They/Them Pronouns & Conflicting Access Needs
Why they/them doesn't include everyone
You are at a party. Everyone knows it’s a queer space. You are having a lively conversation with a friend, and your friend gestures to someone across the room, pointing out that the person is wearing a beautiful jacket. The person is dressed femininely and has clearly put effort into appearing so. You are about to add your comment about the person’s coat - but what pronoun do you use? A gender-neutral one - they/them - to avoid making assumptions? Or she/her - what if that person is trying to be seen as a woman?
There has been significant hostility on either side of this particular debate, which seems to recur in queer discourse. Should we simply use they/them pronouns for everyone, treating this as some gender-neutral default? Or should we initially assume gender based on presentation, letting the language of gender expression guide us? In this essay, I intend to explain why I think both solutions I have seen proposed cause harm to different groups, and why I think we need to grapple with that core conflict rather than assert that either solution is perfect. I conclude that any solutions our community develops must seriously reckon with transmisogyny.
The Gender Performance is About To Begin
A significant part of transition, for many trans people, is trying to “pass” as the gender you identify with. Trans women are often criticised by supposed “feminists” for adopting “stereotypical” modes of feminine expression - wearing make-up and dresses, having long hair etc. This might be painted as having simply regressive ideas about what a woman is, or instead be suggested to be engaging in a form of sexual deviancy - a telltale sign of the AGP.
However, anyone who has spent time in community with trans women, as I have, knows that trans women do not necessarily adopt these practices because of some innate desire to wear skirts and heels - though of course, some trans women do have a preference for these items. Rather, trans women are forced to present in a way which is considered stereotypically feminine, because this is the most effective way to stop getting he/him-ed at the Post Office. This must be understood alongside a history of medical gatekeeping faced by transfeminine people unless they were able to perform a particular model of acceptable and stereotypical feminity.
Gender expression, here, then, is a form of outward communication to the world. As Butler posits gender, the small acts we take, the things we communicate to the world in this way, are what creates our gender into the world - what performs it. Performance here is not meant in the same way as an “act”, as something pretend and not real. Rather, performance here means that the act or acts creates the thing in the real world - the same way a performance of marriage (an official “pronouncing” you husband and wife) would create a very real and binding legal commitment.
Gender expression is often a language - an attempt to tell the world who you are, in the hope that the world will recognise that and respond to you accordingly. This is an undeniable part of reality - although the far right might generate memes about “assuming gender”, the reality is that most of us do so subconsciously, all the time.
The reason I have focused on trans women in this essay is because of the discussion’s particular relevance to the ways in which transfeminine people are oppressed. One of the core components of transmisogyny - the violent discipline and oppression that is faced by transfeminine people - is degendering. Trans women are socially denied access to womanhood (whilst still being subjugated under patriarchy). Transfeminist theorist Talia Bhatt has described this phenomenon as “third-sexing” - where trans women are relegated under gender hierarchy, and denied access to both “manhood” and “womanhood” (despite being oppressed, materially, as women). I cannot possibly do this concept justice here, but the important thing to understand is that degendering - being they/them-ed - plays a key role in the way transfeminine people are oppressed.
It is in this context, then, that we must understand the reaction of transfeminine people who use she/her pronouns to being called - relentlessly - they/them. It is not difficult to understand that there is something insulting about waking up in the morning, putting your make-up on, putting a dress on, adopting all of the stereotypical femininity forced upon you by a cissexist society and then - some “ally” comes along and refers to you with they/them pronouns to be “more inclusive”.
Of course, this is made worse when the “ally” suspiciously only uses they/them pronouns for trans people. There are people who genuinely use they/them as the default (I’ll address this later), but the vast majority only adopt these pronouns when someone has trans written in their bio, or looks ‘clocky’ enough. Otherwise, they are happy to walk through the world making assumptions about everyone’s gender. In this context, then, the they/them-ing of trans women can only be understood as a form of misogynistic degendering.
There are, however, complications.
Blowing Up The Stage
Despite cis society’s attempts to police us, gender expression does not necessarily align with identity - and this can be a source of very real harm.
Take me, for example. I try to avoid publicly talking about my gender, but sometimes it’s necessary to give some outline to my positionality for anything to make sense. I am trans & nonbinary, I much prefer they/them pronouns (unless you’re another trans & femme person), but I present ‘femininely’. I’ve been told I look like a femme lesbian (though I am not one). My current Bluesky profile picture has me with both short hair and a white and pink floral dress. My name is Jess - an often ‘feminine’ name - though, rarely, it has also been used by as a short form of the ‘masculine’ name Jesse.
If I was the person stood across the room at the party, you might presume just by the clothes I’m wearing, by the make-up I wore, by the presence of my breasts, or my name if you heard it, that I am trying to present as a woman. But I’m not, and I resent the idea that I should have to present more androgynously in order to be gendered correctly. I also resent that transfeminine people are forced or expected to present femininely.
Nonbinary people are often mocked with the “Sock” stereotype, but if it’s truly acceptable to gender us based solely on the name we choose for ourselves, is it surprising that such names are chosen? Are nonbinary people to be forced into a particular androgynous look in order to avoid being misgendered - even within queer spaces? This seems like a problematic alternative.
There is a risk of reifying the gender norms the cissexists impose on us, even within our own communities, if we do not tackle this issue head on. We must recognise that trans women are trying to convey their gender and deserve recognition, and that degendering is a form of transmisogynistic violence against them - and assuming they/them as a default plays into this. However, we must also accept that not everyone who presents femininely wishes to be gendered as female, and that those who use they/them pronouns should not be forced to adopt a particular model of androgyny in order to be correctly gendered, especially within queer communities.
This is a problem which (given my time in disability activism/politics) I think can perhaps be best understood through the lens of the conflicting access need.
Conflicting Access Needs
A conflicting access need, simply put, is when two disabled people both need adjustments within a space which are, simply, not fully compatible.
For example, during a particular activity, a visually impaired person may need bright lighting in order to be able to see and participate. On the other hand, an autistic person may find the bright light overstimulating, and be unable to participate because of it.
It seems clear to me that there is a similar conflict between trans people who need to be recognised as the gender they are presenting as, and other trans people who do not want to have their gender assumed solely on the basis of their presentation. So, what is the solution to such a conflict of access needs?
In my experience, there are two approaches to such a conflict. The first is to employ your creativity to achieve a compromise. The obvious solution seems to be to ask people’s pronouns, but this only works if it is genuinely asked of everyone within such spaces. There are many tales within the trans community of the embarrassment felt at pronoun circles which only appear when ‘clocky’ or ‘known’ trans people are present. This is indistinguishable from the degendering which occurs at the hands of the “ally” who supposedly uses they/them for everyone (but only those they think might be trans in practice). Furthermore, even if individuals are well-meaning in asking people’s gender/pronouns, if they do so insensitively, they risk amplifying the existing social trends in cis society which means trans peoples’ genders are always in contention. This can be hard to stomach.
A more positive trend might include things such as pronoun pins, which are already popular within many queer spaces. However, these aren’t practical in every setting, and can make trans people feel ‘othered’ if not adopted widely. This is a particular issue in non-queer oriented spaces. Whilst I believe these inclusive approaches should be generally promoted and adopted, they do not provide a solution for all situations.
The other approach, to a conflict of access needs, then, is to ask - who is going to be the most impacted? The specific violence behind transmisogyny, expressed through the degendering of transfeminine people, is ultimately undeniable. The particular violence faced by transfeminine subjects is at the core of current anti-trans discourses. I think, therefore, that the specific violence of degendering has to be centred in this conversation, and should lead the direction in which we decide to err - if we must do so.
Misgendering is always harmful, and we should attempt to avoid it wherever possible. But we should recognise that in a society which continually degenders transfeminine subjects, they/them pronouns are not simply gender neutral, but are used as part of a system of discipline and violence. Therefore, although I use they/them pronouns, and want to build spaces that do not misgender me regardless of my more ‘feminine’ presentation, I have to insist that they/them as default cannot be our solution. Nor, do I think, we should simplistically treat presentation-as-gender. We need to be more creative in our solutions and tackle the conflict head-on. But in doing so we need to recognise the acute role in transmisogyny that degendering plays, and be guided by that harm.