tool that nearly every adult uses.
I frequently hear people say that they won't use other people's neopronouns until those pronouns become common usage. But how does any word become common usage? By being used. If you want to be, as the ex-beloved John Mulaney says, "that one pre-Y2K asshole", I guess you can be, but what's the point? What are you proving? The world will simply march on without you while you sit and pout about xe/xem pronouns.
Lindy West, one of my favorite writers of all time, writes in her book The Witches Are Coming that "obsolescence is a preventable disease." She reflects on some of the comedians she once loved and how they actively chose to take the easy way out when they didn't feel like growing anymore. She writes about Louis C.K., how he once spoke onstage about how unsafe women feel around men and how he now mocks survivors of sexual assault and school shootings. She reminds us that we can choose to grow, or choose to be left behind.
Jeffremy wasn't correct about they/them pronouns; singular "they" has been in use for hundreds of years and will continue to be in use for hundreds more, provided climate change doesn't get us first. But what I wish I had told him, what I wish I could tell him now, is that the grammatical correctness of the pronouns doesn't matter. Language evolves, and we must evolve with it. It's okay to struggle, and it's okay for it to take time, but you have to keep trying or you will be left behind.
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