Misgendering and Pronouns

Bianca Harkless

Editor-In-Chief

Recently, I saw an article about a trans girl being put on her school’s list for the running prom kings. Needless to say, I was rather annoyed when I saw this because why did it have to happen? As far as I could see about the incident, the girl was not running for prom queen, so there would be absolutely no reason for the mix up to happen in the first place. Going out of your way to put a student on the wrong list is just rude.

I think we all know the stereotype of the person who wants to identify as a wolf or an attack helicopter or something else that makes literally no sense to someone else. This is also where the idea of ‘pronouns or death’ and ‘pronouns or prison’ comes from. Basically, people that believe in the ‘pronouns or prison’ idea say that anyone can identify as anything and if an individual does not agree to call them by their new identity, that person should go to jail. I, for one, do not agree with this. For a while, I believed the whole debate was brainless and that it did not matter because pronouns do not matter to me. However, if a person has a reasonable desire to be called by another gender’s pronouns, then they should be treated with respect and have such happen.

Recently, I came across people who believe that they should not have to use the pronouns people would like them to. One of these people is Ben Shapiro, an american commentator, who is generally very outspoken about his beliefs on transgenderism and the whole pronoun situation. He is also the man who famously said that he would call Caitlyn Jenner, who was once Bruce Jenner, Caitlyn but would not refer to her with she/her pronouns because her sex was male and she could not do anything to change that, at least in Shapiro’s mind.

There is a point to that. Yes, her biological sex is male. However, she is taking female hormones, has undergone female cosmetic surgery, and undergone whole gender reassignment surgery. Everything about her looks female, so claiming her to be male makes no sense. You are going out of your way to misgender someone who has asked you to call them by a female pronoun in the name of what? What can someone gain by intentionally calling another the wrong pronouns?

I do not see any reason to misgender someone intentionally. It will not kill you to use they/them pronouns if they ask you to. Just to clarify, though, I do not think that people should be crucified for misgendering someone if they slip up and call someone the wrong pronouns when they talk about the past or even in the current, as long as they are not doing it with a malicious intent. Pronouns or prison seems extreme to me but I also identify with the same pronouns I always have. It might be something completely different for someone with different pronouns.

Long story short, do not go out of your way to make someone feel bad for the way they identify themselves . Pronouns have little to do with the actual person or what they believe. Maybe we can all get over ourselves and treat others with kindness.

Image Credit: Tim Mossholder