Pronouns and Power

I’m really bad about doing this in person, so I’m hoping that some of my friends will read this and maybe it’ll make it easier to talk about these things. My advice, if you want to be a good friend to a trans person, is to ask what pronoun they prefer and use it. And, be prepared for it to change, since everyone is always in a state of becoming, but trans people’s becoming is often regulated by, related to, expressed in language.

Right now, I prefer she and her, when people are speaking about me. I’ve been trying to get my friends to learn to use Ze and Zer, but I feel like it is hard for them to use when speaking to other people who use he and him, and who might not know what ze and zer mean. I also feel that by using ze and zer, I’m still ultimately gendered as male by people who don’t critically examine gender. So right now, I feel like she and her is the best pronoun for me, because I think its the most functional in terms of disrupting people’s tendency to gender me male, even when I’m decked out in make up, a skirt tights and boots. I also find it to be the most comfortable, because I feel like people have been trying to force me to be a man my entire life, and I’m done with that. Hearing people refer to me as she reminds me that people support me in my transition and that some people recognize the philosophical and ontological stance I’m taking of rejecting the categories of male and female and not reducing me to my present biology. I identify as transgender, as crossing gender boundaries, and as genderqueer, as not fitting into categories of male and female.

When people refer to me with male pronouns, it basically makes me feel invisiblized, disregarded and misunderstood. It makes me think that people think I’m “just a cross-dresser” and it disregards the fact that I am struggling everyday to deconstruct and challenge the gender that has been assigned to me, but to which I’ve never quite fit, even as a child. I consider myself to have a genderqueer body. From before I even knew the term, people have accused me of running, sitting, throwing, walking “like a girl”, and girlfriends have always told me that they were attracted to my “androgyny”. Basically, when someone refers to me as he, I feel like they’re joining that chorus of people saying “be a man!” Still, I realize that a lot of people knew me as a male person before, and I find it hard to bring up this issue, as I don’t want to be the center of attention.

Last night I had a long conversation with a close friend of mine, in bed, about pronouns. They feel that by using “he” to refer to me, they’re making a Foucaultian move in not reproducing the discourse of power, in relation to gender, by avoiding the conversation where they have to explain their sexuality to people. I understand their position, but I feel a little differently. I think that if I’m being referred to as he, then the discourse and its power is very concretely being manifested.

Judith Butler ties one of the most fundamental mechanisms of sexual control, in psychoanalysis, to pronouns, saying “the paternally enforced prohibition against union with the mother is coextensive with language itself, and makes itself understood in the elementary structures of reference and differentiation, particularly in the structures of pronomial reference,” which reinforce our roles and their limits everyday over and over [1]. Leslie Feinberg says “I don’t have a personal stake in whether the tans liberation movement results in a new third pronoun, or gender-neural pronouns, like the ones, such as ze (she/he) and hir (her/his)… It is not the words in and of themselves that are important to me - it’s our lives. The struggle of trans people over the centuries is not his-story or her-story. It is our-story.” [2] I totally agree. I’m not so concerned with these words, so much as their affect and operation in my life and the communities I inhabit.

As I said to my friend last night, on one level, my gender expression is definitely me doing what I want. At the same time, on another level, its a daily act of resistance to the codes and laws of sex and gender that are so ingrained to society that most people probably don’t even realize they’re saying “sir” or “hombre” or “man”. And its hard. And sometimes I wonder how people have the strength to keep it up, in the face of the constant stress and threat of violence. Which is part of why I’ve been thinking about transitioning more, along with the sheer desire I have to explore my body and its possibilities more. Which is also part of why I’m moing to a much more queer positive and less conservative city, probably Montreal. I was there for a week last month and three people asked me what my preferred pronoun is.

So, if you’re talking about me, do me a favor and use she and her, or if you find that so difficult, just use my name or they and their. And if you’re friends with another trans person who’s in transition, check in with them about how they feel about their pronouns. Its an ongoing source of stress and joy for some of us, and they might be really happy that you asked.

I’ve been reading Donna Haraway’s new book “When Species Meet”, which is a beautiful and compelling bringing together of queer theory and ideas of alter-globalization or autre-mondialisation, with the aim of rethinking post-humanism around an idea of companion species which can inform how we communicate with and treat each other. Its really amazing, but in the context of world building, the difficulty to get people to use the right pronoun or find a bathroom I feel safe in on a day to day basis is still humbling and grounding. Deleuze and Guattari exclaim “the schizoanalytic slogan of the desiring-revolution will be first of all: to each its own sexes” [3]. I want a world and a community where we can have fluid genders and sexes and sexualities. Where we don’t have to worry about what label, lesbian, gay, transgender, we fit into, and I’m willing to struggle for that world, every minute of every day, with my whole body.

1. Subjects of Desire, p. 201

2. Transgender Warriors, p. x

3. Anti-Oedipus, p. 325