I am the mother of a nonbinary teen. They are smart, creative, and have a close circle of loyal friends. They are, frankly, better adjusted than I was at fourteen.
The portrayal of nonbinary individuals as disturbed and maladjusted does a massive disservice to people who are trying to live their lives.
34
We had a really hard time slogging through this/that piece by a media thing. The part of our body that is farthest from the core of the earth when "vertical" has been identified as "hurting".
We are longing for the time period when people can be whatever they want and we don't have to hear about it anymore. Thank y'all y'all.
20
The number of comments here complaining about they/them pronouns is instructive. Our entire world, including the language we use, is gendered. Not having adequate language to describe those outside of the gender binary is just a microcosm of what it must be like to live as a non-binary person every day in a binary world. Yes, it can be hard to adjust. But I hope this frustration over pronouns is an opportunity to recognize the world and languages we have built put constraints on some of us. I also hope it's an opportunity to extend a little bit of grace to those asking to be seen and respected in a way they currently aren't. Adjusting the pronouns we use is a small price to pay for the blessings it brings.
18
Wonderful article, so helpful. I/we can't respond to genderqueer folk without understanding what it's like to be them "from the inside." This article gives the non-genderqueer reader that understanding. Applause.
About pronouns: folks, get over it. We just don't have a better option than they/them.
Last but not least: Go Salem! Also, let's be kind and tolerant toward parents who struggle to be supportive. Sounds like Salem has those kinds of parents, whether they said the perfect thing at every point or not.
16
As biologic entities we are male and female. That is how life continues. The question of how you feel is more thorny. I am of the belief that we should not prosecute people because if sexual/gender identity. Live and let live.
My concern is with the concerted effort to “normalize” gender struggles and casting it as a defacto truth. Going back to my opening statement life needs male and female.
The enormous struggle to help people look like they feel (through painful hormone therapy or surgery) seems excessive to me, and a never ending struggle . Life has a way of winning by culling out the weak . That is how biology has shaped this earth. I fear that just as we are killing the planet by forcing it to shape up to our expectations, we are dooming the human race by trying to force our bodies to catch up with our mental aspirations/tortures.
30
Ultimately, you cannot control what other people think of you. These therapists would be better off helping these clients come to terms with this crucial step in maturation.
39
My beef w/ my birth certificate is that I was "assigned" the wrong parents: surely if my assigned parents were richer and whiter (western euro rather than eastern) than the ones I got, I'd be alot better off than I currently am.
Also, re: pronouns--- seems like "s/he" (pronounced "shee") goes a long way towards eliminating the confusion over how many individuals are being discusst (unless the person has multiple personalities...)
Frankly, I love the immense variety of behaviors and visual manifestations of human females and males in our culture . In Iran today, anyone who is perceived to be behaving "abnormally" for her/ his sex is pusht towards sex-reassignment surgery. Is that where the US is headed?
In conclusion, just wanna say: I ain't your "cis".
15
As difficult as it is to be transfemale or transmale, the path to wellness for these individuals, i.e., gender congruity, is well marked - hormone therapy, cosmetic work such as hair removal or breast removal, and where appropriate genital surgery. In contrast, the path to wellness for a person outside the binary system is much less clear and ultimately the person may find social acceptance elusive.
Generally, the non-binary person needs to gain relief from the physical and social restraints associated with the binary gender assigned at birth based on the mistaken notion that genitalia always define gender identity. For example, in the case of the assigned male non-binary, this may involve hormone therapy, such as testosterone blockers, to prevent the development of pronounced male physical attributes. However, overshooting the mark can result in the person being pressured to adopt a female identity which is no more congruent than a male one.
The objective in the medical and social treatment of trans individuals whether binary or not is to bring them to good mental and physical health so they can fulfill their potential and be happy. To achieve this requires the understanding, compassion and support of family and the larger community.
4
Nearly 30 years ago, I was writing an article for a magazine and my interviewee was trans (I don’t know that the word existed then). The person, born a woman, said (they?) were not, and wanted me to use the pronoun xe, if I’m recalling correctly. The article I was writing was for Seventeen Magazine and it wasn’t about gender. I was 20 and I was annoyed. “You can’t do that,” I told them, earnestly. “You have to choose.” “I don’t want to,” they said. “I don’t have to.” And they don’t. What business is it of mine or yours or governments? Be yourself. I wish I could apologize to them now. I hope they are happy and continuing to be exactly who they are.
20
Only those who are 'there' can really know. The rest of us must try to listen, to understand and to refrain from judgement.
13
Can we please stop with the
Their/Them appellations ?
Find a new pronoun.
And can we stop with cis-gender ?
Question:
Say a person is born with the appearance of
one gender.
They say they feel that they are the opposite gender.
They undergo operations/hormone treatments
and transform into the opposite gender.
What percentage of those who have been transformed
have sexual desires now for:
Their original gender
Their new gender
Both genders
and what percentage have no sexual desires ?
15
I found that The World Health Organization has an excellent explanation of Gender and Genetics in their "Genomic resource center". I highly recommend this resource in the interest of understanding that, to quote: "Clearly, there are not only females who are XX and males who are XY, but rather there is a range of chromosome complements, hormone balances, and phenotypic variations that determine sex".
https://www.who.int/genomics/gender/en/index1.html
6
advice to those of earlier generations who have trouble with this whole thing: when you meet somebody who is "queer" (scare quotes because while they might not identify as queer, you can tell something is different about them) and you dont know them, simply ask them how they would like to be addressed and carry on. its simple, really. its their body, their life, and really, not your business what they do with it or how they present in the world. i know the singular use of they/them/their can be challenging to grammar nazis, but realize when you ignore people's pronoun preferences you are also ignoring their very sense of being which is rude and to the more sensitive types (especially the younger ones and those coming to terms with their identity) downright mean. dont be mean. treat all people with respect even if their very existence challenges your beliefs.
im 30 and a gay female. ive never felt female a day in my life, although i appear more feminine than masculine according to well... everyone. im lucky that it doesnt matter enough to me to "change" anything about my body, but others become so dysphoric about it that change is a must for their own sanity. these people deserve love and support rather than arguments and shame.
if the current discussions existed when i was just coming to terms with my identity, i too might of identified as gender non conforming (still kinda do). the labels seem to matter for everyone but me.. i hope todays kids dont get hung up on labels.
16
Who came up with "cisgender"? Cisgender? How about "genderborn" or "borngender" or "biogender".
15
Several years ago my granddaughter came to visit with her girlfriend, we let them share a bedroom. Time goes by. Last month my granddaughter came to visit again with her husband and her three-year-old child and was sick the whole time she was here, guess what, she’s having another baby.
15
Apart from the pronoun issues,the bigger problem, in my opinion, is the fact that genetic mosaic und true intersexuality have been around for as long as nature. Hoever, human civilization has been squelching these aspects for almost as long. There is no and has never been any binary nature in sexuality; it has simply been propagated as such. As far as the language goes - pronouns and appropriate address of whatever individuals and their sex, this will need to catch up fast, since a continuous gender spectrum has been around for atleast millenia but maybe even meggenia.
9
@Aaron
The binary nature of sex is that it takes a small male gamete fertilizing a large female gamete for people to reproduce.
There is no other gamete, so there is no other sex.
20
I worry about all the hormones and surgeries. I have read that in some of the ancient cultures such as Native American, there were multiple sexualities that were recognized- female, male, masculine female, feminine man, asexual, bisexual... I am sorry that we don't live in a society where all people can't be comfortable with themselves.
Perhaps I am naive.
22
Instead of they/them, be we/us. Don’t be other—apart from the group but rather be included even in the duality. They/them is how we are divided. As people, our gender perceptions and instincts should not be parceled out into smaller and smaller clumps; we should embrace the astounding and wonderful diversity that exists between “male” and “female.” Diverse, yes, but still “we.”
4
Most people are too concerned with their daily lives to care what special way a transgender person wants to be acknowledged. For myself, if you want, desire and need to be transgender, that's great. There are going to be some people who disagree. So what? That's life. Move on. Count yourself fortunate to be in a society that won't kill you. Let's face it. For all the fussing, moaning and crying about "rights", Western civilization is your friend. Plenty of people, actually most do support you.
That does not change the binary role of the sexes, men identified as women should not be allowed to participate in female sports because of inherent differences in their musculature nor should children have sex change operations before they have finished becoming adults.
Also, grow up about what pronoun to use or title. If I can be Ms., Mrs., or madam, you can be called several different names also.
34
I have no doubt that people struggle with gender dysphoria. However, is it really wise to be encouraging such radical changes in young people who have yet to even fully develop sexually? Let alone allowing young people to damage their bodies permanently in the name of having the “correct” genitalia for their identity. How would you feel if you had surgery at 20 years old and years later you realize at the time you were extremely depressed and had made a huge mistake? Suicide and serious mental illness are a huge danger here and those issues should be dealt with and focused on before issues of gender fluidity. After all, a full fledged man can enjoy basically anything a woman can without changing his genitals or hormones, and vice versa. How about we start with that?
43
everyone should read “as nature made him” by john colapinto. John money at hopkins tried to prove that gender was purely a social construction. just not so. for the small minority of people with true gender dysphoria-get therapy —if you choose to transition I will support you in your journey and support all your rights as a citizen and human being. but lets not pretend that genderqueer is normal. Its like saying an anorexic dying of starvation just has a fluid sense of body size.
26
After reading many comments, I'm still just....confused. Or unenlightened. It seems that non binary people want to present androgynous because they do not want others to box them in with preconceived notions. Or they don't identify with the gender stereotypes that are expected of them.
But most of us don't! I don't want people to think I am a certain way because I'm a woman.
But I live in a biologically female body, which regardless of cultural baggage, it's the body I have and must love because it's a core component of the self. It's the foundation of why I call myself a woman. And there is evidence that (being part of the physical body) the brain does lagy down some feminine wiring as part of that. But I still don't think that means men and women should be boxed in to expectations. And that's why "regular" transgenderism makes sense to me, they don't just want to express to others a certain way, they do not have the physical body matches their mind's wiring.
So what I just don't get, still, after reading about non binary people's experiences, is what do they see themselves as in their physical bodies? Must they have non-sex-specified bodies too? Because many seem completely reliant on being seen by others a certain way. But what is it they want to see, when they're all alone at home?
Because if you don't want to change your body, it just seems like they want to avoid all the cultural baggage that comes with our bodies. Most of us want that, too.
21
@someone
It’s not either/or, it’s both or it’s neither or it’s both and neither. You’re probably touching on an issue that might be relevant, and that is society’s rigid and unsympathetic definition of male and female. Without this starkly contrasting definition, perhaps the children we are raising wouldn’t be quite so confused and angst-ridden about themselves.
6
I don't really care what people want to identify as...really I don't. I have two good Trans friends. I only rarely think of their issues, and its mostly as a means to find empathy and compassion for their struggles. (they posses a tenacity I will never equal!)
But Im not all in with daily these changes in who or how a person wants to be identified. Joe cant show up at work on Monday and then expect to be called Josephine on Wednesday and then Duco (non-gender specific name) on Friday. You cant show up for a job that demands say...physical labor on Monday then on Wed tell me you can't because you might chip a nail, because its Josephine Day!
I'm being harsh and silly,but I think the point is clear.
Fluidity in persona with ones intimates is one thing, but out in the cold, cruel world (and lets admit its never gonna change much) its a non-starter!
The World demands binary. It demands reliability in people. It demands that if you present yourself as X one day, and being X is what you are hired, and relied upon for by others - then X has to come back time after time. If on Monday as X, you're bald and wearing Timberlands, and on Wed,its a flowing wig, and cute sneakers - but you can still do the job/tasks demanded - no problem! But if now you're Y and in need of accommodations...big problem!
To thrive in the world, reliability is a key component. Expectations are not inherently bad. Nor do they rob people of their identity. You gotta own your shyte and BE in the World.
25
@Boregard
I guess maybe we should re-examine concepts of “male” and “female.” The two terms don’t even acknowledge the fact that some people are born with genitalia of both, whom we then try to define as one or the other. This is like trying to force a triangle shape into a round or square hole. Society has ignored the realities of gender too long. We’re in that messy “figure this out” stage. At last
3
In the late 70’s, I had a summer job in an office of a fusty engineering firm where the head of the typing pool was a non-binary person of color. S/him was an amazing manager, and overall swell person to be around. Some days this manager was Dennis, some days Denise; you knew which name to use based on the day’s dress. On “inbetween days”, when attire could be a stunning mix, instead of a name we were asked to use dearie or darling. The company never batted an eye and had one simple rule: when clients toured the offices (always known in advance) pick a gender and stick with it. As a young college student I learned a lot about how to meet people on their own ground and also the capacity for a business to put people first if they really wanted to.
13
"The most thorough follow-up of sex-reassigned people—extending over 30 years and conducted in Sweden, where the culture is strongly supportive of the transgendered—documents their lifelong mental unrest. Ten to 15 years after surgical reassignment, the suicide rate of those who had undergone sex-reassignment surgery rose to 20 times that of comparable peers."
"Because sex change is physically impossible, it frequently does not provide the long-term wholeness and happiness that people seek."
And:
". . .Paul Rowe, who took the name Paula following genital surgery 15 years ago. Rowe, 54, believes he was wrongly diagnosed as transsexual while suffering from severe depression following a string of personal traumas including the death of his mother. He now considers himself "trapped between male and female", and dresses in baggy trousers and T-shirts to disguise his breasts and hips.," he says.
You can read further : https://www.theguardian.com/society/2004/jul/31/health.socialcare
21
Whether these statistics are correct or not, they do to pertain to the subject of this article, which is people who do not identify as binary—including those who would transition surgically as in the references you cite—but as something else altogether.
3
@Paula and @ asdfj.
It is language serving as a block to understanding, rather than an enhancement.
I just finished shaving my legs with a razor from a bag of twelve. I can't stand that hair on my legs and I want it off! I'm not sure that a blue razor would complete the task any better. But I feel better using pink. I just noticed the product name is "Venus". Thanks Proctor, or perhaps, it was Gamble.
If it was the English-American Proctor, thanks for the gender discipline. If it was the Irish-American Gamble, thanks for incorporating a risk for non-conformity. Now THEY were way ahead of their time.
Whichever dude I choose to thank, both have impact. With blue I conform with my head down, with pink Istand tall with Pride! Except that I was alone in my bath tub in my closet sized bathroom. I get it; no one wants to watch people shave their legs. But I love the looks I get when I step out.
The package lists all of the features in two languages, English and French. Each are actually pointed out. That seems so unnecessary because you can read one or the other. You are either French or English. How does Canada solve a problem like Ontario?
I followed up with skin cream called "Udderly Smooth". My legs are deliciously smooth. I purchased that cream at a hardware store. I know Lush sells skin creams, but I'm ignored when I enter that store.
How do you find a word that means StacyJames?
4
@Tracyjames
Dear Tracyjames:
I live in Ontario and, in fact, in the Canadian capital. To what problem are you referring?
3
I wanna be kind and just call people what they want and so I try and stumble. But why couldn’t Xe Xerm and Xeir have become the non binary pronoun fashion? It was definitely in the culture consideration a few years ago. Less divisive...
3
In Chinese, the words for “he” “she” and “it” are homonyms all pronounced “ta.”
Can’t we just adopt that for all of us?
Boom.
3
@ae. They also don't have articles. So?French, Spanish and many other languages divide nouns onto femine and masculine. Should they stop?
3
This is gonna come off harsh, and if posted likely, and rightfully, earn me some critics.
But boy if some of this doesnt sound like the Psychology Industry (and it is an Industry, capital I) that is also a profitable failure, is selling yet another avenue for their services.
What has the Industry really fixed since Freud blamed everything on our mothers? Since the money started rolling in? Depression? Nope. In fact we're worse off, and the alleged cures are now being seen as causes and sometimes dangerous to the patients. Toxic masculinity? Not even close. Alcoholism, drug addiction, mania's, fetishes, fixations and all the flotsam and jetsam of our lives.
All remain and have in fact overwhelmed the Professionals and their prescriptions. And boy those prescriptions...the Rx industry that has thrived. Millions of Americans are taking some regular cocktail of Psych "Meds" as they call them. "Got my Meds fixed today".
Who are the real winners, besides the Rx Execs and stockholders?
Do the patients spawn the doctors and "specialists"? Or does the profession - the Industry spawn their own needy patient stock? Suddenly "experts" are talking, on the 5oclock news, guests on The View. "Are your kids gender confused? We have an expert after the break."
Is non-binary really a thing, like a crucial thing? Or is it some cultural thing of the moment, a malaise, a minor symptom, that is gaining traction due to an industry that is always seeking a means to sustain itself?
21
It's really not that hard if you have an open mind.
4
Having lived in Durham on and off for the past three years ... Durham must be the epicenter of LGBTQIA in the USA .... there is every kind of person in Durham and they are very demonstrative of their preferences in the public sphere. Can’t imagine a safer community in which to explore identity. As a regular old heterosexual female I did not enjoy living there.
8
However you feel about gender non-binary identity its clear that its not a coincidence that the first generation to propose it is the first generation that grew up with the internet. If I have the ability to go online and consciously construct all aspects of my identity, then why should I be denied that right in the rest of my life? It could be that gender is just the beginning of a radical shift in how we understand ourselves and our relationship to our community. If that's true then I dont know if the end result will be better or worse or just different, but I do know that it frightens me and that I personally will not be part of the new paradigm. I think we should let people explore new ways of being and challenge norms without persecution. If someone wants to be called "them" I humor them the same way I wouldnt push pork chops on an orthodox jew even though I am fairly skeptical of this new cyborg religion.
8
"according to clinicians who specialize in gender, it’s among the young that nonbinary identity is taking hold most rapidly. “It’s growing exponentially,” - this all makes me think of some kind of mass contagion, a kind of neurotic delusion. When something, anything, starts growing exponentially amongst adolescents it seems more of a fad than anything reality based. Think of previous mass phenomena like "repressed memories", anorexia and bullemia, copycat suicides, and hysteria in the nineteenth century. This is more of the same.
40
no, the difference is the younger generation had the emerging freedom to outwardly express these feelings.
the internet or Drs didn't invent this phenomenon.
4
@April, there is a social ecology of depressed and anxious teens, therapists, and publicists out there that is creating a self-reinforcing bubble in similar ways to the repressed memory fad, bullemia, and anorexia, and hysteria in the late nineteenth century. The main difference with this latest version is that it is greatly amplified through social media, so its onset has been faster and more dramatic. Vulnerable young people encouraged by professional enablers - it is a repeating history.
25
So many celebrities have trans children and had those children at older and older ages.
4
I am all for people identifying themselves in any way they choose--I think we should do away with check boxes that say male or female on anything other than medical records and dispose of archaic honorifics that are gender-specific. But using "they" to refer to one person, as in this article, is just confusing. Surely we can come up with a gender-neutral singular pronoun.
12
Salem was alt right followed by non-binary. I suspect something else will follow in a few years.
21
While squabbling over the pronouns, consider this: 1. first, we are all male and female, in varying degrees, in "gender indientiy related" behavioral traits. 2. the emergence of, first gay and lesbian, and then transgender individuals openly speaking of their gender almost certainly made it less dangerous for persons who do not experience themselves as gender binary, to articulate their gender experiences openly - these persons have likely always been part of the spectrum of human gender variability.
3. Recent research has raised the possibility that air pollution may disrupt the development of sexual dimorphism
in other mammals. We are, all humans, in the anthropecene epoch, who we are in part because of environmental influences, specific to this epoch. The truths about genders are more complicated than we understand. Our ignorance should make us humble, so that we accept and affirm people as we really are, not as we believe we should, or should not, be.
2
I struggle with the nonbinary thing and this article is immensely helpful. Yes, human compassion is more important than grammar; and yes, grammar compounds an already difficult struggle. I think nonbinary people would do themselves a favor by relinquishing their insistence on "they/their/them" simply because reality is showing us every day how hard that is. Instead, invent a new pronoun to go with the new salutation "Mx" (which I adore). I propose "e." It's easy to say: "What was e doing?" Sounds rather Cockney. And removes an obstacle.
4
actually not e, but ze
4
It is far less intrusive to oneself in conversation to employ the singular ‘one’ than the oberused standby ‘I’.
As children of English parentage we derided the occasional thrusting ‘I sayers ‘ among us. Americans were always conspicuous because ‘ me me me’ was frowned upon as too rude.
They/ their speakers might also relief from using ‘one’ appropriately in their speech acts. One thinks that insists genderizing every oneself is somewhat wearying and self-aggrandizing.
4
Why do so many people have such a big problem with using "they" or "them" as a pronoun?
It's not such a big thing to ask.
6
@Rx
I’m bothered by the sense of other or exclusion. I propose-outside of a neutral but fitting pronoun—we/us
I am fine with people being non-binary, but I don't want to be judged for my ability to use proper pronouns. My brain doesn't perform that kind of task well. I had trouble with several places in the article, and I know it would be worse if I was the one speaking.
I've tried to educate myself on the topic, and I find myself defeated by the ever increasing number of new terms. The simplest example being LGBT to LGBTQ to LGBTQ+. My lack of facility with this ever-evolving topic doesn't reflect whether I accept your choices. I could wish that there was some agreement on a few number of terms.
19
I was surprised at how many people had trouble reading the article due to the number of "they/them" pronouns. I'm in my twenties, so it's possible I fall into the category of the generation that's much more comfortable and exposed to gender fluidity, and therefore more used to unspecific pronouns. But how cold do you have to be to prioritize arbitrary grammar rules over a simple way to address an individual that makes them feel seen and valued? At what point does ascribing to social norms override our basic respect for other people? Not all people struggle with their identity as much as Salem might, but if using their preferred pronouns (even none at all) can make them feel like they belong, it's the least any of us can do for a fellow human being.
13
It seems to me that it becomes much more of a psychological dilemma for someone like Salem to be encouraged to believe that they actually have two core identities, either of which is a negation of the other. The clinical goal should be integration and synthesis, not bifurcation. Being encouraged to cultivate a split personality seems like it is more motivated by gender politics to the detriment of functional mental health in which people like Salem become collateral damage to a cause.
22
@Emma B. I'm perfectly happy to use whatever pronouns make someone feel comfortable and I truly wish Salem the best.
However, I do not understand the need to feel "seen and valued." I can truly say that I don't myself feel "seen and valued" and I think anyone who is looking for that type of external validation may end up disappointed.
20
@Emma B.
The rules of grammar aren't arbitrary. They can to some extent shift over time, but I doubt that simply calling out those who don't adopt a particular use is in itself a sufficient force to make that happen.
If people who want "they" used as a singular pronoun want to help, then use it correctly as a singular pronoun. Instead of saying "they don't" as the therapist does, say "they doesn't" to make it clear you are talking about a single person and not a group.
If you want "they" to be a singular pronoun, then use it the same as other singular pronouns. Don't blame me if I'm unclear what you're taking about when you use it as a plural pronoun. I can't read your mind.
12
I truly sympathize with Hannah/Salem/They. It is not to be expected, however, that the rest of society should see Them as They wish to be viewed. It's truly said that one says 'hello' to a person based upon how they look, but 'goodbye' based upon what they had to say. Hannah/Salem/They looks female no matter how They feel and must reasonably expect to be said 'hello' to based on that. How They're bid 'goodbye' will depend on what They have to say.
10
It's funny. Things like "gender binary" and "trans people" used to make me feel kind of uncomfortable. Probably because the only genuinely trans person I knew was the least competent employee I had to deal with as a manager at a business. I know that is petty. But I still believed in the Dutch concept of "gedogen" which is loosely translated as "tolerance" but more closely resembles "live and let live." Now, after years of witnessing the hysterical social conservative reactions against them, I am so in favor of anything that adds genuine diversity and variety to human life that I will fight for it.
7
I adore androgyny -- and hermaphroditism. Fluidity is fine -- and yes ruffles if you want them -- lipstick , eye shadow whenever....
But I detest the latest specificity when it comes to ethnicity: I have always identified with Native Americans -- but because I'm of European descent.... it becomes forbidden.
If I can chose my gender, sex, religion, etc. I want to know why I can't ID with cultures other than those into which by chance this soul was born??
14
@Auntie Mame
The generally-accepted answer to this is that gender and sexual orientation are not inherited. Someone isn't a woman because her mom was a woman, she's a woman because she has been identified that way. Similarly, someone isn't straight just because their parents were –– if that were true, there'd be a lot fewer LGBT people in the world!
On the other hand, race is inherited. Laws beginning in the time of slavery and before dictated the ways in which race was passed from parent to child; especially in the case of enslaved Black people, race passed from mother to child so that enslaved women would produce more slaves when raped by their masters. We are living the legacy of slavery –– and the legacy of this model of race –– today.
I think a lot of people, including me, have a bad habit of trying to look at all forms of oppression the same way, and all forms of identity the same way. But race is completely different in the way we identify with it than gender or sexuality, and always has been.
1
@Sarah
In legal terms, it comes down to the fundamental human right of freedom of association.
You might want to be Catholic, but you aren't Catholic unless you can convince a priest to baptise you as one. Freedom of association gives groups a right to decide who they include and exclude from their association.
There are actually rare cases of Native tribes granting people of European heritage membership in their tribe. It's generally based on a longstanding deep relationship with the tribe, for example, a white child who was adopted and raised by members of the tribe.
In Canada, in fact, there is legal precedent that allows a woman's group to exclude trans women if the latter don't fit with the group's purpose, for example, a group of new mothers formed to support each other with natural breastfeeding.
Gender identity is not the same as sex, and sometimes it makes sense for people to associate by sex. Similarly, there are trans self-support groups that exclude people who don't share their transgender identity.
All this differs from discrimination, which is when a for-profit business (or government) offers a good or service to the public but then refuses it to members of a particular group who are part of the public. Freedom of association means you can decide who can participate in your private association, but everybody gets to participate in the public realm.
2
"Gender Binary" is an annoying, pretentious, academic term notwithstanding the problem it seeks to address.
But here's a solution to the "they" plural problem in the English language when it comes to gender definitions that are neither male nor female: "himher" (pronounced "himmer"), or "herhim" (pronounced "herm").
13
What a mess. Society does not "assign gender at birth". It is determined by the sex chromosomes, which are usually XX or XY, and which the article does not even mention.
49
@Charlesbalpha: Gender is not determined by chromosomes. It is sex that is determined by chromosomes. That said, there are millions of individuals who are not XX or XY. There are individuals who are single X, XXYY, XYY, XXX, etc.
Gender and sex are not synonyms as many writers here have documented.
6
"We’re all born nonbinary. We learn gender. And at some point, some of us can’t stand it anymore."
But gender is not simply "learned" or constructed by society as many like to proclaim. Society is a big part of the story for sure but biology does play a role too. Even Dr. Joshua Safer, the executive director of the Center for Transgender Medicine and Surgery at Mount Sinai Health (and president of the United States Professional Association of Transgender Health), agrees that gender is partially biological.
I get why this non-binary trans person made such a statement... it hurts to feel alone. As a gay man I remember many of my gay friend's sincere beliefs that "everyone was bi or gay or on the spectrum but just couldn't admit it". But that's simply not true either. If trans people want their lived experience treated with respect then they have to offer the same courtesy to cis people. Just like many people feel 100% straight or 100%gay, many people feel 100% male or 100% woman.
36
@Gunnar. I agree. Just please stop calling me "cis" already.
11
do people really refer to you as 'cis' or are you offended by nomenclature used in a discussion about gender?
1
how are trans people being disrespectful?
1
I would have expected more understanding from the comments section. I personally found the use of they/their in a novel way for referring to non-binary in this article exciting and a fun learning experience that caused me to reread sentences and really think about what it means to use a pronoun, a liberty most of us take for granted. It's really not that difficult to understand once you get the idea that they/their is referring to a single person in this case. Kudos to everyone in this article who was brave enough to think about who it is they really wanted to be and took steps to become that person. We can all learn from their example.
133
@Bearhugs: I have been trying to use "they" as a third-person singular pronoun for quite some time. It takes some getting used to, especially for someone who used to be an editor. A colleague told me that it took him about a year. Bear with us--some of us agree and are doing the best we can.
11
Sorry but this is not that simple. There are real life consequences to pronoun confusion, as any first responder or hospital worker will tell you. If you’re dealing with a life threatening situation or medication dosage there is no room for even a few seconds confusion as to whether “they” refers to a patient, their family, their doctor etc. We’re talking about a unilateral change to a basic grammatical structure, not a simple shift of terminology. I’m gay, not especially masculine, have grown up around trans people and have plenty of close friends who fall on a wide spectrum of gender so am not approaching this from the outside. I can tell you there are plenty within the LGBTQ community who want to push back on this garbled language too.
45
@BearhugsPeople are HIM/HER. nothing else. I would counter sue anyone who made me call them something else. Their rights do NOT over ride mine.
12
I remember an early interaction with a nonbinary person. I was in NYC for the summer as an intern. We had swiped on Tinder and set up a date for a sunny afternoon at the Brooklyn Art Museum. It didn't end up working out, but not because of their gender, but because of our lack of chemistry. When I returned to Omaha and started to unpack all my decade-old feelings of discomfort about femininity and my body, I remembered my date. I realized that maybe I felt drawn to them because they showed me a new way to see the world and myself. I identify as nonbinary, my expression slipping between masculinity and feminity between the days depending on how safe I feel to express more masculinely or androgynously, but my pronouns (they/them) staying a comforting constant used by those I love and work with. Dressing feminine now feels like doing drag, as a more artificial performance than dressing androgynously. Perhaps I'm lucky to work in advertising, where adaptability is a part of the job and creating images and crafting ideas and new ways of thinking is the norm. My peers took to it like water. My significant other, who once blanched at the idea of me being nonbinary, experiences no difficulty in saying "I love you" to me and "I love them" to others. I think back to my date at the BAM, how easy it was to smile back at them. You see, all it takes it an open heart and an open mind, which you should never experience life without. You might discover something about yourself.
8
I have been escaping the "gender" expectations all my life as a woman who did not want to get married, loves my career, does not wear dresses on the regular and prefers sports to gossip. Oh and I never had children. Let's get rid of those stereotypes and expectations while we are at it. (Which will require a deep dive into the Patriarchy....).
23
As a person who has identified as genderqueer for over 20 years (I’m 43 now), I found this article familiarly disappointing. It follow the common journalist device, begin the article describing a gender different person’s experience of profound distress, then pivot to defining and describing the community as a whole. Be sure to highlight trans people’s bodies and surgeries too. I’m sure it draws readers in, but it primes them to believe that being gender different is about suffering and medical interventions. It might be less interesting to read, but by and large, most genderqueer people are at peace with their identities and bodies. It’s the world around them that isn’t.
Just got off the phone with my Mom who read the article too. I reassured her that - yes - bathrooms can be stressful, but interminable yearning is not a obligatory feature of being genderqueer. Being genderqueer is freedom for me, not fixation.
22
@Katie. I have no idea what genderqueer is. But I'll add it to the other what, 30 or so?, new labels people want to use and want me to learn and use. I had less trouble learning the Cyrillic alphabet.
9
Hey @leftrightniddle, To me Genderqueer means that I am a blend of masculine and feminine, and hope to pass as a blend of both. The term has been around for a while but if you don’t travel in lgbtq circles (or even if you do) - makes sense you haven’t heard of it. You are right, there are may terms for identity these days - some I’m not familiar with and have to learn as well. And that’s ok.
I hope the article hasn’t discouraged you and others from asking and learning. In my experience, if you ask what a term means to someone, with good intention, they are happy to share. The conversation is usually fun - where I learn something about them and myself.
2
getting a lot of requests by people to call them by different pronouns?
I would have expected more understanding from the comments section. I personally found the use of they/their in a novel way for referring to non-binary in this article exciting and a fun learning experience that caused me to reread sentences and really think about what it means to use a pronoun, a liberty most of us take for granted. It's really not that difficult to understand once you get the idea that they/their is referring to a single person in this case. Kudos to everyone in this article who was brave enough to think about who it is they really wanted to be and took steps to become that person. We can all learn from their example.
3
@Bearhugs You're totally right. The rest of us should be forced to use awkward, irrational language in order to appease a small handful of deeply confused people. No thanks.
11
I am perfectly happy to describe someone by whichever term they choose. From the obvious distress suffered by people who are described by what they feel is the wrong term, they should understand perfectly when I say that I am not happy to have someone choose the term by which they will describe me. I'm a woman, a female - I am not cisgender.
26
does anyone refer to you directly as cis-gender? it is just nomenclature.
1
Good grief , let's just hand another dividing 'bathroom' issue to this election cycle and watch president Trumps second term. I'm sorry,but, this is a micro minority that want to change established language for 6 billion people . Sensitivity yes, legislation no. Please, let's see the big picture and stop the fringe pushing moderates to the right . The are more important things at stake and this will become a wedge issue gift to the re-election right.
48
as a moderate, why would this change your vote? what legislation are you referring to? this really has nothing to do with you.
1
From the article ;
H.B. 2 turned out to be a harbinger of a broader political strategy on the American right. The effort has featured the Trump administration’s decrees that gender should be legally defined, immutably, by biology at birth, and the arguments made by Roger Severino, Trump’s director of the Office for Civil Rights at the Department of Health and Human Services, that positions taken by the Obama administration — including letting openly trans people serve in the military — amounted to a “radical new gender ideology” and must be rolled back. For the nonbinary, though, negation can even come from within the L.G.B.T. community. David Baker-Hargrove is a therapist and the founding president and co-chief executive of Two Spirit Health, which provides medical and mental health care to L.G.B.T. clients throughout Central Florida. He’s gay and has been working with binary trans people for more than two decades, yet he remembered that with his initial nonbinary cases three or four years ago, he had to “really explore the oppressive in my own thinking about gender norms” and felt, at first, “I can’t get there.” He added: “It took me a while. Our brains fight fluidity. We like this or that. Nonbinary presents a lot of challenges.” And not only cis people resist the concept. “Transgender people can react with ‘Pick a side’ or ‘Nonbinary is an insult to my experience — it’s crap.’ ” Baker-Hargrove has recently begun identifying as nonbinary.
2
If only you were right.
Sorry, I'm not buying this. Not fitting into generally accepted norms is difficult for a teen, regardless of the reason. Most everyone struggles with their identity in their teens and early twenties. Salem is struggling with their gender identity, plus multiple other issues, just like most of us. If they weren't in therapy for gender identity, they would be in therapy for something else. This story cherry-picks facts in order to prove a point. When you cherry-pick facts, you can prove anything. Stop making a person's gender orientation the focus, and you'll find they just have the same issues as everyone else.
41
what cherry picking? please enlighten us. basically what you saying is you don't think this is real.
1
The use of "they" makes this story unreadable.
37
No it doesn't.
1
Humans did not box people into just male and female, DNA did! Hundreds of millions of years of evolution or just plane development in the species. There is no such thing a binary or non-binary because nature has already decided it does not work.
23
@Astralnut Hello. Gender and biological sex are different things. Please google. Second, one in 500 to one in 2000 people do not have xx and xy chromosomes. Please also google. Thirdly, you are right about evolution-- we used to be single cell amoeba. History proves we will not stay the same as we are now—perhaps inter-sexed or androgyny (also exists)? Perhaps self-procreating (already exists in nature)? Stay tuned...
7
This is an excellent article as it includes many different individuals and their perspectives and struggles. I am, for the most part, just confused. My older godson has a girlfriend who identifies as a "they/their/them." When his mother first told me this, my questions were obvious and so were the answers. Is they (she) a girl? yes. Is she dating a boy (being heterosexual)? yes. Then why the pronouns. She is a she. I have yet to meet her to actually talk about it with their, as I would like to. They is the only non binary person I know. And, of course, out of respect to my godson, I refer to their in the preferred pronouns. But to me it is more than more pronouns, I want to understand the thought process.
10
@LM
It surprises me that a godmother would want to be so intimately involved in the life of her godson as to want to meet his significant other. Maybe you should keep a distance as he may have a different girlfriend next year anyway. Also, you don’t know her, I mean them, if you never met them.
Daniel, I found your article difficult to read since it didn’t conform to standard English usage (‘them/they’). If you want to communicate, you need to be understood by the recipient of that communication. As on an SAT test, I had to assume what was being said to understand some sentences. Easy enough when you accept that there will be incorrect usage in the communication, but is this the best way to start a conversation? I will call the person whatever they want, but will not corrupt language to achieve that. And to expect mutual respect and understanding when one foists their own standards in conflict with common use is a bad way to begin.
16
“But Perry has been wearing thick flannels and hoodies as a nonbinary person since before the hormones and beard, when their round face was smooth and the masculine clothes signaled complication, and Perry wasn’t going to change styles now. They were tired of worrying about how they were perceived. They weren’t going to fret over their wardrobe.”
I’m a 65 yo woman who’s been wearing flannel shirts & hooded sweatshirts all my life and I’ve never been mistaken for a man. Who decided that these are masculine clothes. This author perpetuates these absurd arbitrary conservative stereotypes when he describes clothes as such. Such frivolous superficial nonsense.
62
Referring to people "dressing masculine" or "dressing female" in my thinking is emblematic of the way we have defined gender identity even when we think we aren't, what is described here as "gender non-conforming." That says nothing about biology and everything about social construction of identity. What we are really talking about is framing physical features in a particular way, sometimes even (as in the case of fake fingernails or high heels) fetishizing a body part. Anyone can do that; it has nothing to do with gender. The problem is that society shames people for "looking different" from the coded binary dress we expect, so counseling as some suggests isn't the answer. Society has to evolve. The people who are challenging their own identities are bravely doing something for both themselves and the rest of us, which is insisting that we continue the conversation that fuels that evolution.
I take issue with the position, "biological sex is binary," as some say here. Humans and animals are both with both/neither sex organs. This business of corralling people into groups under the notion of a fixed biological boundary feels a lot like the old discussions that "there are only two races."
3
The article resonated wonderfully for me. Even though I couldnt always follow who or what was being written about.
3
Gender isn't binary. Sex is binary. I am a feminist. I believe in rejecting genderism. It harms all of us. Men are hurt. They are forced to deny their emotions, view women as property and be aggressive. Women are harmed by being forced to engage in childish, demeaning femininity or get told we are worthless. Smash this and smash the patriarchy that ruins everything. Pretending sex does not exist does nothing of the sort. It ignores the challenges both sexes face biologically, doesn't talk about the care of children and reduces everyone to either a collection of stereotypes or people outside those stereotypes.
It is not a good thing. It does not deserve to be honored in our mainstream life.
18
I have a day job but at night, I am a musician in a band that features a performance artist front-person singing originals and covers. Our music and our show is considered art rock. We play gay clubs and straight clubs and have a sizable gay fan base. Regularly I meet wonderful people who struggle to find where they fit. Honestly, one week they appear as a woman, the next as a man, and back again. Having befriended these sensitive souls, I witness their identity struggles on a routine basis. What saddens me most is that they seem unable to find the right fit. One friend is going under the knife for a sex change procedure. I truly fear for this one because I’m not sure that the permanent change will bring her (currently he) the peace of true identity that she seeks. And when I talk with these friends as they navigate through their uncertainties, I wonder if the outlet that we are providing - do what you want, it’s all fluid and subjective - is indeed the right way. Is it a path to emotional satisfaction and identity confidence? Or is this merely a cultural moment with potentially grave consequences for people swept up by it and looking for solutions? I’m not so sure.
44
@MWR Christ can bring that peace and destroy the painful confusion.
4
This was a moving article. And I am left with these thoughts:
1. Acceptance and compassion could lead our thinking.
2. Being somewhere between male and female or any variation of the theme is not something 99% of Americans can understand or accept - any more than they could accept gayness a few years ago.
3. There needs to be a better solution to the language problem. As others have said, the use of "they" and "theirs" is very confusing. it is plural. Not accurate. I understand the selection of the words but don't think they will aid the individual in dealing with others.
4. We need spiritual leaders to help us to accept and love humans no matter what their gender is or isn't. Can't we just start by judging people by how they treat other people and the world around them?
5. I can accept an invidual as a valued fellow traveler reagrdless of being binary or not. I don't care whether he or she is a neutral or anything else. But I am not at all typical.
6. This is sadly, maybe not always, but probably is now a time when "non-binary" folks should for practical purposes, choose a gender. Be a he or a she. Not fair. Easy for me to say. But this could really be a matter of physical survival. Many people in the world will want to hurt them. It's wrong. But if we haven't made significant progress in accepting trans folks, what chance is there for non-binary people to step out into the open. I would support them - but how many battles can one fight in a short life?
6
@Bob Bruce Anderson. Compassion does not always mean going along with someone else, or facilitating their desires.
7
I hope Salem and my friend Cam can find each other in Durham. NC is not a safe place to be different. Come to Seattle if you want to be accepted and not feel alone. We love you, all of you!
4
@Julie
In some ways this article reminds me of that 1970s PBS Series, An American Family, especially watching it fifty years later.
If what we are all seeking is to be viewed the way we want to be viewed and treated with respect, then why is it necessary to label a bunch of people "cis" gendered? It's becoming sort of a slur it seems. I really do not like being called that name.
51
I am very glad that I don't exist in this confusing world, that my identity has always been in sink with my physical gender. It would be very hard to live in our society and not be in conformity. For those who think all this is made up, I ask them why would someone chose such a hard life?
6
@MNGRRL Sex exists. Gender does not. These people are choosing to reject stereotypes like the rest of us and pretending this makes them special. They are making life difficult by making a production out of it.
22
There is a big difference between gender non-binary: I reckon I am a male but I prefer society-described outer expressions of beimg a female; and claiming to be sex non-binary: "I am not a male", as such constitutes a rejection of reality, of your own biological reality. Grant you the first one can very much be a choice: a male who likes pretty dresses and make up and heels but doesn't claim or feel he is a woman. The second one, is not a choice as rejection of reality is more of a mental illness.
3
We are all human beings. Some of us have curly hair. Some of us have freckles. Some are tall. Some are short.
But none of us are "average". Mister Rogers was right.
"I like you just the way you are." Language is malleable. Lots of words that were once unacceptable are now commonly used. Lots of words that were once meaningful are now unknown.
We all struggle to define ourselves. And it is polite and considerate to accept a person's definition of themself.
But it is incumbent upon each of us to be honest, so far as we are able.
10
Ideas of gender identity only result in understanding ourselves with stereotypical prototypes of man/woman, widely based on a social media/Hollywood presentation. And the notion of gender identity resonates largely in coastal America: NYC, Boston (Harvard), Seattle, Portland, SF. It’s boxing people in. To even understand gender fluidity, a person must have preconceived notions of what it means to be masculine/feminine. It’s not liberating at all.
28
@Step: Thank you for articulating this so well. You give me new language to explain why I think these folks are doing themselves and society a disservice.
6
In terms of Utility, a little linguistic awkwardness for all is outweighed by the great joy for the few in being recognized as they’d like.
Those who find these pronouns too painful to bear saying probably won’t be interfacing with many non-binary people anyway, which is their loss.
6
I felt uncomfortable with how the therapist was pushing Salem in specific directions.
23
Thank you so much for this article. Thanks especially to the generous people who gave interviews - your light shines and we see you.
1
Well, we've sure come a long way from "Guys don't make passes at girls who wear glasses!" Or, have we?
10
One can identify themselves gender-wise all they want. But the point at which a person (or “they person”) starts saying they’re two people at the same time, isn’t that basically schizophrenia?
27
No schizophrenia is NOT split personality. It is sometimes experienced as being apart from reality.
2
I see many comments calling for devising/finding gender neutral pronouns other than they/them, which already function as plural pronouns in English. Pronouns such as ze or xe and others are already in use. Just use a search engine. In the meantime, I endeavor to use the terms and pronouns an individual prefers, and encourage others to do so out of respect.
9
The human brain sorts input according to what we know and recognize as true to us. A sunny day or a rainy day, a familiar place or a new place, a friendly dog or a scary dog. When people look at me, they see an older woman. When I was young, they saw a pretty young woman. Whatever someone calls me to my face or in reference to me, I've been sorted, in seconds, in many dimensions. The focus on pronouns as a salve for the challenges of gender fluidity doesn't have real meaning. We each of us, every day in human relations have to find a way to show ourselves to others as individuals; we all fight the daily battle to be seen beyond labels.
28
I think the pronoun issue is far from resolved. This was probably the longest article I've read that used the third person neuter pronoun frequently to refer to single individuals, and it was difficult at times to be sure just who the intended referent was. This isn't necessarily fatal—there are many kinds and instances of unavoidable ambiguity and vagueness in language—but surely there's a better approach. One thing that occurred to me as I was reading was to use an invented written variant, such as hey, hem, and heir(s). This could be pronounced the same as they, them, and their(s), or, over time, perhaps the spoken form would begin to match the written one, which would give us a true neuter singular pronoun.
7
What’s next? Pan species? I guess there’s no reason why not.
23
I'm 45 and I can remember at my first "real" job in the mid-'90's that the FedEx driver who made daily deliveries was transitioning from male to female. People in the office were curious because it was the first time that most of us encountered someone going through a sex change, but everyone was respectful. I never remember anyone saying anything mean spirited or negative directly towards her, or afterwards among ourselves.
Questions, issues and dissatisfaction around gender seemed rare until fairly recently. I'm sure that it's due in part to society being more open minded and accepting, but I have to wonder if there is something environmental going on that is interfering with people's sex hormones. Much like how obesity was rare 50 years ago, I can't help but think there is something in our environment that is playing a role in the increase of gender identity issues.
23
When I so often read about the plight of these generally unhappy, but unfailingly self-absorbed people, I wonder what proportion of people out there have this particular problem in life that they attribute as the root cause of their overall dissatisfaction?
Maybe they choose "they" to make people think there are more of them than there actually are?
OK, that might be a bit mean, but I can't shake the feeling that this issue is being way overrepresented, to the detriment of other issues that deserve a piece of the available bandwidth. In any case, we've all got the message, we don't need to keep reading basically the same story over and over.
61
After more than a decade of struggling of never feeling like a girl/woman but never wanting to be a man, it’s thanks to having terms, history and other current trailblazers to show me that I wasn’t weird or broken, just that I never was someone that fit into this Western now global binary checklist of what makes you a ‘man’ or ‘woman’. It doesn’t harm me or anyone to have this marker, and for those concerned about how will doctors know how to treat non-binary folks, well it’s no different than how they learn how to treat you individually anyway, you just inform them what you have biologically no different than informing them if you have implants or surgeries or allergies. What saddens me more is seeing most of the problems people seem to be having here is not that people are suffering with a need to fit, are being bullied, or don’t feel safe, but that apparently the biggest issue is how utilization of they/them in their singular context somehow is so very hard to do when someone just asks to feel more Alright with themselves as a human being, in a world where we’re pretty alright when nicknames of people and celebrities change all the time and we don’t bat an eye.
7
@Aden Wilke Woman is not a feeling. It's a biological reality.
22
This is all well and good. However I dont agree that we "learn gender".
Go to a any preschool and observe most, not all, boys and girls play differently. For many, of not most there are differences. They evolved. To deny them simply pushes the ostracism from the non-binary to the binary! Cant we do this right please?
28
Age is quite fluid too. Should we abolish the child/adult binary? Micheal Jackson who openly identified as a child and maybe just fondled other children innocently... A 17-year old surely identifies as adult when he/she drinks.
Treating everyone with respect has little to do with gerrymandering the social structure of the human society. And, of course, good luck with trying to translate the pronoun madness into other languages.
36
@Astasia Pagnoni. Emile Ratelband Is a Dutch man who, due to the lack of interest of (younger!) women on dating sites when he revealed his biological age, recently sued the government for the right to reduce his age by 20 years. He lost his case.
7
I know there are teachers being counseled by overly sensitive principals and falsely accused of causing micro-aggressions and discrimination in their classrooms. I take umbrage to this charade.
The problem occurs when a student informs their peers but not the teacher what gender they have selected. This is a catch-you and a no-win situation for the teacher. The student complains to their parents that the teacher is not accommodating their fluidity to morph as they wish.
Any confusion you create regarding your gender status or even the inability to select a gender status-at-all does not require me to make an unreasonable accommodation nor make me misunderstood in plain English what is required of you to excel regardless of the pronoun I used or forgot to use.
25
Your you - Your Beautiful.
that said...
we have more really important issues to deal with then to argue over male - female or nothing at all.
male and female - we are born one or the other except for hermaphrodites - deal with it.
it is your issue.
15
Nothing wrong with being non-binary, but there's much wrong with recategorizing everyone else instead of coming up with a completely new pronoun.
It doesn't mean people aren't supportive of gender fluidity because they're not OK with fluids being grabby and bossy with the language, not to mention pouty.
I'm not going to be encumbered by cis-anything, and non-binaries aren't they/them because that's already taken and used for plurality. Invent a cool new pronoun and people will be far more likely to go along with it.
24
I'll be ostracized as a bigot for saying this, I'm sure, but in lots of cases just hearing the names the genderqueer/genderfluid adopt is a strong enough case for their confusion. They often sound like they've been borrowed from a cheesy fantasy novel.
36
Ask me to call you Salem, or Bob, or Sue. Pick a name that's "gender neutral" where one doesn't know just from the name itself whether it's more commonly used for boys or girls. Examples abound.
But please don't mess with our grammar. You can't use "they" instead of he or she just because it suits your PC sensibilities. Keep that up and I'll respond by laughing in your face.
These folks don't know when to quit. Good thing "they" are already in therapy. We all know how effective that is though.
30
"They is," more likely.
Plural-form subject to accommodate non-binary sensibilities; but a singular verb to refer to what's really a singular subject expressed as a plural third-person pronoun.
2
I was taught that "if you don't have nothing nice to say, dont say it at all". I sincerely hope common sense makes a return soon, because this is getting ridiculous. Gender and Sex are not the same, and if you look like a duck and quack like a duck, I'm not going to call you a chicken.
21
This is the 4th Times piece in 2 weeks pushing Non-Binary/Gender X issues, including Gender X legislation mandating, among other things, an "X" option on all state IDs, and requiring all accept subjective self-classification by any single person of themselves as a "They".
It comes as the death of one of Trump's lackeys led to his daughter discovering and then revealing documents proving the new Census is about to "Objectively Classify" over 15 million people living in the US legally as lacking status or possessing any fundamental right to representation. It is Authoritarianism, a direct violation of the Constitution, run through the Trump DOJ at the behest of Trump and Wilbur Ross, with officials overseeing voting rights enforcement instructed to commit perjury.
As Trump and the GOP destroy our republic, and five right-wing Supreme Court justices do everything in their power to further it, the last thing needed is to search for additional subjective classifications of marginalization when tens of millions of people already objectively marginalized are about to be denied their most fundamental rights so the GOP can gerrymander the country and make it impossible for Trump and the GOP to lose.
What's advocated here is a right-wing dream come true: A left-wing so obsessed with identity politics, gender, and a need to change how everyone must use language, that it thinks it's some sort of victory as American representative democracy is destroyed and replaced with autocracy.
90
@Robert, hands down the most important response I have read here. Congratulations! You have recognized the absurdity of this debate on pronoun use relative to the real life & death issues we face over the next 2 years. Thank you!
22
@mike4vfr
This hardly an absurd debate when children are bullied in school, rejected by their parents, assaulted as teenagers, denied jobs, assaulted in our service branches, denied medical treatment, denied their right to raise a family, physically and verbally abused by people who think they are absurd, and then sometimes murdered.
3
@Tracyjames, don't misunderstand my praise for for the comment above as a rejection of the difficulties & injustices faced by the LGBT-Q community. Making demands focused on obscure pronoun usage is counter-productive, as is your misunderstanding of my intent.
8
We think that those of they who am struggling with thems path along these mortal coil is two of the person inhabiting one of the infinites shades of identity a human beings may finds difficult and/or painful. We don't like to see anyones suffer and we'll do my best to calls anyones anything them wants, but we have to admits we has not reached the point where person referring to multiple spirits/genders inhabiting a single corporeal presence as "you" quite has us ready to storm the barricades on them behalf. Or behalfs.
But thats's just we.
34
Who a person desires is pretty concrete, literal. It's the result of millions of synapses and various hormones coming to pretty simple conclusions...nope, nope, nope, maybe, probably...yes, definitely. Bingo! You have it.
Identity is fluid, subjective, undefinable, psychological, cultural, perceptual. It's as much an inner exploration as you want it to be.
But these outward expressions of identity, whether as words, actions, and the demands they impose on others, seem to play the same game people focused on identity fight against. By opposing the norm, they are reinforcing it. If a male wears makeup because they feel feminine, then they reinforce that makeup is feminine.
In other words, identity is cultural, and fighting against identity norms is also a cultural act, but also personal...it's a statement of saying I do not fit. Social deviance (excuse the term) is not new. It's been studied plenty. People have always felt out of place and find ways to cope. Sometimes people turn to self-destructive behaviors, but often individuals reject the norms to find something new. While this has been done through the ages--new religions, social revolutions, subcultures--there is nothing definitive or timeless about the responses. They are cultural and of the moment.
I feel terrible for Salem and other nonbinary people, but I wonder how much of it comes from self-loathing and discomfort and searching for a way out--any possible way. Perhaps gender is one of many routes.
37
If they're going to keep adding letters to the LGBTQ acronym I would appreciate if they would throw in some vowels, which would make it easier to come up with some type of mnemomic device to help remember it.
It's getting difficult and I'm beginning to worry about offending someone by getting it wrong during conversation.
28
QUILTBAG is gaining steam. It has vowels! The A stands for asexual. If you don’t like it we’ll know your complaint wasn’t in good faith to begin with.
7
"They" should never be the personal pronoun claimed by a single person, and such overspun claims should not be accommodated by society-- too ripe for confusion, too self-indulgent. Or would the demand be for "selves-indulgent"? This is a simple power grab cloaked in the guise of a linguistic advance. We see this uncompromising attitude everywhere, but we need to get past the point where pushing a claim of entitlement to its logical extreme, without considering the consequences, is excused by the supposed virtues of the claimant. A mere demand from anyone, no matter their personal status or attributes, does not create in another a duty to comply or be labelled. The proper response depends, as everything does, on a host of factors. Too many people can't get that last bit.
26
This was painful to read. The pronoun issue is minor; using a plural pronoun is awkward, but it has always seemed good manners to use the name (and pronoun) a person requests. Civilization won't collapse over pronouns. Getting to the heart of the matter -- I don't know what the heart of the matter is, but it seems much deeper than socially imposed gender norms. Many women live full lives as women while rejecting "feminine" appearance and having relationships with same-sex partners. There are also men (fewer) who adopt a more feminine or androgynous appearance or cross-dress. Society has accepted women with short hair and androgynous clothes more readily than outwardly feminine, cross-dressing men, so perhaps that is one way gender norms play a role. But Salem isn't just pushing against social constructs of gender, they are rejecting both the body they have and a body closer to that of a different sex. Since Salem is still a young person, perhaps this is a particularly difficult transition period that will resolve with a little more time and therapy. But what Bergner has described is someone so totally at war with their own identity that they who don't want to be male or female. That goes well beyond chaffing at gender norms and seems to have more in common with an illness like anorexia.
63
I wish someone would come up with a non-gendered pronoun that is not plural. Or, since that has actually been done multiple times, I wish we could all agree upon and use a non-gendered singular pronoun.
12
I have lots of fears about a hyper-conservative SCOTUS. The one ray of light is that if they get a hold of a gender identity case, they're shut the whole thing down. That is, assuming this trend lasts that long.
23
I wish that at least in government and all legal matters, we would prohibit any designation of sex, gender, or any other identity other than "being". This would allow for more freedom for all, and help ensure that no one group receives more benefits nor carries more responsibilities and liabilities than any other group.
4
Using the pronoun they suggests to me that the person is really two versions of themselves. Some days a female or sometimes a male. Is this the intention? Otherwise if it’s always a kind of mixture a new pronoun shouldn’t be too hard to come up with.
5
Like the old Almond Joy/Mounds commercial: Some days you feel like a nut, some days you don’t.
14
I can imagine that alchemists, flat earthers and eugenists would have loved to have more science involved in their beliefs. Galileo did but waz fokrced to wait 300 years for a kind of apology from the church who punished him for his statements about the Earth and its planets. We do know that gender is a range between our previous limits of male and female. As we learn more about the human genome and associated differences we may just realize that cis-gender is just a stop along the way to a twenty second Century gender enlightening. These struggles, as confusing as they are, make more sense than the feeding of thousands with a coupla fish and Ioaves of bread.
2
Simple Pauline Christianity states it this way:
"There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus." Galatians 3:28
Most of us are comfortable being either male or female. Some of us aren't. I say honor all of it. With God, I figure it doesn't make any difference.
20
I'm non-binary and transfeminine. I use they/them pronouns. I also have a PhD in history and I teach LGBTQ history at the college level. The comments here astound me. We commonly use the singular they all the time in modern English. I can assure you you already do this in common speech when you refer to someone who you have not yet met and you do not know their gender. It is an accepted part of our language and those who challenge this do not understand how privileged such a position is. This language is liberatory for us; but what is it to you? similarly, those saying that there are only two genders should read more transgender history. Most societies in human history have had people who are neither male nor female and we could run up a list of historical terms that have been used to refer to these people over time. So... There's nothing new to see here except that non-binary people like me are finally achieving some modicum of healthcare services, legal protections, and historical and cultural recognition. How does this harm or hinder the lives of cis people in any way? If you are cisgender, please learn more about these issues. Learn to be an ally. Thank you
26
Your comments are well-informed, but I would hope an academic who educates others on LGBTQ issues wouldn’t be “astounded” that the academic/social services consensus is not shared by the public at large. Otherwise their students will be in for even more of a shock when they join the working world.
26
@GS I cannot be an ally when you go out of your way to mis-label me. I am not cisgender. I do not recognize that term as applying to me and resent that it keeps cropping up in the pages of the NYT. I am a woman, full stop. There are plenty of others just like me in these comments alone who hate the term
cisgender. Although you can declare what you want to be called, you cannot declare what I am called or what I call myself. The manipulation of language on the left has moved beyond tiresome straight to authoritarian.
71
@GS
Amen x 1000! I'm also astounded, over and over, by the dismissive and mocking comments that inevitably follow pieces like this in the Times. I truly don't understand what the naysayers are afraid of.
3
Definitely find this all very confusing. The pronouns, guessing the way “they” are feeling (male/female/both) on any given day.
When a self-identified gay male goes through hormonal therapy to transition to a female and then proceeds to date a male also transitioning to a female...totally their business but it is unfair to judge others because they cant read minds.
11
I think the non-binary identity is pretty cool but have a lot of trouble with the ungainly ‘they’ pronoun. It’s just really hard to rewire my brain at this very basic grammatical level, and makes me afraid of appearing insensitive by making a mistake. This is probably a terrible idea but I kind of wish non-binary folks would take a nonchalant ‘any pronoun’ approach: use ‘he’! Use ‘she’! Use them in the same sentence — who cares! Seems like a good way to reduce the power of gender, and highlight the absurdity of our overly-gendered language. (Obviously this is different from trans where getting the pronoun right matters a lot.)
6
My more open-minded and considerably younger husband just tried explaining to me that gender is a social construct, and different from sex. I always thought that it was gender ROLES that were social constructs. And that gender was typically determined by sex, except in the cases of transgender people who identify with the opposite sex. Or gender? Honestly, the only reason most of us who wonder whether or not this is a real thing vs just young people quite understandably pushing back against the ridiculously rigid expectations of femininity and masculinity rooted in tradition, perpetuated by religion, and blown to the extremes by capitalism, is that it seems silly to choose non-binary and expect the rest of the world to respect, accommodate and understand when there is a simple answer right there in your pants. Is just being androgynous really a more difficult life than trying to assert that you belong to a newly-recognized, third, non-binary gender that is characterized exclusively by rejection of being labelled as one of the other two?
29
It is impossible to read this article with the they/them pronouns being used here as they are. I am open minded, but clarity is necessary in language and thus “choice” of pronouns is ludicrously thrown about.
16
I could just say that this pronoun business is just too hard.
It is too hard.
You—that’s still a good pronoun—are you worth the trouble?
As a gay man in a volunteer counseling group there are a number of non binary people I come into contact with. Each one of them —that’s right, them, still a good pronoun, requires a particular form of address. One of them rejected all pronouns demanding to be called by (singular possessive pronoun) name.
I cannot say that the demands placed on me by these people are always reasonable. The result is I avoid people who make unreasonable demands of me, including the non binary.
Tiresome is what it is.
50
A person for whom saying “I am real” is one of the hardest things is, in my opinion, dealing with an internal struggle that goes far beyond pronoun usage.
28
Very provocative - especially the use of "they/them" and having to process the grammar conversion to include what had been a gender-neutral plural pronoun system to one that can accommodate the third person singular. Difficult but possible.
Here's what I found missing: Many native American cultures have had a "two-spirit" gender category that included intersex, trans, and gender-queer for (I'm assuming) centuries. Why no reference to those cultural traditions and what they may offer to our efforts for inclusion in 21st century mainstream USA??? There is nothing new on the face of the earth.
6
"Jacobs is 49 and nonbinary (they prefer “genderqueer”), but Jacobs is a rarity . . . "
When "they" is used as him, her, or one (singular), wouldn't the verb be singular? Shouldn't it be "they preferS "genderqueer" ?
12
yes, the world does want to put a label on people.
Just live your life, and who cares what anyone else thinks.
Take the Duchess of Sussex for example, she has been labeled black by everyone except herself. How writing an article about the struggles of people who racially mixed? Now that is something that cannot be changed with hormones or surgery.
5
@Irene Cantu. I also think there is a glaring omission of those with autism, which is a much larger number of people.
1
What is the NYT's obsession with this topic? Seriously, I am so tired of hearing about this fringe minority. The person in this article is clearly very confused. I feel sorry for them. But truly, one is born male or female, that's it. I understand that this person feels like they are female, but they aren't. They are free to dress up and makeup and have surgeries and feel however they like, but the idea that this is in any way normal or that others will accept it as normal is futile. What if I feel like I'm a dog or a rabbit? Is that ok, too? Should I check myself into a kennel? We have SO many problems in the world- hunger, lack of medical care, an unstable president...this is literally at the bottom of my list of concerns and I wish the NYT would choose another subject that dealt with any of the more immediate issues that all humans are currently subjected to.
75
@atb
If you bring this level of curiosity, depth, and understanding to your other "list of concerns," the world weeps.
5
Amen. I figure I'll come in for flak for writing this, but it goes farther than poor souls like "Salem" being tragically confused about his "gender." For one thing, "gender" is an invented concept. As you said well, the human race comprises two sexes. We are born into this life as one or the other.
For another, all of this madness comes as the result of rebellion against God and the natural order He established. Like I said, I know I'll come in for flak from the rebels and their supporters, but truth is truth. I pray for the "Salems" of this world. I hope they can come to terms with themselves and find peace.
6
No one is stopping you from presenting yourself as non-binary (we used to call it "androgynous") and changing your name. However, you are a non-binary female. As for making up new genders, no. You don't get to invent your own version of biology and insist that I go along with it and accuse me of oppression.
58
No, not, nope!
I am a biological female who identifies as a woman. I am NOT cis-anything. If Salem gets to be they/them/theirs, then I get to be a woman. Just woman.
I’m bloody annoyed with (yet another) white, XY chromosome-carrying entity telling me who I am and who I must be.
It is phenomenally and unacceptably disrespectful of women to change our identifier to massage the fantasies of others.
202
@hey nineteen Thank you!!! Could not agree more! Transgender people have hijacked the women's movement and made it about themselves. Meanwhile, born women like us continue to take a backseat.
87
Does the same apply to men, or just women?
2
Cisgender is a term coined by the medical community to differentiate between varying patient demographics in order to provide adequate care to people with different medical needs, as well as a clarifying term used in scientific literature.
It is not an arbitrarily constructed label meant to denigrate your existence (a phenomenon which LGBTQ people are all too familiar with).
13
‘Why didn’t you wear makeup today?’
Jan Tate asked her client during a therapy session in May of last year.
“I didn’t feel the need to.”
“Would today be the day to begin using Salem instead of Hannah?”
I'm surprised that they was even able to decide whether to get up out of bed that morning to arrive at not even being able to answer many of the day's other really tough questions.
53
Americans slaughter the English language, and especially pronoun usage, enough. The pronoun, "they/them" is too schizophrenic sounding. I'm already battling my friends to stop using "that" when they mean "who". Using "that" turns people into things..."People like Tom and Karen, that go to the store regularly..." should be "People like Tom and Karen, WHO go to the store regularly." I think non-binary people, usually young people, would be more accepted if they used a new pronoun that has not been used before. Create a new pronoun for the non-binary sex.
27
@RCJCHC
Yes. Alternately, they could adapt to the silly binary world, maintain a thriving underground culture and find a sense of humor, as gays used to do and have. We've all become so boring.
16
"Salem and their parents say good night. They go to their bedroom." Question: Does Salem go to a bedroom, or do both Salem and parents go to their respective bedrooms, or do the parents go to their bedroom while Salem keeps playing video games?
"Salem and his parents say good night. Salem goes to his bedroom." Question: Where does Salem go?
Please tell me both how "context" helps answer the first question and why the proper use of pronouns, as in the second sentence, does not make where Salem goes immediately clear.
30
@Ester
I am waiting to see whether the NYT has to courage to adopt this forward looking usage as a universal style policy in all of its coverage beyond this article, that is the courage to put itself out of business for becoming illegible.
20
@Ester, parents is too genetically constrained. Try ....
It and two other forms of life made slight variations to their positioning.
I know I’ve still made some big assumptions but I can’t know everything. Which maybe is why it’s best any of us just goes with what the tag on us says.
6
From the comments, it would appear that a large percentage of those commenting in this and similar articles are confused about whether it is gender or sex that is making them uncomfortable. Their logic leads to the following strange conclusion: "No matter how much you change your sex, you'll never be a real boy/girl because sex can't be changed." Sex is not simply the presence of XX or XY chromosomes. There are many other chromosomes, androgen receptors, etc. involved as well, Sex encompasses a wide range of mostly non-binary physiological phenomena: voice pitch, body fat distribution, musculature, CVD and other disease risk, brain structure, size and shape of external genitalia, etc. By undergoing hormone therapy and surgical procedures such as gonadectomy, individuals *are* changing their sex.
In the past the term "transsexual" carried a lot of baggage; for one thing, unwarranted assumptions about the individual's sexuality arise from a conflation of the different meanings of the word "sex." The term also focuses attention on sex organs, when an individual's sex and gender are about much more than sex organs. In addition, many transgender and nonbinary individuals do not alter their sex.
Even among the aware, the current permission seems to be stuck on "it's okay to [fill in the blank] to *feel* more like a man/woman. That doesn't go far enough; it is also not only possible but okay to become more male or more female.
5
@childofsol
Really not buying this at all.
22
@childofsol
It is hilarious to me that many of my male gay friends embrace the Barbara Bush idea of femininity as much as I reject it. Wouldn't it be cool if we could all embrace "Viva la difference!" and really mean it, in a totally non PC way? Shaming unwokeness is a new brand of racism all it's own and very very stultifying to having any fun, sexual or otherwise, at all. I miss the "In Living Color" halftime days, even while hating football. Now, we have Beyonce brand of feminism? Ewwwwwwwwww
9
@childofsol
As someone else said -- really not buying any of thise.
12
This is pure narcissism. Men, women, boys, girls - wear what you want! Act how you like! Feel how you feel! Come to peace with the fact that you live in a sexed body, and enjoy your embodied life. Rejecting sex stereotypes isn't new, and it doesn't need to be treated like it's extraordinary--it needs to be normalized.
75
I remember in the late 60s and 70s that it was deemed "cool" to try out sex with someone of the same sex. As a matter of fact, to show that you were "free" you almost felt obligated, even though you really had no desire to. Luckily, that pressure has long since gone away. Or, has it? All these different names for different choices gives me a headache. I'm a woman, who has no problem saying I am, is seculy attracted to men, and not to women (crazy, huh?).
You want to be called them,they,all the letters in the alphabet? Well, I don't want to be called "cisgender". So please stop.
74
@leftrightmiddle
The problem is that eliminating the cisgender category also eliminates the transgender category. We will probably get to a point when we stop referring to transgender people as anything but people; that will be when we as a society realize that is normal and valid to be transgender. This has been happening with respect to homosexuality and homosexual people; the use of the qualifier gay/lesbian is becoming less common, along with the seeming need to first point out that someone is gay, a typically inane and irrelevant point. The need to describe a person as cisgender only arises in the context of a discussion about transgender people. Unfortunately, these comments suggest that those who are most opposed to being labeled as cisgender align quite well with the group of people who deny that trans people exist. They certainly add nothing to progress being made in the effort to see people as people first.
2
@childofsol. The term "cisender" has never come up in conversations, rare though they are, in my own experience, about transsexuals. A polydactyl cat exists. That doesn't mean we have a separate name for cats with 18 toes, which is the normal number. Stop defining and pigeonholing me.
11
@leftrightmiddle
You are not being pigionholed or defined. Being transgender is normal. As I said, when transgender people have all the respect, legal rights, and affirmation that cisgender people have in our society, there will no longer be much need for either term. These terms may still arise in medical discussions, however.
Did you ever object when a group of people or a person was described as heterosexual in certain contexts, a very common practice. I do not think so. No one commenting on the outrage of being called cisgender has said a word about being labeled heterosexual, although cisgender is to transgender as heterosexual is to homosexual. .. Though come to think of it, back in the dark ages, some bigots did object to the term heterosexual, because it "normalized" homosexuality.
1
Instead of using pronouns like he or she, or “it”, why not use this person’s name? That’s who “they” are, is it not? This person may not be a he or a she, but Hannah, or Salem, is all that. A unique, and special, and worthy, human being. Kudos to Salem, for Salem’s courage to be forthright about the experience of being Salem. Instead of being classified as “X”, instead of “M” or “F”, how about “O”? Perfectly symmetrical and complete.
5
Why can't the singular "it" or "its" be used to replace him/her or his/hers instead of the plural "they/their"?
6
@Taliesin
Why can't the American Shakespeare Theater be called Saturday Night Live? Uh, they mean different things...
5
I don’t have a strong opinion on the language issue beyond the fact that I think every human being deserves to be accepted by others and be treated with dignity and respect. But it’s worth pointing out that no one who is not royalty can reasonably ask others to address them as “your highness”; only judges get to be called “your honor”, only physicians and people with a doctorate are entitled to be addressed as Doctor, etc. So the premise that we should always respect people’s wishes about how they wish to be addressed is empirically false.
Asking for respect is one thing. Inconveniencing everyone with a barrage of confusing and mutually inconsistent demands for changes in how they speak is quite another.
70
@Math Professor
Bravo.
QED -- :-)!
9
My problem with the current language used by non-binary individuals is that it often seems to inadvertently reinforce gender norms, rather than undermine them. "I like to wear a dress so I am not a male" is actually reinforcing a strict gendered definition of masculinity. "I want to keep my hair short and date women, so I am not female" is similarly reinforcing a strict gendered definition of femininity.
My problem with the "neither gender" category is that it presumes to identify what the other two categories are -- and in ways that are incredibly problematic. It accepts problematic societal assumptions that feminists have been working for decades to undo, embraces those assumptions, and then tries to side-step the assumptions by creating an "other" category.
I want our definitions of masculinity and femininity to be inclusive and expansive. I don't want them to be so rigid that only a small percentage of us will ever fit into them. If a woman wants to play sports, is a lesbian, is wearing jeans -- do we really want to inform her that now she isn't a woman anymore? Isn't that exactly what sexist men used to do? If a man wants to wear make-up, should we tell him that this act stops him from being a man? What a limiting definition of womanhood and manhood these people seem to be accepting. I wish them the best as people, but I don't like the way they use language to accept and police the borders of gender identity, rather than expanding them.
117
@RVC You nailed one aspect of this conundrum...well-stated.
17
Attaching deep emotional significance to how strangers classify you is guaranteed to end in disappointment.
IMO people become happier as they move toward caring less what others think. As Rudyard Kippling recommends, "view approbation and opprobrium as equal impostors."
Or masculine, femine, or neutral pronouns as the case may be.
34
Thank you for this article. Your use and explanation of the different pronouns is helpful. It costs us nothing to try and understand and learn about our non-binary fellow humans.. (I almost said non-binary brothers and sisters, but caught myself!). Small shifts in language can help someone feel supported and seen. I want to make those shifts. There is nothing wrong with non-binary people.. only something wrong with a society that refuses to accept that humans fall on a spectrum of gender identity and shouldn't be forced into a box. I WANT to hear these stories. Thank you!
9
The demographics of this phenomenon are intriguing in the extreme. As noted, ".. the identity, they said, is the province mainly of people under 30. Its underground beginnings, they explained, can be traced well back in time, but one iteration emerged in the 1990s, with theorists like Judith Butler, who wrote about gender as a culturally scripted performance, based in social norms rather than biology, imposed much more than innate; and with activists like Kate Bornstein, who fully surgically transitioned from male to female in the mid-1980s..."
[Their] experiences are real and undeniable; the wonder is that [they] emerge as a contemporary phenomenon, and now to some extent march under a banner flown by such as Butler, Bornstein, and others. This conflates biology and psychology with politics--and in my view it is regrettable in the extreme that this should happen. In the public mind (of some), the "trans" emergence is seen as a political (left, urban) and irreligious CHOICE, made under the corrosive influence of cultural critics. That in effect compounds the difficulty of emergence, since it is seen as an unwelcome "crusade" and an element of identity pollitics, adopted for reasons not limited to the biologic and developmental. And that complicates the social task of understanding, accepting, and adjusting.
9
And telling everyone they need to relearn the English language doesn’t help.
Like one commenter said, Make up a set of new words. They is plural; not gender non-specific.
I happily refer to myself as cisgender. Often.
New words and concepts are cool.
Trying to force everyone to ‘correct themselves’ in a way that’s confusing does NOTHING to advance acceptance.
2
People disrupting gender roles is always a good thing. However, there is a serious problem with non-binary rhetoric: the claim to non-binary identity implicitly assumes that there is also a binary identity. That there is some right way to be a man and some right way to be a woman, usually based on 2D stereotypes. So either everyone on earth is technically non-binary by nature of having actual personalities, or most people really are walking 2D stereotypes (but for some enlightened few). Come on.
38
It is a problem of the English language that 'they' is both gender neutral plural and gender neutral single. I will gladly do my best to use whatever pronoun someone requests. But it does seem like there's a real need here for linguistic innovation. If Shakespeare could invent 500 words, surely we can invent one fit for purpose? We invented Ms., which I love and use both married and unmarried. If there were a gender neutral pronoun that was more functional, I'd embrace it widely. Because frankly, 90% of the time what does it matter what gender someone is?
8
When I was a three years old, I was taken through a display of old toys at the county fair. At one point, the toys were divided into boys' toys and girls' toys. My mother scoffed and said how ridiculous that was, that there's no such thing as boys' and girls' toys, just toys, that anyone can play with any toy. This was in the early 70s. And I had all kinds of toys and books growing up.
I grew up to be a woman who dresses androgynously, truly - just pants and t-shirts, and whose hair cuts range between obviously feminine and androgynous. I don't wear make-up or jewelry.
These days, some might call me gender non-binary because I'm truly somewhere in between in the way I look. But I'm not gender binary. This is what female looks like when it comes to me. I am a woman, and this is how I look, period.
I'm grateful to my parents who taught me constantly and practically that gender is just a construct, that we don't have to be bound by what society tells us is male or female, that we are perfectly okay just the way we are, in the bodies we have.
In reality, we are not simply our bodies. This is what I wish I could share with everyone who is suffering and struggling with these issues. You are NOT your body. You have a body, but it's not who you truly are. You are sooooo much more. Stop identifying with the physical body and what society tells you you should be. Start identifying with your heart, with who you truly are inside. Then all that outside stuff doesn't matter anymore.
65
What a wonderful comment!
6
On the subject of pronouns, wouldn't it make a lot more sense to refer to "Salem" by the singular pronoun "it", rather than the plural pronoun "they"? It makes no sense to refer to these people by a plural pronoun. It is not only singular, but also genderless. Neutral. Isn't that what these so-called "non-binary" people are?
8
Gender, like race, is a societal construct that needs to go. We can just be humans.
7
@Kim M. What about people who gain strength though their body and culture? Many women, for example, feel empowered after being pregnant and giving birth. Many people feel proud of their family and heritage. Why must this all be stripped away?
6
I don't identify strongly as a modern human of any biological sex or chosen gender, even though genetically I mostly am, because I despise collectively the modern human species with the trinomem of Homo sapiens sapiens.
I identify more closely with Homo sapiens neanderthalensis, a human variant now extinct as a separate subspecies of human, but whose genes live on in many of us, who has often been given a bad rap.
'Neanderthal' is used more as a pejorative, meaning a 'knuckle dragger', than a compliment, especially by unwoked crypto feminists, with whom I used to identify but rarely do these days, because as I've aged, I have evolved beyond such shallow thinking.
I also identify with captive primates in zoos such as gorillas and chimps.
Most of all, I identify with certain breeds of domesticated dogs such as staffies. My best trait is my doggedness, I think, followed by my fidelity, loyalty, courage and ferocity.
18
This whole issue is so tiresome, and even contrived. If someone has a problem with accepted gender roles as practised in society, that person has a strong case, and we should be tolerant and accepting of that . But to extend that to some "non-binary" identity (as if that's a real thing) is as foolish as those denying the science behind climate change.
Then there're the linguistic gymnastics required to accommodate that. The whole thing is just so artificial.
55
Isn’t it kind of like agnosticism, where it doesn’t matter what you say you believe, sometimes you act like you believe and sometimes you act like you don’t? Sometimes you act and dress like a man and sometimes you act and dress like a woman. But acting is not the same as being. Reacting against gender stereotypes through externalities, separating sex from gender, or gender from sex seems to have more to do with an well-intentioned attempt at social affirmation and pushback from discrimination than science or nature.
3
How come self identified "non-binary" people seem to need to dress in the stereotypical way of the opposite sex? Why does a "non-binary male" put on makeup, or a "nonbinary female" seem to dress in baggy chinos and button down shirts? Short hair, long hair?
49
Is there any doubt that once these groups of “nonbinary” and their allies gain recognition, they will immediate seek to denigrate and ostracize all who disagrees with their ideology?
30
Already happening.
13
It's so sad to see people who don't seem to fit in their own skin, but changing pronouns is not going to change the facts of their life. I'm happy they are getting help, but I think the therapy (with a therapist that steals flowers?) is a little self indulgent. I could say that I'm a martian, it doesn't make me one. I hope they get the help they need and find out who they are.
37
I feel very sorry for these folks. Not because they chafe at the cultural expectations associated with biological gender, but because they've been psychologically tied in knots by transgender ideology operating in cahoots with traditional patriarchal definitions of gender. Both perspectives assume that the genitalia we're born with should somehow determine our predilections, personalities, fashion sense. If we find ourselves at odds with the standard model, we're seen as sick, disgusting, or even threatening. To circumvent the bullying, ostracism and shaming that accompany being different, and to help people justify their choices, transgender ideology invented "non-binary" and "gender fluid," as if there were something intrinsic going on that they must either conform to or reject. How about rejecting the stereotypes themselves and letting people do whatever they want in the bodies they were born with?
Evolution provided us with two genders for purposes of reproduction. Male/man and female/woman are biological descriptions. That's it. Or at least, they should be. Remove expectations from these words. Not easy, given how deeply ingrained these attitudes are. But a necessary human project. We can do better than spouting pseudoscience and lying to ourselves about the reality of the body.
Gender is a simple biological fact. It's not a fashion statement.
40
I’m sympathetic to the suffering of people struggling with these issues but I question some of the language demands. Describing gender as “Assigned at birth” misses a biological reality that has implications for medical treatment, except in rare cases of intersex where the biological sex might not be so clear. The body has physical attributes at birth that aren’t assigned by a doctor.
I have no problem with men acting or dressing as feminine as they want, or women choosing to be masculine. I also have no issue with addressing gender dysphoria through surgery. But to carve out a vague third category and demand an endless number of nonsensical pronouns seems like a clumsy bureaucratic imposition. Wouldn’t it be more effective to counsel people to feel comfortable expressing their biological sex through a wide range of possibilities than to create a separate category?
There is a potential here to liberate everyone from restrictive social norms about gender behavior, mannerisms, clothing etc. But for homo sapiens, our sex is binary.
1098
@Paul Medically, it's sex assigned at birth, not gender. For example, transgender males would still require breast and gynecological care. Also, nonbinary individuals are expressing their gender identity, not their biological sex. Other than intersex individuals, sex is binary as you mention. Gender, though, is most definitely not.
51
@Paul
"I also have no issue with addressing gender dysphoria through surgery"
This is the only psychiatric condition where people are advocating for extremely invasive cosmetic procedures like HRT/SRS, as "treatment."
Actual medical treatment would be therapy, or medication as a last resort.
If someone has body dysphoria manifesting as anorexia, do we recommend stomach stapling to them as a course of medicine?
138
@Paul,
While there are visible physical attributes of gender which are observable at birth, my understanding is a greatly more complex mixture of hormonal structures and psychology which also contribute to gender definition and identity. My hope is to develop a legal and social environment to allow every individual to come to terms with their own identity without the imposition of any social expectations based solely on observable physical attributes. It is clear from stories like this one that such attirbutes tell only part of the story.
25
My concern is that this movement or trend (for lack of a better word) is a huge set back for feminism and equality of the secession. If, as feminism believes and I believe, girls and women can be anything they want, and so can boys and men, and so can anyone why would it matter which one you are - or if you are neither or both or something else?
103
@Rachel It matters because, while gender should not determine your professional or personal role in life, it is still a very important, personal reality within that life.
Our given names shouldn't determine our life's trajectory (though, we know that racism means that they do), but we still, over the time of that life, settle in on the way that we ask others to address us. I.e., I tend to be "Dash" and not "David" or "Dave." Would it matter if someone called me "Stephen" or "Molly" with respect to my profession? No, but it wouldn't be accurate.
In the same way, our gender (or lack thereof) shouldn't determine our life's trajectory (though, because of various forms of sexism, we know it does), it can remain an important facet of our identity. And, for some of us—myself included—this is a facet that we want to share with others.
3
Take a look at your life. Look at all the things that define your gender.
Your clothes. Your shoes. The way people address you. The way you look at yourself in the mirror. The way you approach the world and the way it approaches you.
Now imagine erasing all that.
Tell me again how it doesn’t matter.
4
Obviously I meant equality of the sexes. Darn autocorrect!
7
It is highly likely that for the most part, identification will always be based on the norms of "man" and "woman" and that these will be determined by a consonance between anatomical and cultural cognates. Biological and cultural ways of seeing are connected in some ways and will never likely be completely sundered. At the same time, there will be some people who exist outside of those norms. For those of us who exist inside those norms, let's not try to get so crazy about these other people who are searching for a meaningful way to make sense of themselves. Gender identity is important to everyone--it should perhaps not be so important, but given that it is, it makes a lot of sense that these people who don't exactly want to be called "man" or "woman" still want to be called something.
5
"What if our most fundamental means of perceiving and classifying one another is illusory and can be swept away?"
I am a left-liberal millennial, and I believe passionately in equality for all, yet I struggled with this sentence. Gender may be fluid, but how can it be illusory? It is the way all species reproduce. We may give it too much credence, but it clearly exists as a fact of evolution. Unless I am missing the meaning of the above sentence.
32
When I was in my twenties women were referred to as 'Miss' or 'Mrs.', men as 'Mr.'. It suddenly tipped - and we (I am a woman) needed to NOT to be identified by marital status. To do that, and still recognize that we were still not being given equality with men in this society, we had to find a clear term to define that status. That has turned out to be 'Ms.', which now, but not then widely accepted. Note we did not use 'Mr' to define any 'married or unmarried person; because that would imply an equality in societal treatment that women in this society still have not achieved. And the term 'Mr.' already had a long standing definition. It was a step on the long road toward equal acceptance and treatment.
Language is communication, and it needs to convey exactly what it means. Had we instead tried to give 'Mr.' a new meaning, it would have been inaccurate,and created unnecessary hostility, thereby conveying far more than a push for status equality. The problem that I see with trying to use the pronoun 'they' for non-binary people is similar. 'They' is already a pronoun in long use meaning physically literally multiple groups. Not a single person who is gender fluid. Non-binary people need their own clearly defined pronoun in order to realize the movement towards achieving fully equal societal status that they deserve.
5
@Amrak
Excellent history, thank you. I believe 'Mr.' is a shortened form of 'monsieur', but still wonder where 'Mrs.' got that 'r' - none such in 'madame' or 'mademoiselle'. 'Ms.' was a natural evolution from 'Miss'. And when 'Ms.' first came into use, it was revolutionary enough to name a magazine.
The history of words is fascinating. Usage may change, and language matters, but only if we still plan to use it for communication. Emoticons may be the better choice for some.
1
Ms. = short for “miserable”
1
@Quite Contrary "Mrs." comes from "mistress."
I remember when the term "Ms." was not yet widely used or accepted, when someone from the NYT called me at my publishing job with questions about an author. The caller wanted to know whether the author was a Miss or a Mrs., and got very annoyed when I advised her to use "Ms."
8
It would be interesting, and perhaps outside the scope of a newspaper, to learn how much sexually explicit content these gender-variant young people were exposed to online.
I often see trans and non-binary commenters use anime or "furry" avatars from highly explicit online storylines. Too much screen time in general doesn't provide a healthy outlet for maturing minds and bodies.
In addition, if a major part of one's self-worth is spent trying to make sure you are seen by others exactly the way you want to be seen, that is a recipe for anxiety and frustration. It's a game no one wins.
22
To all of those who think that "they" can't be used as a gender neutral pronoun because it causes confusion: Psychology research routinely uses "they" to address to specific participants, especially when all identifiable information is wiped from the data. It's really not that hard to get used to. Instead of complaining about how it's confusing to use, try it out. You're not the one who has to deal with the struggle of not being accepted for who you are by large portions of society. Using a person's preferred pronouns can make their life so much easier, and make them feel validated.
2
@naseem - "They " has been used for apparently hundreds of years to refer to a single person whose sex is unknown or indeterminate (as in, "there's someone at the door, what do they want?"). It has never before been used in the way these individuals are requesting.
As for trying it out, I just did. This article with its constant use of "they" was tedious and barely comprehensible.
1
In Spanish masculine plural pronouns are fine for groups that include at least one male.
It seems that anyone who can pass for the sex to which they are attempting to transition would be flattered that you pretended not to notice their painful efforts.
I say keep the current singular pronouns in English and Spanish but pick the one that comes closest to his or her effort even when have known them for years.
4
It’s a little distracting and confusing to use ‘them’ when referring to an individual. I suppose bipolar people could insist upon that too, as could people with anger issues, some women during menstruation, and many other people that have different personalities in certain roles. It seems to me that putting a dual gender identity on your drivers license is asking for trouble. It’s not like law enforcement officers are known for their open-mindedness. It seems like this identity could be good because it could prevent an unnecessary and irreversible sex change for some people.
2
I work in the mental health field with teenagers involved in the justice system. Youth claiming to be "trans" are on the rise among troubled kids. They tend to fall into two categories: 1) Males who see that they can get more lenient accommodations by being housed with females; and 2) Kids who have significant histories of molestation, abuse, and rejection (often by socially/religiously conservative families) who grow up thinking something is "wrong" with them and the trendy way to "fix" this is to change "who they are." And the system (government) has to jump and provide irrevocable medical treatments to unstable and confused 15 year olds in fear that there will be a lawsuit from one of the myriad of nonprofits to defend their rights.
51
@Eliza
Exactly. I always tell people that if I get in a jam at work, I’m wearing a skort the next day and will be talking about how I’m so confused because I look and am male, but as a married ( to an actual woman) tall, thin, white Christian male, all of the special leniency cards are not in my favor, so I may have to call an audible to save my skin if it eve4 comes to that.
5
@stan
Do you recognize that that's not what transpersons do? We don't claim another identity to gain a perceived benefit. Just read through these comments and you'll see that those of us who are trans aren't seeing a lot of benefits for our choice vis-a-vis our interaction with the rest of the world.
4
@David Dashifen Kees
@stan was replying to my post, here I shared my professional observations of adolescents claiming to be "in the wrong bodies" as a reaction to trauma, molestation, rejection , or for a secondary benefit knowing that claiming to be "trans" is now the golden ticket to special accommodations.
12
One of the huge differences between us and all other species is that we don't fit into any ecological or sociobiological niches, nor are we restricted to natural selection or evolutionary biology.
We have the power of "gods," and are able to radically alter the biosphere, and ourselves.
The alterations we make are often misguided, careless, and injurious.
We also must acknowledge that there's a gender dysphoria industry, and that "gender confusion" has been marketed.
Binary gender is the natural norm for primates.
But as with GMOs, chimeras and other experimentation, humans are never satisfied with what Nature has produced, and think they can do better. The story of Frankenstein is a perfect cautionary for such experimentation.
I feel sad for people who think that rejecting binary gender norms will make them happier or healthier.
10
@Steve Davies
For what it's worth, it wasn't until I stepped into my non-binary identity that I felt like myself. This has made me happier.
2
"They" has two separate and distinct meanings, one when applied to a single person and one when applied to more than one. This is not a good situation. In the first meaning, "theys" is the plural of "they", except that "they" is already plural in the other meaning. "It" is unfortunately dehumanizing.
The misuse of standard English is itself demeaning. If we had an Academie Francaise, we could ask it to invent a word (although it is accustomed to going in the other direction and keeping words out of the official language). "Heshe" or "shehe", or perhaps "heshee" or "shehee" for the pronunciation, would be better.
Freud's word for what we call the id was das "es", and for the ego, das 'ich". Both words, interestingly enough, are neuter. The people who call themselves "they" need and deserve a better and clearer word. If anyone came up with a really good word, it might be adopted by everyone, or at least everyone who sees the dimension it describes as a possible and valid way of living the human situation.
3
My only objection to reading about nonbinary issues is the nerve wracking difficulty of substituting a plural prononoun (their, they, them) in places where a singular prounoun belongs. That makes following the thread of any writing about nonbinary persons, however brilliant and enlightening, unbearably clunky. Couldn't we come up with an entirely new one instead of appropriating letters already taken? I realize "it" may be seen as derogatory, but could we try "shea" for he/she; "shirs" for his/hers and "shem" for them? At least these novel pronouns would flow more trippingly off the tongue, and be easier to decode than the confusing plural form when a singular person is being designated. Binary people are, after all, singular individuals, not Siamese twins!
Nonetheless, I valiantly read on, wading through the plurals-as-singular-pronoun dissonance, up until I hit "the nerve-rackingness of shopping". Now, really, Mx. Bergner, I do understand that clothes shopping involves racks, but must the assault on English extend to parody? Isn't the world crazy enough? Can't we even rely on grammar and English conventions to guide us in proper spelling, if not hyphenation and pronouns? We need this haven of reliable and non-toxic rules of our language to continue. Please, we are not French or Spanish with all the feminine/masculine verb tenses. Give English a break - save the pronouns, and spelling.
Miss Thistlebottom
5
A serious suggestion. I see sooooo many comments sympathetic to non-binary people, but that also object (quite strongly, in many cases) to use of "they/them" as a pronoun. Often the objection is because our language already uses those words, but as indicating more than one person. Thus, it's jarring to the ear, creating tension as we try to relearn old patterns.
How about a word that seems to naturally fit within our normal conversation flow, by remaining closer to "he/she", "him/her"?
How about "hue"? Try it in a sentence, and see if it flows naturally. An additional benefit is that, because of its original meaning, we immediately associate it with "rainbow" = the entire spectrum of gender identities.
Or simply spell it "hu", and it's the first two letters of "human".
"Robert Alice said hue needs to leave early, hues Dad needs some help this afternoon."
3
@ImagineMoments
It's too easy to confuse "hue" with "you."
4
Let people live their truths as they wish; it is part of our freedom. But ugh! They "they" thing just grates on me. Can we not agree on a few set of terms for common usage, such as "ce" or "ze" instead of he/she? I'm all for that!
Using new, gender-neutral terms would have another positive application: referring to animals (who aren't sexually dimorphic). I notice a tendency among people, including myself, to watch a squirrel or goose and note what "he" is doing. But of course he may be a she, and "it" is no solution. Let's be rid of assumptions in *all* relevant cases.
2
How can we be rid of assumptions if people just “believe what they want to believe””?
4
It is so sad to read about the suffering of these humans and irritating that the New York Times magazine seems oblivious to the fact that "Third Genders" "Two-Spirits" or "berdaches" (named by the early French explorers in North America) exist around the world, have a rich history, AND still exist today.
A few examples:
-- Hijras - a legally recognized third gender in India - if you know what you are looking for, you can see them dancing at the end of Monsoon Wedding
--We'Wha - well known Zuni Two-Spirit who visited Washinton in 1886 and met Grover Cleveland
--Winkte - Lakota Two-Spirits, even today needed for the traditional songs for funeral ceremonies
--Fakaleiti - the name in Tonga for a third gender -- a well know b&b is run by such a person, and the gender varies among different guide books -
--Māhū - third gender in Hawaii
These are a few examples. Will Roscoe has published a great deal on this topic and is an excellent entry point into the literature.
Western societies are rigid and binary in some categories: male/female, and fluid in others: pink, rose, blush, ruby.
This is a simple fact that is well-known in many societies, and Into to Anthropology 101. A simple google search of Two Spirits shows the many groups, usually Native based that exist today in North America. (There was one perfunctory reference in this article to a Two-Spirit practice, but it did not seem to actually be related to the topic.)
3
In the 1990s we had heroin chic, where all those confused young people starved themselves to look skeletal and sick. Thirty years before that, in the 60s, it was looking like a hippie and rejecting "the establishment". This genderqueer thing is the new chic, I guess. Like all youth trends, it will pass.
31
@C
As one who got married in bell-bottomed blue jeans, circa 1971, and thought I was going to revolutionize wedding drag, I hear you. Nonbinary probably has more going for it as a fad than my closet did. At least we've added to our vocabularies, and provoked a passionate NYTimes discussion of grammar! Who knew.
Dashiki shirts, John Lennon glasses anyone?
5
Salem was not assigned a sex at birth.
As an embryo, Salem, like all embryos, had rudimentary female and male tissue, but the female tissue disintegrated and the tissue that remained developed into a male reproductive tract.
When Salem was born, maternity ward personnel conducted a physical examination and determined he was male. They enter “male” on his birth certificate, but changing the sex designation on Salem’s certificate whole have no affect on his sex; he would still be male is the designation were changed to female or some other designation.
Since humans are not among the species that can change sex after birth, Salem will always be male regardless of gender identity, hormone therapy or surgery. If men could become women or women could become men, there would not transgender issues, would there?
Salem is a single entity. If he rejects the pronouns “he” or “she,” the correct pronoun is “it.”
An argument can be made that people who come into contact with Salem should use the pronouns he prefers out of kindness. Laws should be passed to protect Salem and people like him against housing and employment discrimination. One could argue that Salem and other persons affected by gender dysphoria merit protection under the American Disability Act.
But the pretense that Salem is neither male nor female is silly.
50
@William Case
Good to know that there's an authority on this complicated subject!
I think my lifelong condition of never having achieved a stomach as flat as Cher's might qualify me under ADA; can I get the card online? Is there a tax exemption involved?
4
@Quite Contrary
Gender dysphoria is listed in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5). People diagnosed with it should be cover by group medical insurance policies and eligible for ADA protections.
4
Me, you, we, us, their, they, them. And Sweden offers gender neutral: Hen. "Hen did come over. Hen and I, we...".
‘We’re all born nonbinary. We learn gender." It is not helpful to demand that people accept things they instinctively know are not true. Gender is not largely a social construct. Sex is very largely a binary proposition, with some intersex individuals. The vast majority of people identify as male or female. For the vast majority this follows from the biology that determines their sex. Gender is, statistically, pretty much binary. Many potential allies are lost when it's demanded that they accept what they know is nonsense. Live your life as you wish, but don't demand that others accept nonsense.
31
How very disappointing and demoralizing to see so many NYTimes commenters prioritize their staid grammatical comfort over the humanity and personhood of others. Words and language change and evolve, so does society. Grammar is not a immutable law of the universe. Terming someone's request to be recognized and validated via language as an "unreasonable demand" or "confusion," as many of these comments have, is not just hard-headed — it's cruel and parochial.
5
If you are using "they" to refer to an individual, shouldn't you use a singular verb? The confusion is compounded when it is unclear whether the reference is to Salem or Salem and Tate.
3
@Pat - "You" can be singular too, although it takes a plural verb.
But yes, this use of "they" makes the article confusing and unclear.
OK- so apparently the first question we now need to ask people when we are introduced is:
"...What are your pronouns?..."
If you do not do that, then you must be a bigoted person, especially if you are a cisgendered white male afloat for all your life on a sea of white male privilege.
14
@Lefthalfbach. I think demanding everyone state their pronouns is very invasive, actually. Despite being promoted by the trans movement and being seen as very progressive, it could cause a lot of anguish for these individuals who are struggling with these issues or do not want to commit to a pronoun. I also think it would be offensive to ask people to state where they are from/ what race they are during each introduction as well.
3
The word “you” is plural, not singular—the singular version, thee/thou is mostly archaic and rarely heard outside of certain Protestant prayers. If you’re able to understand from context that “you” can refer to an individual, then you can handle a singular “they.”
People have been using the singular they for decades—maybe not for non-binary folks, but because “they” is a lot less clunky than “he or she.”
Anyway, I think too many comments here are getting hung up on grammar/usage/semantics rather than actually absorbing the human experience of the people in this article.
(I do wonder, if I hadn’t grown up with an ardently feminist mother, who told me repeatedly that there is not wrong way to be a girl/woman, if my childhood best friend hadn’t had two rather butch mothers, if I would’ve seen myself as non-binary instead of a woman who just doesn’t bother to match feminine ideals.)
6
@AB In English, like many western languages, "you" is the formal second person pronoun used for both singular and plural.
Thou, thee, and thine, are respectively the nominative, objective, and possessive forms the the familiar form of "you". It also happens to be singular. In Latin languages, the equivalent would be "tu". For some reason, the familiar form died out among most English speakers, aside from a very few Quakers.
4
@AB - If you know French, you will realize that "vous" can be both singular and plural. So can "you".
To every question about my gender that bombards me on every single subscription, financial, Internet and other form, I seek the only option I care to choose: NOYB. None of Your Business. Because, what on earth could it possibly matter? As an admitted female, will I be treated as dainty and domesticated versus wise and worldly? Will I be bombarded with ads for Swiffers and sedans versus yard tools and sports cars? And my own problem is simply resentment that I would have to say anything at all. No wonder there's a mental rebellion within people whose brains tell them they don't fit into just one of a mere two, constricting, stereotyped categories of something as varied and bountiful as gender. Why must we accept societal dictates about something as elemental to each of us as air? NOYB.
4
@Peggy Rogers The problem, Peggy, is that their identities depend on others "validating" them. I think we would all love for this to be something people kept to themselves so we could all mind our own business.
9
Gender and sexuality are far more fluid than we have been raised to believe. Straight, gay, trans, bi, and of course non-binary. It's a continuum, not a set of discrete points. Although I've always identified as straight, there have been times when I acknowledged attraction to other women. I'm monogamous, so there was never any experimentation, but I do realize that my preferences may be more fluid than I have always believed.
I wish the world would simply accept that the old ways of looking at gender and sexuality was simply wrong, influenced by the heavy hand of religion. and fearful morality. I've never understood why so many people want to judge someone else's personal desires. Unless those desires pose a threat to someone else, unless they're used coercively or inappropriately, people should be free to love as they choose.
4
Homosexuality/ bisexuality and transgenderim are two very different issues. Gay and bi people have absolutely no problem identifying themselves as male or female regardless of to whom they are sexually attracted. Transgenderism is about rejecting your sex and adopting the societal stereotypes of the sex you think you should be. They are not part of a continuum. The first one is biological and found among other species besides humans. The second one, as of today, has no biological basis as there is no such a thing as the brain of one sex in a body of the other sex.
4
Just my luck that I was born in this generation of existential insanity and madness...that I have to force these beliefs on my children or be shamed into conformity by a culture that proclaims to hate shaming and cultural influence.
51
Interesting to note, AJ, that it isn’t clear which position you are unhappy about. Your words can represent either those who support a post-gender society, or those who do not.
3
You do not have to force any beliefs on your children. Up to this point, transgenderism has not been proven to have any biological basis so all your children need to learn that there are some people who believe/feel they were born in the wrong biological body and have decided to adopt the outward stereootypes that our culture imposes on the sex they believe they are.
3
I'd love it if we could come up with a gender neutral pronoun so we can stop using "they." I find "they" to being confusing because it's not always clear if it's referring to one person or a group.
Since "it" has negative connotations, perhaps something like "ha" could replace "he/she" and "him/her."
2
I'm in favor of everyone just coming up with their own pronouns. I like zx and urg, but that's just me...
3
@Marcus Aurelius Haha. Good one! I'm thinking they/them will work fine.
Every time I read an article about someone who does not feel completely male or female I think to myself, "Take a number and stand in line."
Maybe it's just me.
And I'm nearly 70.
28
In German the word „Sie“ translates as she, you, or they (with some differences in capitalization that is obviously not apparent in speech). Understanding is achieved through verb declination and context. This is perhaps a niggling point, but wouldn’t it be easier to understand “they” as a singular personal pronoun if the verb matched?
“Salem rarely left the house where they lives.”
3
I have very little patience with commenters insisting that "they" isn't correct grammar. Remember that language evolves. Do your own work on your own time to get over your discomfort with "bad grammar" and in the meantime treat people with respect.
Remember the platinum rule: treat people how THEY want to be treated.
4
@Sam Harrison I'd like to be treated as someone who does not have to pretend another person can be a they. Thanks. Respect is a two way street.
12
@Sam Harrison
Sure, but grammar and syntax tends to evolve slowly, organically and over time, not suddenly and due to concerns for social justice.
11
@Sam Harrison As a woman, I am under no obligation to treat men as they want to be treated. The very notion is offensive.
9
It used to be that people referring to themselves in the 3rd person would be sent to the shrink to sort out their issues.
Now people identify as ‘they’ or ‘them’?
If it’s not a male or a female, can we refer to that person as ‘it’?
I am sure we cannot. So can we just call that person by their name and move on?
No one cares if you are names Salem or the name you gave yourself of Hanna, or George. No one but ‘they’. Just call it whatever name it wants to go by and can we all just move on?
This gender thing is a fad, a 2019 thing. It will fade away. So just let them call themselves by whatever name and move on people.
No need to glorify them in news articles. Live and let live.
20
If someone asked me "What are your pronouns?" I would reply "I / me".
"No, I mean what should I call you?"
"Whatever you want. That's your right to free speech. It doesn't change who I am."
8
@Suzanne. The answer to "No, I mean what should I call you?" should really be “you/your/yours.” The emphasis on third person pronouns means we will not talk TO each other, but merely ABOUT each other.
1
Obviously this will all go away with a few modest changes to the English language. Adding the pronouns "hishi" and "himmer" would probably alleviate much of the trouble.
1
I am transgender but I think that all non-cis identities should be referred to as Third Gender. It worked well for the Lakota and other Native Americans before they were converted to Christianity by Western missionaries.
We are swimming in a sea of identities and I think it's time to revamp our wording. Transgender implies that I'm delusional and think I can become cisgender. I get that I have an XY chromosomal makeup, I studied Biology at MIT so I understand the difference in the sexes. I also understand that cisgender people hate being called cisgender.
If I identify as Third Gender the wording doesnt imply that I'm delusional, and also it doesnt imply that I'm buying into the stereotypes of the social construct of gender. I'm not "usurping" female cisgender identity so the womyn for womyn group loses its argument, and Third Gender can encompass everything from non-binary to transgender Male and transgender female and everything else in between.
So what do you say? I am officially changing my wording from today on. I am a Third Gender individual..No trans, no cis, no non-binary. All the clunky wording cisgender people hate just is solved right then.
14
Now this (Third Gender) I can get behind. Makes sense and encompasses many identities. Still, what about the pronouns? Seriously. I can’t handle the they/them for an individual and it’s clear that many here share that view.
5
@Jacqueline I am not cis. I do not identify with genderism. Please respect my right to avoid doing so. I'm tired of being told to change my language because you want to pretend to be a woman.
15
@Katie, best thinking so far, add me to the list.
This article confirms that the Age of Enlightenment is now the Age of Narcesism. The topic of gender identity is all the rage with the youth, medical world and online. Today "gender-queer" is very fashionable. This notion of an "authentic self" is actually being stoked by the mental health industry and organisations like the APA and AMA. What is odd is that it is impossible to figure out what it costs to "transition." Perhaps the NYT could investgate the economic impact of all these "desire" procedures and drugs on our expensive, oblique, capitalistic health care system. That would be difficult (I have tried) but would be a valuable part of the discussion.
25
@justpaul When women took hormones to get through menopause rates of breast cancer soared. I do not want to pay for the problems caused by young people taking hormones, surgically changing their genitals (any older man or woman will tell you that urinary tracts can cause problems when not interfered with) or indeed for any medical treatments involved in fiddling with obvious sexes. The .01 of intersex persons may have all the treatment necessary. After all if someone says to us they are sure they are Napolean we don't treat them with hormones. We send them to a shrink.
1
@justpaul - It's all the rage with only a very small portion of the medical world.
1
This is the craziest, saddest article that I have ever attempted to read. I understand that some people are gay and I understand that some people identify with a different gender than the sex (male or female) that they were born as. That is all okay with me--to each their own, within reason. If you can't decide with consistency which gender you identify as, though, that indicates to me that you are deeply confused, possibly immature, or desperately seeking attention. I'm sorry, but I really cannot take this issue seriously--it is simply too ridiculous. Has the whole world gone mad?
80
Sophie, I agree, the emperor has no clothes. These seem like very confused, sad individuals. The article is difficult to read for many reasons, not the least of which is the use of “preferred pronouns”.
24
Fantasy and emotion are not biology. Man reproduces heterosexually. These psychologically ill people are the product of anti-cognitive, Progressive education. Their minds are disintegrated by mindless, out-of-context memorizing of meaningless Pragmatist trivia. Their psychologies disintegrate in response. Mainstream psychologists are frauds.
19
I support the right to make choices in personal life. As a woman, if I want to wear neat pants and shirt, versus skirt and heels, that should be fine. For example, I'm not hobbling myself with unhealthy heels to match an outdated standard.
Show up and work hard along side of me, and you are my peer, always. Come on, everyone, you can do this, too.
4
Wow, my parents thought long hair was radical.
This or their story is impossible to read. As one commenter said, changing 500 years of the English language is not easy.
Cis has only been a term used for ten years.
Options available only through surgery or chemicals.
There are two sexes- When you join a male sperm with a female egg you get a baby.
17
Since many are commenting their discomfort about the pronoun "they" this article might prove useful: https://libraries.indiana.edu/chicago-manual-style-singular-pronoun-they
That's just a confused young man that thinks he is a woman. That's all.
39
I was checking in for my doctor’s appointment and was 2 minutes late. Asking about my spouse’s presence, she asked me, “Are they here?” And I jokingly said “ she’s here, I have only one of them. There she is.” The receptionist didn’t crack a smile, stonefaced. I began to suspect I was dealing with hyper political correctness in this receptionist. She was using “them”to cover the minuscule number of people who have same sex spouses or non-binary spouses. The rest of us—the mass majority—will have to surrender our grammatical, ordinary, normative use of they-them for this arbitrary, bizarre twist in usage—much of it prompted by the self congratulatory feeling of being “woke” and compassionate. To underscore her surliness with me, the receptionist flagged me as being late to the appt.—2 minutes.
25
@Richard. And why couldn’t the receptionist ask you, “Is your spouse here?” instead of using “they,” anyway?
"This old hetero guy wishes you the best. its tough being human. Do what works for you and ignore the rest."
This comment is from Tim, who wrote it earlier in the day and expressed it better than I can. I'm another old hetero guy, and I agree completely. (But like most things, easier said than done, I understand.) Hope it might help to realize that most of us don't even focus on that aspect of who you are and will respectfully call you by whatever name you provide.
The pronoun issue, however, does concern me. Many of us have been using "they" in cases like this:
If someone has tons of money, they don't know what it's like to worry about the electric bill.
Was the doctor kind or were they too brusque?
Our language, as well as many other languages, needs a solution for these common kinds of problems: many of us have resorted to "they". This grinds a bit on the ear, but it's nothing like the effect caused by the pronouns in the article--though I assume some of this was intentional.
"Ms." really does seem to work smoothly. But finding a singular third-person pronoun without a sex tag is a challenge even in the simplistic binary world.
So I ask my daughter about the person who just interviewed her for a job. "Was they tough? Was he/she tough? Were they tough? Was the person tough?"
It sounds silly, but it's definitely not trivial.
73
@sing75: In my observation, languages tend to adapt to communication needs as they arise. For example, standard English does not have distinct words for the singular and plural forms of 'you.' So guess what happened, y'all? Well, youse New Yorkers know, and you'uns in Appalachia know too. And you guys in California? Maybe that grinds on the ears of some, but it works.
We forget that language is a tool that adapts.
14
@hammond So how do refer to a group of "them"s? Just asking.
3
@sing75
"Mx" works for the honorific, and avoids labeling women as feminists. I might support this if the nonbinary language police would stop the pronoun abuse.
2
Cis het man here. The biggest question for me is the intersection of modern medicine with gender identity. One commenter mentioned that the withholding of medical transition options for trans individuals is akin to gay conversion therapy. To the contrary, are these procedures not a type of conversion therapy themselves? By which I mean, is it not possible to imagine a world wherein a trans person can feel “themselves” without medically transitioning? I want to believe it is possible, because the contrary suggests fully realizing one’s gender identity is only for social classes privileged enough to access it.
18
All human beings ought to be free to live with dignity and we ought to feel compassion for their suffering. That should be basic. That being said I have the same sense reading this article that I have had recently reading many similar articles written from a trans activist standpoint, ie that there is so much confusion. For example, there is a difference between feeling one doesn’t quite fit into traditional gender categories, roles, or attributes, or even being confused about whether such categories should apply at all, and the problem of feeling uncomfortable and alienated from ones own body and feeling compelled to change it. The former is about social or psychological construction of ourselves and our place in society, and whether there is any truth or benefit of such categories, and whether it is possible to come up with a set of categories that would lead to greater freedom and fulfillment. The limit question here is, why shouldn’t a man be able to dress or act like a woman, or enact any or all the performances traditionally allowed to women. Or the reverse, why shouldn’t a woman be able to act like a man, or embody the roles, positions, or performances traditionally allowed to men? The latter, however, is on the face of it a pathology, body dysmorphia, not unlike the extreme body dysmorphia in anorexia, along with the correlative self harm. These both are then confused with the issue of rights and legal expectations demanded of others.
18
In Woman on the Edge of Time, Marge Piercy used "per" as a new pronoun. I think using plural pronouns merely adds to a sense of alienation and confusion and begins to make the person using plural pronouns seem mentally ill instead of what they hope to achieve or be perceived. I think that someone who feels neither male nor female, identifies with neither or both, who doesn't want to be confined by gender might consider accepting the body they come with and living a "nonbinary" life. Acceptance of ourselves, our imperfections allows us more time to do good in the world as we are. It will be a lot less painful and expensive. I don't think you need surgery or hormones to live as you are. Marge Piercy made that clear. Virginia Woolf made that clear.
12
I'm older and was raised to use very good grammar in both speaking and writing. It's not resistance on my part so much as habit that makes it hard for me to adjust to plural pronouns used to refer to individuals.
Mostly, correct grammar emerges from usage over a long time. But considering how rapidly "Ms" entered English, it's not impossible for grammar to sometimes change because of top-down principle rather than habit or usage.
In any event, trying to change English usage so its about gender-neutral pronouns could probably work. But I don't see how it could ever work in any language, such as French, where all the nouns and pronouns are tethered to masculine and feminine grammatical genders.
3
The "gender fluid" folks need to accept that they are a small minority who do not drive the worldview of the majority of those of us who are "gender binary". We should certainly have protections for this minority that protects them from harm and/or discrimination but we are not going to change our basic view of the world to suit their agenda.
33
Nothing new here. Androgyny was an aesthetic and ethical ideal in late antiquity. Hermaphroditus was a god combining male and female sexual characteristics and representing a perfect balance of beauty and desire. In Plato’s “Symposium”, human beings were originally created as androgynous, and the separation of the sexes was a divine punishment for hubris. So instead of seeing non-binary people as freaks, perhaps we should see the rigid separation between the sexes enforced by the monotheistic religions as unnatural and perverse. People should relax and enjoy the freedom of fluidity instead of trying to fit into a rigid mold of “gender-appropriate” behavior. I am a wife and mother but I don’t think of myself as a woman first and foremost. I am myself. And this core self has no gender.
5
It is unfortunate and reflects poorly on the author that he left unchallenged the assertion that "we are all born non-binary." This hypothesis has been thoroughly - and for the children affected by the experimentation around it, painfully - debunked.
22
I am very cautious when discussion this non-binary/transgender issue mainly because in twenty or thirty years we may have a lot of people who underwent gender reassignment surgery only to feel as though they've butchered their bodies. I don't want to be part of a movement that causes more long-term harm than the short-term comfort by enforcing change on society.
Unlike others I am not too upset about the "they/their/them" pronoun even though it is clunky. I adapted to it pretty quickly.
My main problem is if you begin imposing gender fluidity on the rest of society i.e. transgender girls (sex is male) competing against biological females, or transgender women (sex is male) going to a woman's prison.
I think we are still trying to find a happy middle ground but right now I don't know where that is.
15
@Faust
I agree. I won’t be a part of it and no one should be bullied into believing the ideology if they think it harmful to their kids or the future generation. No one wants to persecute transgender people, we just want to proceed slowly so we’re not implicated in one of the greatest scandals in human history
21
I need help with the pronoun issue. Is there a reason why proposals for gender neutral human pronouns are deemed offensive? Is the use of they/them as singular a statement that the person is both or between masculine and feminine, i.e. plural in some sense? Or is it an assertion of self-determination ( “I reject your label and your confusion is your problem”), or is it a “declines to state” pronoun?
My experience with Miss/Mrs/Ms is that Ms took hold because it was clear (at least it seemed clear back in the days when gender seemed clear), and filled a new need for a marital status neutral title for women (declines to state.) Resistance came from those who were “confused “ by women refusing to be identified according to marital status. Racial nomenclature changed during the same period, but for different reasons (I reject your label.)
They is plural, but is also used as singular in contexts where number is clear and gender is unknown (“somebody left their keys at the bar.” ) To use it in contexts where number is unclear seems, well, unclear.
It is hard to imagine an enduring convention under which every person declares individual pronoun preferences that must be remembered and incorporated into all communications. It seems to me that we need a gender neutral singular human pronouns for the same reasons we needed Ms. Times have changed.
9
It's clear from a majority of the comments that the real obstacle to acceptance of binary individuals has little to do with gender or sex or even the binary individual herself/himself/itself/themself/itself/whateverself. It's the confusing language. Surely that can be fixed. We've put men on the moon for goodness sake. And saying "they" is often used as a singular pronoun doesn't cut it. The circumstances don't fit this issue at all.
2
The root of the problem is the fairly narrow definitions/roles that have developed around the concepts of male and female. If you don’t fit one of these definitions, you feel compelled to either awkwardly accept your lot in life, as many do, or defiantly define yourself as “something else,” or claim whichever definition more closely matches how you feel. If instead we work to show that gender roles are essentially meaningless and often have no relationship to sex at birth, we’ll be making the world a better place for those who come after, because they won’t have to feel like they don’t fit in to a narrow scheme and declare themselves as somehow “different.” If millions of people feel the need to “redefine” themselves in this sense, maybe there’s something wrong with the definitions. In other words, people born male who feel more like what we think of as females should be themselves yet proudly say “I too am a male, and what of it?”
12
This is what happens when there are not positive male and female role models for kids growing up. They end up not sure of who they are.
15
To my non-binary fellow citizens: fear not! The Democratic division of the Republican/Democratic servant of the oligarchy is desperate for some bones to throw to their constituency in lieu of substantively addressing the massive upward transference of wealth that has taken place over the last forty years.
Republicans throw their non-wealthy base god, guns and white hegemony. Democrats toss theirs identity politics and pronouns.
But actual money and power that would accrue to *all* poor, working and middle class people, be they black, white, gay, straight, man, woman, trans, cis or non-binary?
Easy now!
When it comes to equitably sharing the wealth, Democrats are merely Republicans with more enlightened social views.
8
Gross confusion. We have to step out of the binary us/them mode here as well. I can affirm the dignity of all, respect someone’s right to be whoever they want to be and pursue their own happiness as they see fit. And feel compassion for their suffering. And Can see traditional binary categories as restrictive and inadequate. While also seeing as mistaken the claim that they are not the sex they were born with, be unwilling to see no difference between their identified gender and those biologically born into that gender, and to be hesitant to grant special protected status and special rights to them as a category. Just as I can respect someone’s right to follow their own religion without myself believing it
4
All this suggests people who are deeply uncomfortable with the bodies they are born into. I'm all for someone becoming more comfortable with their body, and having bodily autonomy to alter it however they wish. But let's ask ourselves, are these efforts leading to greater happiness? Not necessarily, and certainly not for individuals like Salem/Hannah. Perhaps psychologists efforts should start with untangling the deep self-hatred, depression, and lack of self-acceptance frequent among confused early adults before prescribing body altering surgeries and hormones? Is like the NY Times to write at least one story on those who have transitioned and then de-transitioned partially or fully, and why. Because many, like Salem/Hannah do not find the happiness they expected treating symptoms instead of causes.
19
There are two genders/sexes. You’re either male or female. It doesnt get any more complicated than that.
This non-binary trend is not rooted in logic, but in a desire to be different and stand out. Sadly, just being true to who you are is more than enough to stand out, but now we see people wanting more than what they are.
It bothers me that self-confusion is being supported and treated as something to celebrate. You have to accept yourself, natural born gender and all, if you want be happy and discover what makes you special. Claiming to be no gender is an attention grab if not a call for help.
19
The Financial Times published a very insightful article today - "U.S. Liberal Overeach on Gender Identity Risks Benefiting Trump".
I'd suggest that the New York Times editorial staff read it and take heed of its warnings before it unwittingly contributes to Mr. Trump's re-election in 2020.
21
For all its many challenges, living as a non-binary person also often involves a certain kind of privilege. Some people’s bodies (height, facial features, fat distribution, etc.) make them able to look more “successfully” androgynous than others. Some people can get the responses they want from society in terms of gender without medical interventions, and some can’t.
I discovered this when I sought to identify as a genderqueer person (neither male nor female) but wanted people to use male pronouns and a traditionally male name for me. (I was assigned female at birth.) Because I was 5’2” with a curvy physique, I found that no amount of insistence or signaling could make people treat me as anything other than a woman *unless* I underwent medical transition. It was my choice to do so, of course, but I often wonder whether I could have avoided transitioning had the social pressures been fewer, or had my body been less readably “feminine” to begin with. Unlike non-binary identity, trans identity in cases where someone “passes” as their non-natal gender involves an erasure of ambiguity. Living in a more ambiguous self-presentation has its own risks, but it also allows non-binary folks to sacrifice less of their fluidity. It is a privilege not all of us have.
3
"They’d failed, so far, to get their parents, their sister or their two remaining friends to understand and accept that they were neither a man nor a woman..."
Oh my. I will pray for person as they are obviously confused. This is another example of why we need to fund mental health services.
12
The various reviews of intersex populations generally come up with a frequency of around one in 1,500, or .06%. Changing a language to accommodate that minuscule number is not justified.
Further: If the category is approved for legal reasons -- say, providing a "none of the above" choice on drivers' licenses -- its use should be limited to those who are genetically intersex. Self-identification leads to such ridiculous situations as Caster Semenya, born with testes and male chromosomes, and no internal female organs, running as a woman.
No, your sex is your birth condition. Bruce Jenner may have had the operations and the hormones administered but, had he gone through that transformation prior to the Olympics, should he have been allowed to compete as a woman?
Nope.
15
This makes me think that the Mao suit or togas was probably the best ideas humans have ever come up with.
2
Speaking of the Mao suit, it’s interesting that Warren is aping the the gender neutral Clinton style with her uniform dress code, pantsuit and color coordinated jacket. Do these women really believe they have to hide their femininity to compete? Are they making a statement about how they want to be perceived? As asexual? If so, it doesn’t work.
Thank you New York Times for publishing this article; it's much better than the last article about nonbinary fashion I read.
I am a transfemme individual who was "born male", but been transitioning for over 6 years. I identify as a nonbinary transwoman (for simplicity) and use they/them/themself.
I am several years down the line from some of the subjects of this article, and I can understand and remember the struggle that I faced in my early days (but now no longer face). Others in my community face it as well.
Some pearls of wisdom for cis-folks:
* Sex != gender. Don't conflate them.
* They/them/themself is grammatically correct. In fact, between the 1400s and 1800s, it was an acceptable pronoun: https://public.oed.com/blog/a-brief-history-of-singular-they/.
* I have undergone some changes to my body which have lessened my dysphoria, as part of my transition. I wasn't happy with my body before and no amount of pseudo conversion therapy would have made me happy with it, so don't prescribe this action to others. Let them figure things out for themselves.
* There are 2+ genders in many cultures, outside of Judeo-Christian ones (Hijra, Muxes, Two Spirits) & texts (the Torah, which is the basis of the Bible, had 6 cultures for instance).
* There are more chromosome variations than just 2: https://www.who.int/genomics/gender/en/index1.html & some intersex people with "ambiguous genitalia" have been shoved into a binary box when born.
Life is shades of gray, not black & white.
2
@Ngie -
Pearl of wisdom for trans-folks:
* Stop calling people "cis-folks".
3
This should have been a series of shorter articles. It was way too long and confusing - I wonder how many people couldn’t / didn’t finish it. And that’s a shame.
3
I’m only reading the comments, so well-spotted from Dublin!
5
What does our sex assignment at birth have to do with who we are has loving human beings? We must elect government officials who will protect the rights of all.
We have the power to change our country. It's called VOTE !
1
Much love to everyone out their living their truth. Love, love, love. Thank you for sharing your stories. I'm a pediatric nurse and appreciate the chance to gain a better understanding of gender fluidity so I can provide better care to my patients. Thank you.
101
If truth were simply subjective, there wouldn’t be any such thing as truth.
5
I understand that people's minds don't match their bodies.
But what I don't understand, is why we insist of trying to treat the body, not the mind.
75
If we consider the idea of being born non-binary, and gender is construct put upon by society why is there a need for surgical alterations. Why not live in the body you have and alter the society norms only, ie hair, clothes, occupations, pronouns... This was addressed in the article, by Kia. Isn’t the act of physically transitioning, using hormones go against the idea of being non-binary?
63
As someone who is non-binary and considering surgery, it's more that my body is in line with how society sees women. So even though I know I'm agender, the world treats me like I'm a woman. So surgery would make me feel better, and hopefully begin to help others see me as I see myself.
45
@TS Interesting question-- This goes to my point about why is "dresses and make-up" what is female? As a woman into neither, I have found this baffling.
18
@TS
You cannot without contradiction simultaneously hold that one is born (= by nature) non-binary and that gender (identifying as non-binary) is a social construct. One is born with male, female, or ambiguous intersex organs. Hard to say to what extent gender identification is natural and to what extent it is cultural.
11
Live and let live is my motto. But admittedly this grammar issue is nowhere close to any of my priorities.
Back in Europe, in Italy, I met a gypsy hermaphrodite who was also the clan’s patriarch (- matriarch?)
He signaled his - her status for the day by wearing a hat ( sort of Frank Sinatra look) or a scarf. Nobody blinked an eye. The interesting think in retrospect was the simultaneous feeling of both oddity and normalcy. He - She was in total command and obviously obeyed and respected (feared).
7
It seems to me that mere Good Manners suggest we use pronouns that people prefer when talking to them. Otherwise we would be intentionally insulting.
However, there are other, unreasonable, demands being presented about language in the non-binary context.
Gender is not "...assigned at birth..." in the sense of being randomly assigned a college roommate freshman year. For society to be asked to accept that is, frankly, Orwellian. To insist that people who do not accept that term are prejudiced is totalitarian.
Two or three years ago the yerm "...cisgendered..." appeared out of nowhere. Now we are all supposed to use it and accept it and, frankly, accept that being a "...cisgendered white male..." is to be "...part of the problem..."
It is getting very tiresome.
68
When I was 20 (In 2007) my friend told me that they had started using gender neutral they/them pronouns. I had never heard of gender neutral pronouns and had never used they/them before to refer to my friend but I said okay and learned a new word/way to use a word. I will never understand why people have such difficulty with they/them. Humans have gigantic, neuroplastic brains and with that we can learn new ways to use words like they/them. Of course I made mistakes and understand when people make mistakes...but really ya'll its not that big of a deal to learn a new way to use a word. I bet most of the people commenting about how this is asking too much had zero issues learning a friend's new last name when a friend took on a married name. Also, they/them is grammatically correct--go ahead and consult the Oxford English Dictionary.
12
1. It seems that there is so much self-hatred here. As if there is a whole lot more going on for Salem than being non-binary. I wish I could reassure Salem that there are plenty of people out there who would be willing to provide respect and support and wish Salem well, even if we all don't understand exactly what is going on and it's all new for us.
2. This new convention 'they' is not working. I kept reading & thinking the journalist is describing more than one person. You need to write in such a way that an ordinary NYT reader understands who you are writing about- or isn't it just another way of blurring the person's identity?
30
One gender identity term the article seems to ignore is androgyny. If one approaches gender identity as binary spectrum, people who live there lives near the middle of the spectrum experience the richest and broadest part of what it means to be human. Limiting ones identify to the fringes of the spectrum denies one the joys, sorrows and experiences of half of humanity
7
Wouldn't it be nice to be able to get to a place where we could remove labels entirely? I appreciate the British pronoun of "one", as in "One does enjoy a walk in the park." But let's be really clear - the struggles for the rest of us to find the right pronoun/verb agreement severely pales in comparison to the struggles of people trying to live their authentic selves in a world that doesn't accept them for who they are. We need to get over that. People are people. Love is love. Words are malleable.
9
@DMC Except somehow half the population would still get pregnant, worry about rape, be discriminated against at work. we just wouldn't have a name for that group. Not progressive.
8
@DMC Who they are? Salem is a man. That's just biological reality.
3
Due respect to the individuals involved, but I‘m cautious.
First, the use of the plural, non-gender pronoun to identify a non-binary person is at worst confusing and at best doesn’t remotely solve the problem it is intended to solve. Unfortunately “it” has pejorative connotations and so cannot be used to refer to nonbinary individuals. The apparently preferred choice of using the plural neutral pronouns is confusing, as demonstrated in this article when used to refer to a person, but by definition is meant to refer to multiple persons. If we can’t personalize “it,” and I don’t really think that is possible, then wouldn’t it be simpler, and more importantly, clearer, to invent a new, non-binary pronoun?
That said, the difficulty of the social issue, as expressed in the statement in the article tells the tale: “Our brains fight fluidity. We like this or that. Nonbinary presents a lot of challenges.” This is so because binary classification reflects the overwhelming majority of humans. It is the statistical definition of “normal,” which of course completely overlooks the human dimension for those who are not within the “normal” range. That means this is a massive social change, and shows why the people highlighted in the article suffer.
Social change of any kind is difficult to engineer at best. On this scale it is monstrously difficult, calling to mind the adage about how much time and space it takes to turn a battleship. Not to say it shouldn’t be done–just that it’s hard.
133
You know what?
It’s not that hard. The kids get it and they will solve this problem simply by outliving us. Amongst my kids HS friends this is just not an issue. They get it. They respect the individuals choice to define their identity in a way that makes sense to them.
Personally I didn’t get it initially but after a lot of listening, I get it completely and have realized it costs me exactly nothing to recognize others as they wish..... and the payoff is immeasurable and that’s what matters most to me.
209
@Marshall Doris using they is done regularly for single, as well as dual subjects. Example:
Context: Joan went to grab a sandwich.
A: "Where did that person go?"
B: "Oh, they said they were going to the store to go grab a sandwich."
The upside of this is now you're talking about the person and not their assumed properties/behaviors.
2
@Marshall Doris, I agree 100%. I struggled to read this article because of the pronouns. I trust and believe the challenges faced by non-binary people are real, but a new pronoun is not the solution. The solution can’t be about how other people see you or refer to you, but about how you see yourself. You can be an effeminate male or a tomboy female, or transgendered or gender-ambiguous. How you see, accept, and love yourself should be what matters, and then who cares what pronouns someone else uses?
16
It really is astonishing that we can have more than a half-million words in the English language, and not have a gender-neutral singular pronoun.
9
@Frank
We do: "it." But, unforunately for the issue at hand, "it" means something that is neuter or a thing, rather than a gendered human. So "it" won't work.
3
Actually we do have “it” but it sounds very impersonal.
1
@Frank
We do have one: it.
2
The “their/they” usage is really messing with my head. It immediately evokes multiple personality disorder, which of course this is not. Has the community offered up a new singular pronoun? Perhaps it’s time that our language evolve so as to give proper recognition to these humans.
13
Honestly, I don't understand this issue. I then read this article hoping for some level of clarity and I'm still as muddled as before I read it. I understand the biology around homosexuality/bi-sexuality and have always championed their rights to live free in society including the prison of marriage. When it comes to transgender and multi-gender people or gender fluidity. I'm left baffled, I mean I'm not going to discriminate against how people choose to live their lives, but I'm not entirely convinced that it is not a mental condition. In my small mind, trans is a technological construct created by the ability for us to change ourselves to meet our psychological state. But, is that psychological state correct and when do we say it is abnormality and when do we show acceptance (laws, major societal changes)?
If I said I'm a demi-god. You would say yeah right , because you think I'm crazy. Then I go out and find 1.5 MM people who also stridently believe they are demi-gods as well and were reluctant to speak out until I expressed my state of godliness to the world. Should psychologists come out with a new mental state called demi-god? A new human condition? Does this mean now that demi-gods deserve special treatment? Special lululemon branded tights?
My point is how do we know that this isn't a pyschological condition or how do we know that it's a pre-determined fact. How do you know I'm in fact not a demi-god? Or should you accept the fact that I am indeed one?
114
@Johnson
You do not understand it because it is not rational. I feel sorry for these confused people. We need to love them and offer them our help - not encouragement, IMHO.
23
The flaw in your analogy is that a demi-god is a mythological being. In this case, someone born a man who feels they should live their lives a woman or not be bound by societal constructs of gender is still technically operating within those constructs. Saying that this should be treated as a psychological condition is not much different than those who suggested we should "cure" the gays.
3
Johnson,
As a gay man, I appreciate your comment. Unfortunately, transgender activists and other gender identity obsessed teenagers have been parasitizing the gay rights movement for years. They bank on your sympathy for gay people, hoping you’ll extend it to them by association.
Make no mistake: homosexuality and transgender ideology have nothing in common. Gay people don’t need massive medical intervention at the cost of the state. Our minds aren’t so fragile that we’ll leap off a building if someone makes a grammatical blunder. We’re not demanding unisex bathrooms or special physical accommodations. We’re not denying biological reality or science. Most of us—not the politically correct (I hate that phrase but it’s apt) organizations that claim to speak for us—are as baffled as you are and even more frustrated.
26
why is the NY Times so fascinated with the gender politics that appear to affect (hushed trepidation at the mention of actual demographic data) only 1.4 million individuals -- that's just 0.4% of the total population?
that's smaller than the number of children in poverty (15 million, about 5% of the population), of people in poverty (43 million, 14%)? i wonder, is poverty less or more painful than deciding whether or not to wear makeup, or which name to use?
why has "biological sex" become so insignificant relative to "gender" that it is only mentioned once in an article that otherwise uses "sex" to mean "copulation" or "arousal"? why should i be interested in strap-on culture and the euphoria of unboxing?
enough, already. you're talking to people in therapy. but the number of individuals who suffer from domestic violence is more than 12 million. you could focus on them instead.
137
@drollere I tend to agree. I am about as bothered by a biological man identifying as a woman (or vice versa, or neither, or whatever) as I am in someone's favorite flavor of ice cream. but zillions of column inches aren't devoted to the latter, because - sorry - it's just not that important or interesting. And there are far bigger problems in the world than someone's pronoun proving to be awkward.
12
‘We’re all born nonbinary. We learn gender. And at some point, some of us can’t stand it anymore.’
So much for the value of education we're all complementing ourselves for devising.
6
@John Doe
And, of course, the premise that all are born nonbinary is put forward without a shred of evidence.
11
And with plenty of confidence too!
2
There was a cartoon about Trump where one guy says to the other “With great ignorance comes great confidence”.
2
Does it cost you anything to recognize a person as they want to be seen?
No.
Literally no.
Change your language. Give someone the gift of seeing them as they want. It costs you nothing.
11
If you value the concept of objective reality and the idea of a common perception thereof, it does sometimes cost one to “recognize a person as they want to be seen.”
As I pointed out in an earlier comment, there is a disorder called Body Dysmorphic Disorder in which the sufferers see their perfectly normal visages as absolutely hideous. Should I have to go along with that and agree they’re awful looking? Should I give them that support or should I worry that that’s really not very supportive at all?
18
Do you really think that’s all there is to it? The hardest thing for one of the non-binary persons quoted in the article is saying “I am real.” Will the use of “they” and “them” make everything OK for that person? Will that alone make him/her “real”?
5
@Gwe Actually, yeah it does. It is a demand that other people accept someone else’s view of the world, even if that is opposed to their religious or cultural beliefs. It is often accompanied by an assertion that the person might harm himself or herself if others refuse to do so. Pronoun usage or lack thereof doesn’t yet carry a criminal penalty, but it seems to heavily pressured, enforced speech in social groups, academic settings, corporate settings. In other words, use my pronoun or risk losing your job or be kicked out of school. I have a problem with that and what seems to be a relentless agenda pushed by the New York Times and similar national media outlets. I have no problem with the individuals involved and might use their chosen pronouns upon meeting them, depending on the situation, but It can’t be forced on people. This is the sort of thing that I’m afraid will re-elect Trump.
15
Salem may want to consider applying to Hampshire College in Massachusetts. Lots of non-binary students there!
I need a glossary for all these new terms! Happy to let people be whomever they wish, but please explain what it means and don’t corrupt the English language by using a plural when referring to one. Lord knows Trump misuses English enough for us all!
7
I'm OK with personal liberal sexuality decisions of any sort.
I'm NOT OK with variants or heteros running the show.
Everyone just do what you want and stop drawing attention to yourselves! Also I do not understand how they have so much time on their hands to make it such a big deal about themselves - don't they work and have a job? I hardly have time for the bathroom let alone self indulgence on a grand scale.
21
Christ - the complete ignorance of the generational gap in this comments section is blinding. If any of you commenters read David Brooks's piece on the demise of the Republican party due to generational differences, you better sit up. THIS is one of the differences. And if you don't at least listen to trans people, binary and nonbinary, you're going to lose these long-term votes to socialists and communists. Mark my words.
4
@Jacque
Republican? What does this have to do with them? One can be liberal AND reject these gender games.
11
@Jacque
Hear here. ;-)
As the mother of teenagers, you’re 10000000% on point! I thought same when I read David Brooks column. Kids get this.....
1
@Jacque We are not the ones pretending a single person can be a they or a man can be an actual biological woman. Or calling others names over it.
6
I have no problem with using non-gender specific pronouns but think using plural pronouns for a single person is confusing at best, and gives fuel to the fire of thinking it weird at worst. Perhaps a brand new word needs coining?
5
How about this: Let's live and let live on gender and orientational issues and maybe, like, focus on the carbon spewing into our atmosphere at breakneck speed?
We care about the lives of others in some ways--are they conforming to my needs and prejudices?--but not in others--will anyone be left alive in a decent organized human society in fifty years?
Odd.
6
I, frankly, do not care what or how a person defines themselves. Just do not expect me to applaud your identity wishes nor laud your outspoken way as the greatest thing since sliced bread. Each of us has our own problems. Get in line with the rest of us.
37
Thank you, NYT, for this series during Pride month. Props for linking the ContraPoints vid, too.
I highly recommend everyone listen to ContraPoints' (aka Natalie Wynn's) conversation with Ezra Klein for a deeper understanding of LGBTQ communities on social media. Natalie's analysis of the social media (particularly YouTube) landscape is critical for understanding where we're headed with our identity-focused discourse. Interview here: https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/vox/the-ezra-klein-show/e/60651534
1
Now we are essentializing non-binary along with trans, with straight, gay, bi, etc. What would happen if we decided all behaviors are open to all? Your body and your sexual relationships are yours to define. We should not worry what is under your clothes or with whom you are sleeping. Would this be too difficult for us?
9
Sanity at last!
1
"Jacobs spoke about foreseeing a time when people passing each other on the street wouldn’t immediately, unconsciously sort one another into male or female, which even Jacobs reflexively does."
So the truth comes out. An infinitesimally small minority of disturbed people seek to impose their malady on the rest of us. No thank you.
29
There are people who've been fighting against the "gender binary" for a very long time. We're called feminists. We don't believe make-up is part of being a woman. We don't believe how you dress is part of being a woman. We believe individuals are free to decide how to present themselves. We believe you can be a woman without looking like society's definition of "woman," and you can be a man without looking like society's definition of "man." Your biological sex, on the other hand, is genetically determined in almost 100 percent of cases, and that does not change from day to day. I am afraid these "non-binary" individuals have confused society's stereotypes with their biological sex, and since the two don't actually have anything to do with each other, they have become confused about their "identity". What I don't understand is why journalists are confused.
72
@Anne yess!!! thank you! Apparently because it's a hot new topic that brings in the $$. Woman fighting for women's right? Step aside, that's so 20th century.
2
Science deniers?
Gender is biology to some degree. Look closely
We all have aspects of male and female in our personality and way of being. All of us. Yawn.
13
While I have no problem with those who identify as female on Monday and male on Tuesday, I have a lot of problems with the jargon invented in the halls of academia by Gender Studies Programs. Having a variable gender identity does not make you a PLURAL. It merely makes you interesting.
8
As the 60’s radicals who went into academia and created the the noxiously authoritarian PC culture and its accompanying pseudo-academic sociological “programs” that so infects our political discourse retire, hopefully the pendulum will swing back to rationality.
1
how anyone feels about initmate and personal matters like sexual or gender identity is nobody else's business. that said, I am still not comfortable with the awkwardness and confusion of using plural pronouns for a singular individual, just to avoid using gender specific terms. and I am even more concerned about the potential health consequences of manipulating hormones.
12
The only thing that bothers me about this is the pronoun issue. They/them are plural pronouns, not singular. Whenever I read people referring to themselves as they/them, I go nuts inside. I’m not sure why; I need to think on that some more. It feels like they’re avoiding something, hiding something. Bravo for their courage. And when I say they/them/their I’m referring to ALL the non binary people, not just the person in this article. To me he just looks like a man who like to wear dresses and makeup. Nothing wrong with that. Me, I like shaving, very short hair, muscles, and boots. We should all be able to live this one short life the way it makes us happy.
5
Some people identify as neither man nor woman. Gender is fluid. They are not hurting anyone.
Agree on all counts, but hasn’t this article been written already? (Like, a hundred times?)
9
I have absolutely no problem with people identifying with who they feel the are and which identity they are most happy with. But please do not use the words "they" and "them". Those words already have a meaning and are for multiple people and will be too confusing. Maybe a combination of she and he (hes) and her and his (hir) or something like that.
3
We already have the scientific male and the scientific female. Why do we need gender labels? Aren't we trying to get rid of gender roles in society? Why should we create new genders and more means for separation? Just act how you want to act and stop forcing others to label you a certain way.
6
The sooner the labels get up to 15 or 20, the sooner we'll be back to 2. "Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose."
4
I am really dismayed that some commenters here think humans can have both male and female reproductive organs. NOONE can have both testes and ovaries. NOONE can produce both sperm and eggs. There is no third gamete. There is no spectrum of gametes. Sex is binary.
Gender is a social construct and is probably best characterized by two somewhat orthogonal axes rather than a single bipolar continuum.
15
@Dawn
Actually, hermaphrodites can get awfully close to having two functioning sets of reproductive organs.
1
Just call people what they want to be called and treat them with basic respect. It's not hard. Humans are complex creatures, and it makes sense that not everybody falls into one category or another. Why does it bother people so much?
8
@Jenny Why does it bother some people so much that we won't change the world to suit their delusions? No one is a they.
4
I’m an ER doctor, we face this issue frequently at work.
I will call anyone whatever name they would prefer- frankly, it’s none of my business. However- I will not refer to a singular person as “they”. It is imprecise. It is incorrect grammar and could lead to miscommunications and potential errors.
Is “they” the patient? Is “they” the family in the room? Is “they” receiving 100 mg of Tylenol?
It’s fine to ask/demand to be treated however you would like- until such demands burden an overburdened system trying to keep you safe.
At that point, the burden shifts to those requesting atypical acknowledgement to find a way that works for all of us- including them.
61
I suggest the pronoun hxy for the binary singular pronoun and hxys for the possessive. This approach provides is consistent with the binary identification and allows for much less confusion. If an individual prefers the chosen pronoun could by hyx and hyxs.
1
Several years ago while working at a restaurant, I called a customer "m'am" only to very quickly realize my mistake. Not wanting to make the same mistake again, I made an effort to drop gender from casual interactions and observations which made me acutely aware of how frequent our unconscious use of gender can be. Daughter/son became Child or Teenager, he/she became They, boy/girl/man/woman became Person. For example, "Did you seen the girl sitting in the corner at Starbucks today? She had long red hair just like Sarah" is easily "Did you see the person sitting in the corner at Starbuck's today? They had long red hair just like Sarah." It is easier to go from the non-gendered general to the specific so I have no problems using an individual's preferred pronouns when I become aware of the person's preference.
The use of gender, I think, is more habit than necessary - there is no need for a stranger to address me as "m'am" to initiate a conversation ("m'am, you forgot this" can simply be, "excuse me, you forgot this"). I don't need to address children I know/don't know as "bud" or "sweetie." ("Hey, Bud, I like your hat!" can simply be "I like your hat!"). Our habit of unconsciously using gendered language forces identity on people. It really doesn't have to be that way.
8
We need a gender neutral pronoun that is singular. It's absurd to use the words they, them etc, to refer to an individual. Words have meaning, and wrenching plural pronouns into the language in this way creates a confusing narrative, and does nothing to help bring people along toward greater tolerance and understanding.
12
Identity politics is getting deeper and deeper into the weeds of demanding special treatment for every individual case of gender dysphoria that emerges.
Now language itself, we are told, will have to be butchered out of clarity, common sense, and grammatical integrity to accommodate a growing list of post-gender categories.
Gender dysphoria is a very painful, vexing and difficult clinical problem. It goes beyond actual cases of hermaphroditism which are extraordinarily rare.
But biology is binary. It is indispensably male and female. Anything outside of that cannot reproduce. This biological reality is not a social construct.
The human intellect is able to problematize any given issue in the search for deeper understanding. But concepts are not biology.
Cultural memes can reproduce in endless permutations, reminiscent of the many actual uses imaginary numbers bring to math.
But let's not get lost ontologically and confuse biological entities with abstract entities.
The gender odyssey is uninvited. It afflicts people who find themselves existentially unhappy with being born male or female.
Enabled by identity politics, the gender odyssey is now extending further into unhappiness that goes even beyond pursuing hormonal and then gender reassignment surgery.
Where will this road go?
The human intellect when unchecked by common sense can sometimes behave like a child before toilet training.
oz.
31
Too many people are educated beyond their intelligence.
So many people, these days, feel like they don't fit into the social box of their biological gender. Maybe we should encourage viewing a gender as a big tent, not a constricting box.
6
What does non-binary love look like? To truly understand what it means to be binary and navigate a hegemonically binary world, we need to understand how the most basic and strongest of human emotion works.
1
Wikipedia has a good entry on the long history of they/them/theirs as singular. It goes back a long way. And we do it rather often in constructions like:
"Somebody left their umbrella in the office. Would they please collect it?"
Grammar and word usage change all the time and we adjust. For instance we’ve colloquially if not officially compensated for English’s lack of a second person plural with y’all (or yinz if you’re [not your] from Pittsburgh).
And I could rant, for instance, about the misuse of I when it should be me. Or myself when it should be I.
But it’s possible that in 20 or 30 years what is now bad grammar will be considered acceptable.
Language is a marketplace and it naturally produces winners and losers. They/them/theirs may eventually win over time. Or we may come up with an alternative non-gendered third person singular. The marketplace certainly seems to be telling us that we need one.
I’ve personally found that with a little thought and effort, they/them/theirs is not all that hard to hear or use. It does require letting go of one’s resistance to it. That may be the bigger challenge.
6
@Slim Wilson
And I could insist that persons addressing me use my preferred Italian personal pronouns. And make a fuss when they do not. Or I could just go along in society to get along; trying to change he majority to suit my preferences is the beginning of megalomania.
5
@Slim Wilson
Please refer to the ER Doctor's comment posted above yours. Nobody wants an overworked medical provider, at the end of a long and busy shift, making a serious error due to confusion over a singular person demanding that they be referred to by plural pronouns. It's not all about them !
6
I wish non-binary people would pick a different word to use. 'They' is very confusing. Imagine the conversation when trying to book an airplane seat for a non-binary person.
2
The problem with using “they” pronouns is it can cause confusion. When the article said “they experienced bullying from being overweight and getting good grades,” I honestly thought both Salem and Salem’s sister experienced bullying. There probably should have been better editing but it points to the deeper problem that language communicates a lot more than gender and when you try to fundamentally switch one thing, it can create a lot of problems around communication in general.
3
If the population projections are correct, humans will soon completely overrun the Earth's capacity to support us, its other life forms, and to heal itself for our onslaught.
It has occurred to me that the increasing number of people identifying as gay, bisexual, trans, and gender fluid might be an evolutionary trend in humanity. Rather then devoting most of our life force and focus to profligate reproduction of more and more humans and consumption of more and more of the Earth's rapidly depleting resources, these people can devote more of their time and energy to productive pursuits other than making more humans. However, playing endless war games and narcissistic navel gazing is not what I would consider productive problem solving.
5
This is the problem with modern progressivism. There is less concern for root cause than destruction of social norms. Pronouns exist because they convey vital information about a person’s biological sex. This article and those supporting this absurd movement object to the societal associations we make with those words. Completely fair. The solution is to fix the associations, not to obfuscate our language to such a point that neither speaker nor listener can glean any information from content.
Norms are an inevitable component of social groupings. They build cohesion in communities. Instead of trying to build a normless society (i.e. anarchy), these activists would be better served acknowledging outgroups and growing awareness about these groups instead of trying to destroy every ontological distinction the human race has created over millennia.
9
Maybe less focus on the rights of each individual and more focus on society and quality schooling and water and housing and healthcare for all Americans?
3
To those arguing that wrestling with they/them is itself a form of discrimination manifesting itself....
Anyone taking the time to read this article is self-selecting as at least open on the non-binary subject, hoping to learn more. So tagging them with goat horns is not the smartest choice.
The fact that so many well-meaning, smarter than average, motivated people are wrestling hard with trying to understand a mere article is telling.
Why? Because...they/them is an attempt to redefine a word that is among our most common, with a very well established meaning. And that meaning actual contradicts the proposed change.
It's like redefining "yes" from affirmative to negative. To what end?
A new pronoun, please. So we can more easily follow and support our non-binary friends and family.
5
To my fellow grammar sticklers, I balk at your sudden inability to follow this new set of rules, since following rules is what you love. And let's be clear, using they/their in a singular form is accepted nowadays, although admittedly it's typically used in a general sense. The sky should not fall, however, when there's now a specific person to whom the they/their is directed.
5
On another side of the coin, trans people who are assigned female at birth are allowed more lax clothing and gender expression norms in their assigned gender. For us, the questions are "Am I really trans?" "Would it ever be worth it to come out (especially if I sometimes like wearing feminine things)?" In terms of awareness, nonbinary identity exists online and in my college town and in me, but not at home and not in my future workplace. So, to those communities, I'm a weird girl who sometimes binds her chest and wears button downs.
1
@Jacque No one is assigned sex. Sex is observed. This is the climate denialism of the left.
5
No one is "assigned" sex. The human animal is either XX female or XY, male with a very few abnormal chromosomal cases. You can't change your biology. You can reject your biology and challenge the ways your culture prescribes how you manifest your sex but you can't change your biology, no matter what.
3
I hold no bad feelings but I really do not understand; parts of me does not believe and a whole lot of not and no spill from my thoughts. I never understood cross dressing as more than a preference; someone likes to wear a dress or pants and feels comfortable. Clothing and mannerisms are based on cultural precepts and bias- they are managed by compartmentalizing; stilettos in the girl isle and the wingtips in the boy isle. Jesus, Moses, and in many cultures men wear flowing tops. Some have long hair, cropped hair.
I feel there is a movement to remove confining labels, and gender is one of the labels.
3
Cross dressing is not transgenderism: cross dressing is a sexual fetish or perversion where people get sexually aroused by wearing sexually revealing clothes normally worn by members of the opposite sex. They do not reject their biological sex. All transgender people practice cross dressing but not all cross dressers are transgender.
1
I respect that life for these people can be difficult, but I have a lot of difficulty accepting "they/them" as a specific set of pronouns. It really just doesn't work grammatically. It is either a plural or a nonspecific singular pronoun (unspecified/unknown subject/object). I also don't think these people choose to eschew the gender binary as the article title suggests. The bifurcation of gender is very real, and yes, there are people who biologically fall within the cleave between the two halves. I respect their right to live as their true selves, but there has to be a better solution than using language that will never feel right to use.
1
Let us hope that we all continue to live in a world so easy, so comfortable, so gentle, that some of us can afford to wrestle with such delicate issues as this. Most of humanity has been too busy surviving.
10
They pronouns "they/them" should be modified to something that's singular, not plural. There's only one, not multiple individuals. Also, even the most evolved male or female individual may have difficulty understanding non-binary people, but that doesn't mean one can't accept individuals for however they want to be identified, or how they want to live their lives.
1
'We are all born non binary. We all learn gender'
"I am the body" is learned and agreed with. "I am the gender of the body" is learned and agreed with. "I am the mind" is learned and agreed with. Could it be said that "I am confused about my gender identity" is learned and agreed with also? This voice inside that says "I am (something)" that is always changing the something that it is, is unreliable. So we are back to the timeless question of "Who (or what) am I"? What is this "I"?
2
I must admit, I did not read the entire article. But after reading how tormented the patient is, I certainly felt sorry for her, but I also didn't feel like her pain was the result of society's expectations. It felt more like she has a severe psychological problem, and no amount of hormones or preferred pronouns is really going to solve it. I just hope that somehow the patient gets to a happier and more comfortable place.
11
I miss the word "androgyny." I miss the notion that although biological sex is -- except in rare cases -- binary, the manifestations of each of those two states are wide-ranging and overlapping.
When I was an undergraduate psychology major in the mid-1970s, there was a lot of ground-breaking research being done on psychological androgyny. (Thank you, Sandra and Daryl Bem.) The fourfold typology used for both men and women was "High on Masculinity," "High on Femininity," "High on Both Masculinity and Femininity," and "Low on Both Masculinity and Femininity." We were coming to understand that being high on qualities associated with conventional femininity AND high on qualities associated with conventional masculinity was a very good thing, itself associated with high levels of psychological well-being, creativity, ego strength, etc.
As I see it, the definition of what it means to be female or male -- that is, the qualities and behaviors allowed and approved for each -- have gotten painfully narrow in recent yers. I think the pornographication of so much of our world has contributed to that regression back to a restrictive binary.
I can't imagine entering my teen years today. The societal and social media messages of what it means to be female (or male) are so obscene, so oppressive. But I think it's less clear to today's youth how they can reject the societally determined behavioral binary without also rejecting the biologically based bodily binary.
12
Several years ago while working in a restaurant I called a customer "m'am" only to very quickly realize my mistake. Not wanting to make the same mistake again, I made an effort to drop gender from casual interactions and observations which made me acutely aware of how frequent our unconscious uses of gender can be. Daughter/son became Child or Teenager, he/she became They, boy/girl/man/woman became Person. It is easier to go from the non-gendered general to the specific so I have no problems using an individual's preferred pronouns.
The use of gender, I think, is more habit than necessary - there is no need for a stranger to address me as "m'am" to initiate a conversation ("m'am, you forgot this" can simply be, "excuse me, you forgot this.") I don't need to address children I know/don't know as "bud" or "sweetie." ("Hey, Bud, I like your hat!" can simply be "I like your hat!"). Our habit of unconsciously using gendered language forces identity on people. It really doesn't have to be that way.
3
I want nothing but peace and happiness for every person. But I can't help but think all this is getting out of control and no matter how much society bends to accommodate, some people are going to be angst ridden and blaming society for it. Perhaps those Gender Studies majors at college are causing way more harm than anything useful.
15
Thanks for this article and for Salem’s courage.
3
There are only two naturally procreative biological DNA genetic one and only human race species genders.
Gender identity is determined three times before a fetus becomes a baby. At conception, emergence of sex organs and brain development.
While more often than not all three correspond, that is not always the case. And there is nothing unnatural about those differences. They are not mistakes. Nor do they involve any choice.
Leaving the best adapted offspring over time and space is the essence of evolutionary fit one human race species over space and time is the essence of being ' smart' and ' wise'.
Thus as long as all non- procreative gender identities are a minority, the current form of humans will continue to grow and thrive. Until the discovery of DNA paternity, unlike maternity was always in doubt.
2
My contrarian tendencies are beginning to overwhelm my instinct for empathy as it relates to the increasingly complex and widespread issues regarding sexuality, gender identity, etc. Anyone likely to be triggered by an apparent lack of sensitivity on my part, stop reading now! Despite the ever growing volume of discussion focused on the political, sociological and psychological issues intertwined with gender & gender diversity, fundamental questions seem to be excluded from public discussion & academic inquiry. What are the causes underlying the apparent powerful recent changes in sexual behavior and gender identity? It seems highly probable that neurological changes play a fundamental role in the dramatic increase in the population of non-binary, non-hetero adults. Whether as a cause or as an effect, what genetic, environmental or experiential dynamics are involved in these changes in our global population? Understand that these questions arise from my personal experiences and observations over my 70 years living as a multiple college-degreed, generally liberal, generally hetero, life-long athiest white male. I deny any political agenda. I have a clear sense that something fundamental has changed in my lifetime. I feel like one of the proverbial frogs in the stockpot. It seems to me the water is getting warmer, much warmer. I'm worried about how warm it will get. Beyond that, I'm most disturbed that none of the other frogs are willing to talk about water temperature.
10
It is impossible read this article through to the end without noting Salem's recurring experiences in the online world, a world where YouTube and computer games have supplanted real world human interactions.
I can't help but wonder if there are any studies that address the possible connections between the increase in persons identifying as nonbinary and the role which a massive amount of screentime plays in (at least some of) their lives.
19
My son's sweetheart of the past four years identifies as gender queer. They/them/their are their preferred pronouns. It took me while for that to become reflexive, but it did. Now it seems very comfortable and natural.
I find this examination of gender to be fascinating. Long ago, as a teen, I was in the ballet world, surrounded by people who ranged over the gender spectrum. In the course of those years I came to see that gender (as opposed to sex) is a social construct; that qualities of masculinity and femininity are, in large part, assigned by societal norms and customs, and thus are malleable and fluid.
I entered adulthood as a cis-gendered man who had become comfortable with his feminine side. I didn't, and still don't, feel like I'm anything other than male. I just developed a more inclusive view of qualities that are acceptable in a man.
I was lucky. I can only imagine what it's like to grow up in a culture that has very strict norms of masculinity and femininity, and feel unable to fit into that binary. I applaud young (and sometimes not so young) people for exploring and questioning and creating a better paradigm. I'm sure it's life-saving for those who simply cannot identify as a man or a woman. But it's also a boon to us cis-gendered folk who chafe against the limited options that the binary offers us.
138
@hammond if gender is a “social construct” what then are we to make of trans people who go to every length to transform their bodies into that of the other gender?
19
@JLM. Why do some people get breast implants, nose jobs, liposuction, skin bleaching?
2
@JLM
Just because it's a social construct doesn't mean it's irrelevant. Gender means very much to very many, that's why articles like this are so important.
2
As a person who uses they/them pronouns, I am disheartened by the number of commenters that refuse to use my pronouns for a singular person because it is too hard or “ungrammatical.” As this article shows, living as a non-binary individual is not easy. There are days when I want to cry because my body is not masculine enough and because, despite my best efforts to look like and act like a man, I am never recognized as anything other than a woman. However, I am not a man and I don’t want to be one. I am something in between, like many in this article. While this, along with my preferred pronouns, may be difficult for many to understand, I ask that people respect it anyway. It is frustrating so see so many put their love of grammar above their love of other human beings.
I have also noticed many in this comment section advocating for non-binary people to be counseled to love the body they were assigned. I do not see how this is different from conversion therapy, which is illegal in many states. When people such as myself feel despair at the disconnect between our bodies and our identities, and there are solutions such as hormones and surgeries, I do not understand why it would be better for us to be forced to try to connect with a body we do not want for the benefit of other people. Forcing people like myself and those in the article to be counseled to be comfortable with the body we have is no different that forcing someone who identifies as gay to try to love another gender.
110
@MS I think the English language needs a non-gender specific pronoun than they/them. It first struck me when my sister decided not to find out the sex of her baby. During my research for a good pronoun, I stumbled upon the Swedish term "hen". I've been wondering every since what our version of "hen" could be.....
10
@MS
1. "It is frustrating so see so many put their love of grammar above their love of other human beings."
Why not emphasize being called by your name rather than pronouns? If we ever met, I would not refer to you by a pronoun. I would want to know your name. I would expect that what causes more pain is not pronouns but being called "ma'am," "Ms.," "sir" or "Mr."
2. "I have also noticed many in this comment section advocating for non-binary people to be counseled to love the body they were assigned. I do not see how this is different from conversion therapy, which is illegal in many states."
You were not assigned a body (of course, to you it may very well feel that way and I am not dismissing that). You have a body by nature. Conversion therapy is absurd because the therapy assumes there is something wrong with being gay. Those urging you to accept your body are telling you there is nothing wrong with the body you have and those who protest conversion therapy are saying there is nothing wrong with being gay. I am not telling you that you are to change your body artificially to suit the gender that feels natural to you. But your analogy in defense of that action is inappropriate.
47
@MS
Are you speaking of strangers or people you know? If I see someone on the street and I don't know them, how and why should I know what their "preferred pronoun" is? I don't expect random people on the streets to adhere to anything that I'd like them to. They're strangers.
23
Rachel Dolezal was widely criticized for living as a black woman when her race "assigned to her at birth" was caucasian.
How do we reconcile that with people who rebel against their sex? Was one a case of fraud and another a medical condition?
Are there no more categories?
44
@Jeff
The fly in the ointment is that Dolezal was outed by her family. Nobody had any issue with her work as head of the NAACP chapter. Nobody had any issue with the way she was behaving or "presenting" in any capacity. So it seems that you can indeed pretend to be a different race quite successfully for decades, without offending anybody.
3
Yes, you answered your own question. RD endeavored to adopt and somehow emotionally and/or socially benefit and/or gain comfort from her chosen affiliation. Hers is an entirely cultural, emotional, and intellectual conceit.
On the other hand, the clear majority of transgendered and non-binary people are responding to biological processes that precede the onset of secondary sex characteristics.
I can see how genetic African Americans, born into and creating their culture, and their frequently assigned roles in American society, may feel offense at RD’s assertion and may even suffer socially because of it. My question to you is, how do transgender and non-binary people in attempting to live as they feel affect your life in anyway?
@Jeff & Viv: the other "fly in the ointment is that if race is a social construct, how can yu say she isn't what SHE says she is?
10
Here we have an article about individuals enduring gross discrimination and trauma because of societal rigidity\bigotry.
Comments from the NYTimes readership - “learning new pronouns is really hard on me! I’d like to discuss how we can stop language from evolving so I don’t have to think so hard.”
Unbelievable.
24
@Marta There's a difference between language and culture evolving and vs. changing the entire structure of a language. That is based in hundreds of years of linguistic change that occurred naturally over time, not because a niche group decided to force it to happen. As I've mentioned before, this is impossible to monitor. Are we going to start teaching children to use pronouns this way? New immigrants and English language learners? You are setting them up for failure. Changing the way a language works structurally is completely different from changing the meaning of a single word. One is significantly more complex than the other and to dismiss this as simple discrimination ignores the mechanics of of how we use and acquire language.
7
imagine the fire department is called to a burning house. "anyone inside?" asks the captain. "they're in the bedroom, upstairs, hurry!" comes the reply. firefighters charge into the flames and rescue a person. do they need to risk life and limb to look for anyone else, believing more than one person was trapped, or, knowing they got "them" out safely, just get out?
14
@Marta You are asking us to pretend a person isn't the sex they are because they don't "feel like it." As a feminist, the entire concept is regressive and offensive to me.
8
I hope there will be enough professional therapists & Psychiatrists trained to untwine this gender twisted generation. Boy will they need it!
45
I am completely baffled as to why we keep talking about "gender" when it is a completely made up concept. Some humans have vaginas. Some humans have penises. Wearing make-up is not connected to that biology. Fighting is not connected to that biology.
We have stupidly decided that "masculine" and "feminine" are real things. They are not. We still have Latin language assignment of gender to things (a table: la mesa ... a table is feminine gender). Stop the insanity. People have genitals. And act in different ways.
I do think there are too many people who cannot accept their genital fate. If you are born with a set of genitals for one sex, by all means live your life how you want. But don't entangle yourself with body modifications. Learn to accept the physical reality.
Gender does not exist. There are biological differences in humans that are far less important than the way we divide human roles between males and females, calling it masculine and feminine gender identity.
46
@votingmachine, You're simply wrong. "Salem" can wish he's a woman all day long. Wishing doesn't make it so. He can wish all he wants and sill not carry a child. That's a job for a real woman to do.
2
@Ryan I simply don't know what you are pointing to that disagrees with what you said.
1
I guess it's only we Conservatives who see ourselves as someone and something. Icertainly can identify to more than a pronoun
6
@GM No, it is only you conservatives who believe their personal definitions should apply to everyone else.
1
If a “they” marries another “they” are they then theys? And if theys are theys, should I say good for thems there theys? Also, if theys have a kid, is it an its? Anyone replying to mes, mines preferred pronoun is yous.
47
@JBL, somebody has to point out that theys choice of pronoun seems intended to subvert procreation.
4
While I sympathize for those who have struggles with their gender identity, I think denying the gender of one’s birth (when it comes to checking off a box) is as much a denial of scientific fact as those who deny the scientific facts of climate change.
68
@Hugh Jorgen
I don't deny that I was assigned male at birth, I just choose not to accept that assignment now that I'm an adult. The doctor was speaking about my primary sex characteristics (i.e. the existence of my penis) and considering that I was barely moments old at that point, they could not have possibly known anything about how I would experience gender later in my life.
4
@David Dashifen Kees
It's not in their mandate to deal with how you "experience" your gender.
The "experience" of your gender is an intimate thing about you, that concerns only your personal relationships. Your gender is not your sex.
People who have been raped, or had body parts amputated for medical reasons also experience their gender differently after that event. That doesn't mean they're no longer their biological sex.
14
@Hugh Jorgen Sorry don't wish to spend all day saying this but your position is in fact NOT scientific.
2
Really the most important thing to judge anyone by is their character. Are they honest, compassionate, understanding and trustworthy. You only find that out if you take the time to get to know them as individuals.
6
If people want to reject claustrophobic gender stereotypes, that's great. But nobody, unfortunately, gets to opt out of oppression just by changing pronouns. A woman can call herself non binary all she likes, but she's still at risk of rape, pregnancy, discrimination, and the rest. A male can call himself non binary and he'll still be attacked for not fitting gender norms.
It might be better to widen what it means to be male or female and learn to be more tolerant, than to pretend anyone can actually sidestep these categories.
103
I have had these thoughts for awhile now - broadening our acceptance of make and female behaviors and appearance seems like a reasonable goal for our post-modern society.
12
@Fenella. It is also troubling when an individual with female reproductive organs does not detect a pregnancy partially because of a choice to live as a man, which recently happened and led to a stillbirth.
9
Perhaps the language trips us up. My understanding is that Tagalog ( Philippines) has gender-less pronouns, siya.
Using something like this might help. Are other languages with gender-less pronouns. Anyone know?
5
@Bob Chinese.
@Bob
I hear tell that, in English, some people use a non-gendered pronouns called "they."
2
@Bob I'm sure there are many others. In Mandarin he and she (and it) are pronounced the same, though in writing they have different characters.
As a therapist, I’m concerned about clients and therapy that focus on managing the perceptions of other people. Depending on others to help define your identity and self-perception is always going to be destructive and alienating. Expecting others to agree with you on anything, much less a gender in flux, is a hopeless goal.
Therapy works at the individual level and these therapists need to help their clients with their individual issues first. Social change and understanding will follow individual change and understanding.
116
I support people who identify as non-binary. I have more to lean about their experience. And I couldn’t get through this story because of the use of “they” in reference to an individual. First thing in the morning, pre-coffee, I was utterly confused about who was who or doing what, and I gave up. Understanding demands clarity, and so does language. We need a new pronoun.
17
@Ludlow
Exactly. It's worth noting that forced changes in words cause immense problems in society and particularly science.
Changing the accepted meaning of a word is isolating, and creates silos. Those that know (and agree) with the new definition, and those that are left out - either because they do not know or because they do not agree with the new definition. Division like that is not a peaceful way to run society.
Bastardizing words is especially not a good way to run science. Most seasoned scientists will tell you that there are just two main problems in science.
Firstly, too many people use different terminology to solve the same problems. Secondly, even more people use the same terminology to address completely different issues.
This "gender binary" business has nothing to do with biological sex, and consequently has no place on drivers licenses, forms, etc.
1
Gender is a construction. It is performed. If our newest generation is examining the limitations of what their parents constructed for themselves it would be bracing for everyone so sure of the nature of their own identity to take a deep breath and help these new “gendernauts.” I believe the article focusses too much on one troubled youth growing up surrounded by too little diversity. I wish Salem well. Those of us who are fellow outliers in other categories of life struggle as well with how to be seen in this crushingly hostile world. Age helps us understand that the slings and arrows of our peers should never define us. It is the nature of life to resist rather than to be swallowed into the cold comforts of banality.
6
@Southern
I am now a gendernaught. Thank you for this. 😁
3
I find New York Times Readers' fixation on the use of 'they' as singular quite bizarre. First of all, 'they' is used all the time when when referring to someone in the third person whose gender you don't know, and second of all.. language and grammar evolve.
I'm far more horrified by Oxford dictionary's change in the definition of the word 'literally' to include: "Used for emphasis while not being literally true.‘I was literally blown away by the response I got’" But here I am, still standing.
We assign new meaning to words all the time. If you're so up in arms about using the pronoun 'they' to refer to an individual, look a little deeper as it's quite clear that it's not about the term.
8
@Agree! Language has never been static. It evolves and people adjust.
@AB
Wes just don't want to be corrected all the time by theys.
5
I often think about how much better off the world would be if we could just accept people as they are, regardless of how the present themselves.
All too often people are put into boxes, and when someone pushes outside the box they are, in most cases looked at differently. Often, they are mistreated because of it.
Will society really fall apart if a man wants to present as a woman or a woman wants to present as a man, or somewhere in between? I hardly think so.
11
It is my deep and strong position that all this labeling is terrible. All of this is normal and anyone who is actualized knows they are not the same at all times and even 10 things at once. We all know we can be super "butch" when threatened or super "femme" when a friend needs a tender touch - and I hate even those words but I am limited by my own language. So good, be normal, but what troubles me is that these people are putting themselves into boxes while trying to not be in boxes - the irony is harming them. Moreover, there is so much research on the impact of labeling and even in this article one of the people thought perhaps they were trans but figured out it was non-binary. This proves my point to a certain extent: why do you need to know which box you are in? How about focus on being you?
14
It makes me very happy to see people living their truths and expressing themselves outside of the confines of societal norms. However, that being said, I am also a strict grammarian and I bristle at the notion of using plural pronouns in the singular. And I resent the insinuation that I am somehow ignorant or should be ashamed if, heaven forbid, I don't use the correct pronoun. Gender pronouns are words; that is all. They do not dictate how one is supposed to present oneself. If one presents himself/herself as somewhere in between genders, what is so wrong with being addressed with the pronoun that corresponds most closely with the gender you clearly favor? Other than the rare genetically intersex individuals, everyone else clearly favors one gender or another.
6
You can’t have it both ways: claim to support people living outside of societal confines, AND insist that everyone “clearly favors” one gender within a binary. By whose standards, by what criteria? Salem doesn’t appear to “clearly favor” one or the other, nor does the therapist pictured in the article. Who are you to decide what gender they are?
@AnnaT, Salem obviously presents phenotypic characteristics concordant with biological males (XY) and the therapist clearly presents phenotypic characteristics concordant with biological females (XX). I mean, it is plain as day with those two individuals. People can identify/call themselves anything they want; I really don't care. But for so many practical reasons (demographic, medical, physical, etc.), the binary exists. If one is not willing or able to go "all in" towards one side or the other, I default to the pronoun that corresponds most closely with his/her phenotype.
2
The language of all this is rather complicated and harder still to comprehend as things change so fast.
I ask an innocent question and not to belittle anyone, but has the LGBT community always been this prevalent in society? They just hidden or adapting or worse just taking their own life?
I wish more people would be their unique selves and not try to fit in and accept being a gear in the machinery.
As an Aspie I have some idea, but I will never really know. All I can do is accept and respect all people (ALL!). I wish others could too. We are as lonely people on this planet cut off from anyone save our senses (which usually are distorted). We don't understand each other. Why am I in this meat-sack lonely for love or just words of kindness? I am shy being hurt so much, and that doesn't help.
All I can say is accept yourself and accept others (the good with the bad). Some people will never know. Some don't care.
There has to be something better than this "world" we now occupy and grow older in. Right? If I have no hope (or even faith) why live?
I want intellectual stimulation, and it's always those on the outside who see the realness that provide me with such pleasures.
I guess, I too am crying out!
2
I saw a sign recently that said, "Using a person's preferred pronouns is suicide prevention." To my mind, getting over grammar qualms is worth it to show respect for people who are trying to live with integrity in a hostile world.
292
@kjb
An excellent sign to be sure. But, I might propose an alteration: remove the word "preferred." To make something a preference implies that it might not be met; removing that word make the naming of a person's pronouns a statement, not a request.
7
@kjb: I might point out that the pronoun 'they' is routinely used in the English language when we don't know the gender of the person we are referring to. E.g. 'They almost ran me over' when referring to the unknown driver of a car.
6
@kjb Thank you for sharing that. Even though I am on the younger side I still have trouble adopting and understanding this change in genders/pronouns etc. But when you frame it like that... small potatoes to me... I am going to keep that sign in mind going forward.
4
I'm a cisgender straight woman, and I am struck, as I read these comments, about how many focus on the grammar of the situation. While I agree that getting used to using "they" instead of "he" or "she" is an adjustment, I think it's something I can handle, in the name of helping those with more serous struggles happening within them. Let's not focus on our discomfort with words, but instead show empathy to those struggling with gender fluidity in a world that is often not ready for them.
8
@Susi - but it can become a slippery slope by which every individual finds a victimhood story and wants recognition of their individual identity, and this further fractures efforts to be part of a greater society. Aren't we already too disunited as a country? All this me, me, me navel gazing is not in fact making us happier - we have no more common purpose, no sense of being part of something greater than our individual self. It's not healthy.
10
@Susi I do not accept the term cisgendered. So please do not refer to me as such and as a respectful person, I know you will honor my request.
8
This is a far left issue, that will alienate the left and moderates, and further solidify the right. I’m not saying the writer is right or wrong, I’m just saying focusing on issues like this will only be a win for Trump.
57
This is an acceptance issue. I think even some conservatives can find it within themselves to accept rather than deny and degrade those unlike themselves.
@Er You are correct about this being an acceptance issue. However, I think what bothers many on the right (and in the middle as well) is, if we accept this, what else will the left expect us to accept? Those on the left don’t seem to realize how wack-a-doodle some of their issues sound to the rest of the population. “Ban this, outlaw that, accept anything and everything WE progressives believe or we will shame and vanquish you.” That’s where the resistance to otherwise acceptable changes (like using “they”) begin for the rest of us.
9
@Er
Nah, it's a cultural studies/critical theory, anti-science, narcissism issue, and it already has alienated a lot of people—especially young people. Unfortunately, they don't get sympathetic (or any) articles in the Times.
11
I hope everyone finds peace and productivity.
Acceptance is out there; the internal acceptance seems to be the real issue. Even those Phoebe and the Unicorn books demonstrate great internal turmoil in the individual. I don't know if the hyperfocus on it is helping or making things worse.
2
I long for the day when people feel comfortable expressing themselves within the biology that they were born with. Sometimes I wish I was taller, but I'm stuck with my current height. What I've learned is that I get to define who I am, rather than what cultural expectations of what my height/weight/shape are.
In these types of stories, I find that many people are rebelling against culture and societal expectations. I fully support people expressing who they want to be, but I'm uncomfortable with the "denying our biology" component of it.
37
@Jeff and while I don't like to participate in the "worst trauma" Olympics, being short, especially for a male, in our society, can effect the way you are treated and perceived.
3
@Jeff Indeed. People can deny it all they want but at the end of the day it's still there. Even with surgery, the DNA remains the same.
I am completely supportive of anyone who is suffering in this manner but I also see it as a strictly mental health issue. Gender dysphoria is very similar to body dysphoria in that the individual is very confused or struggling with distortions of who they are. Anorexics see a very fat self even when they are dangerously underweight. There are or were several pro anorexia sites around the net that urged people to accept them as is. How is that fundamentally different from a trans person who removed perfectly health parts of their body because they think they are a different sex? Both are distortions of self imo.
9
"What if our most fundamental means of perceiving and classifying one another is illusory and can be swept away?"
What if? Well then, just as much, what if it's not? Asking the question like that implies the other possibility.
Then what have people done to themselves? Where are they left?
This seems to me to be much like getting a big tattoo on the face. Sure, it seems like a good idea now, but what will it seem like in 30 years, as they change and society changes around them?
I see in this pain now, danger, and a vast risk of massive pain in the future. Things change, constantly. The idea today that seems to be catching fire can be the pet rock in thirty years.
I fear for them. This isn't negative judgment. I wish them well. But oh my, the risk.
21
It is one or the other by nature. Humans are not on a comic book character scale. Male or Female and all other characterizations are not identifiable or accepted. If someone believes or says differently, they are on their own. Otherwise differentiations could be of multiple choices based on spurious reasoning or whatever basis is established by attention seeking individuals.
5
We live in a world where it is common to expect others to live by one’s own values. What if we listened for understanding before expecting what is familiar and comfortable? Thank you to the courageous people in this article for sharing their stories. May we learn from your experiences. I value each of you just as you are.
3
I'll respectfully call anyone what they would prefer to be called by, but my rule is : be simple about it, not complicated. Also use your available organizations to hire quality PR firms to promote the cause. We are looking at at least a thirty year project of having these pronouns gain ready acceptance in this country, or at least on the coasts. Triple that for the South and Midwest.
4
We are currently faced with a significant legal civil rights problem as well as an important cultural/social problem in regards to treating transgender people fairly. So at this point in time, gender identity has become a very significant part of people identifying themselves.
I hope, in the future, we achieve a more balanced perspective on self identity. I do not even begin to think of myself as male/female or other. My identity is that I am a parent, a family member, person with an ethical standard, a person with a certain job, a person with an interest in the arts, gardening, cooking, politics, foreign languages, travel. None of the central aspects of my self identity have any relationship to gender.
That said, right now we need to recognize that oppressed peoples are legitimately focused on the source of their oppression.
3
Halfway into this very long story, we get a thorough account of Salem's history, which includes an unhappy adolescence (obesity, bullying, social isolation) that left Salem lurching from one radical online subculture to another.
To a dispassionate observer, such a troubled history would raise urgent questions: for instance, is it possible that Salem's nonbinary identity is a manifestation of body dysmorphia, paired with an intrinsic human need to belong to a community?
I find it revealing that so many people discover and commit to nonconformity in politically radical subcultures of the internet, where ideas about gender and sexuality have calcified into something that almost resembles a religion, right down to the elaborate linguistic inventions — "deadname," "assigned at birth," the proliferation of pronouns and identities.
I say all this as someone who blanches at traditional gender roles and who has rejected a fair number of them in my own life. But I can't accept the idea, stated here, that "we’re all born nonbinary. We learn gender. And at some point, some of us can’t stand it anymore.” Well, no. It seems like plenty of us are learning to be nonbinary, too.
157
@Michael
this is a brilliant post that captures a lot of what is going on with this set of issues
14
Best comment here.
8
I fully support the right of everyone to live in the manner they choose, including refusing to identify as either male or female. No one should ever have to go through life pretending to be something that doesn't feel natural to them.
That being said, we have got to come up with new pronouns to replace he/she in these cases. "They" and "them" are not gender-neutral singular pronouns; they're used to designate more than one individual or, alternately, a person of "unspecified" (i.e., unknown) gender. That is not the case in the situations being described here. There is a gender; we just don't have a word for it yet.
Using they and them in these situations is both grammatically incorrect and extremely confusing, and I think it's doing a disservice to folks such as Salem to continue to employ this wording rather than simply designate new pronouns.
6
Doesn’t everyone define gender for themselves? I mean, there are very few folks out there ( in America at least) who conform 100% to the stereotypes of their gender.
I’m female and like to cook and knit, but also run and hike. Most days, I wear pants but occasionally choose a skirt. I occasionally put on makeup.
I’m not a “woman” when I’m cooking or wearing a dress and then a “man” when I’m on a sweaty hike. I - like everyone else - am just a person with a diverse array of interests, skills, and proclivities.
105
Yes, but on those days when you wear pants and no makeup, do you require everyone to address you as “Sir”?
3
@MDB
No, of course not! And that was one of the points of my comment.
6
I respect all differences in people but this seems to me like a call for attention more than an actual need. A person who is trans and looking to transition is a legit situation where they must endure non stop medical and psychological processes not to mention enormous expenses and public scrutiny. It takes amazing courage and time for them carry out this objective. On the other hand this binary movement seems to be for those who want some of the current well deserved sympathy trans people get by only simply declaring they are now binary and demanding pronouns be used. The fact the articles mention schools with many binary kids makes this look like a fad. Sorry if this seems insensitive but it is just what I think.
39
So, actually, you do not respect all differences. Many of the creatures on our planet- insects, frogs, many mammals and humans have gender fluidity. Nature is never wrong.
I am confused about the difference between sex and gender.
If we accept that sex only refers to our biology and gender is only a social construct, then we also accept that gender is determined by people's characteristics or how people perceive themselves. This means that certain characteristics that society attributes to people (as we accept gender as a social construct), such as being masculine, feminine or not being any, would help determine one's gender.
Couldn't a male, then, with feminine qualities identify as a man? Does the manhood of that person can only be determined by such qualities? What are the boundaries of being a man, a woman or a non-binary? How can one know that he/she/they feel like a certain gender?
3
I started one comment, then another, then a third. Because none of it is quite right. And that's the point, isn't it?
External rejection is a real problem. But self-rejection - that's tough. This all would be easier if it didn't seem so important to sort us all in the first place. And if we all didn't play right into it from early childhood.
I guess I'm just stumped because I don't care about mating habits of other consenting adults - I'm too busy trying to handle mine and my partner's.
The only thing I might say is that, whether it is surgery, hormones, voice lessons, whatever...renovating the externals is unlikely to touch the internals significantly, unless you are truly 100% misidentified.
6
Sadly, making a big deal of this issue hands Trump a million votes or more.
32
"What if our most fundamental means of perceiving and classifying one another is illusory and can be swept away?"
It's not and it can't.
20
This article was beautifully written, and I am so encouraged to see the Times writing about this.
Some of the unkind comments here are frankly disturbing, given that they're inaccurate as to the nature of gender-neutral "they" language usage; and secondly, that they consider their 'right' to use language pronouns that supersede basic human decency in treating others kindly, even if they don't understand what they're going through.
3
@Lmca Kindness does not consist of forcing the rest of us to pretend someone is neither male or female. It is not kind to erase biological reality.
4
I don't understand why a non-binary person wouldn't embrace a psychological stance of being neither male or female. Why isn't androgynous identity a solution? If a non-binary person doesn't appear to know what exactly they should look like, why not stay as you are made biologically, but take it from there psychologically?
I gather it is the fixed role of conventional male and female roles that disturb a non-binary person. Surely, by now, most of us know there are a multiplicity of ways to express your roles within certain parameters. It looks so painful to struggle like this. I don't see a good solution for this issue as it stands described in this article.
7
This article does an excellent job of capturing and explaining some of the crushing challenges of living as a non-binary. What non-binary individuals endure in this state of both self and social dissociation is difficult to imagine.
The struggles expressed by many readers with the "demands" and "confusion" caused by the grammatical challenges of coping with non-binaries captures the very essence of a society that doesn't get it to the point of the absurd. Imagining a day in the life of a non-binary might be a great place to start for all of those coping with the grammatical challenges this condition presents. A willingness to look outside your silo and have some empathy would help also.
2
People have a right to be called what they want. And I have a right to not have people in my life who irrationally demand this type of effort. "They?"
27
There are two genders, and the distribution is bimodal (not binary). Therefore, some people fall in-between. But the statistical chances of landing EXACTLY between the two distributions is nearly zero. Most people will fall closer to one than the other.
I think a lot of effeminate gay men like myself know this and despair at the current trends today. I have a powerful body that has helped me do well in the world of male sports, but my sensibilities and my mannerisms have always been feminine. My teammates used to tease me about it, and the boyfriends that I have had (and continue to have) LOVE that combination of male physical prowess with femininity.
I suspect that much of the trans movement today is due to a discomfort with effeminate men and masculine men? But is the answer to carve out fake genders and inject ourselves with hormones??
Perhaps had I grown up now, social media and "progressive" teachers would have pressured me to "transition". I had mostly female friends and played with My Little Ponies (remember those!?). But fortunately I grew up in a tolerant community in the 1980's in the Mid-South. It was understood by everyone I would grow up to be a man "with a little sugar in his tank", and that was OK.
Some may wish to transition, but I refuse to believe there are as many "people born in the wrong bodies" as everyone seems to claim these days.
231
@Nate According to the NYT's own contributing psychiatrist, the true rate of severe gender dysphoria is 1 out of 20,000 people: https://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/23/opinion/sunday/richard-a-friedman-how-changeable-is-gender.html
The current fad for a rainbow of 'genders' is media driven prurient hype, encouraging hundreds of thousands of ordinary homosexuals to seek medical mutilation, with the additional benefit of attracting a great deal of attention. However, inflicting hormonal or surgical mutilation of minors is severe child abuse, and should be punishable by long prison terms.
44
@Someone else I agree completely!
8
Nate,
Gay man to gay man: you are far too generous. For understanding MTF transgender women, read Dr. Anne Lawrence, herself a transwoman, or Ray Blanchard, though you’ll have to wade through a lot of garbage from indignant activists get to what he actually says.
Everything else is a fad. These are attention seeking young people who fetishize victimhood because victimhood is social capital in their peer groups. Brown University just republished the controversial rapid onset gender dysphoria paper from last year. You should find and read it. It’s a rigorous examination of the recent phenomenon.
19
There are a lot of comments here that are critical of the introduction of new modalities of identity not because these commenters are opposed to the lives or desires of the gender nonbinary, but because they feel like the way the gender nonbinary folks are going about articulating themselves (through the invention of new identities/modalities, etc...) is somehow or in some way untrue.
Just because someone calls themselves something, doesn't make it "so." But if you believe this, you have to be able to train your critique on your own ingrained norms as well. These norms for most of us are "male" and "female" which in their own ways are every bit as arbitrary as any of the terms that have recently been employed by the gender nonbinary. It doesn't take too long to realize the artifice of even the most "male" or "female" identities. Maybe it's a tonka truck that you didn't like, or a time when you didn't feel like a real "woman" or "man." We all have those moments that give the lie to the most engrained parts of our gendered identities.
Now maybe for just a moment we should consider how the constant and continual artificial perpetuation of "man" and "woman" as identities has given rise to the identitarian strategies of the gender nonbinary. If they are overly reliant on categories of identity, is it any wonder? That overreliance is the very basis of our society. And honestly, if anyone is close to figuring it out and taking it in a new direction, it's probably them, not us
4
@Jeremiah Crotser Those are not arbitrary. Those are biological realty.
Biology makes it so: XY male. XX: female. Humans are biologically binary animals. Whether you accept or reject that biology and how you express it, is a whole different issue, more along the realm of the emotional and psychological aspects of being human but sex, biology is not assigned or fluid or interchangeable.
I hope non binary individuals will respect my choice of any language I choose to use. Respect always has to run both ways.
28
@Shamrock Of course I would, right up until the moment that you don't respect mine. My pronouns are they and them. What are yours?
1
@David Dashifen Kees
You are being grammatically inconsistent by using the singular possessive pronoun 'my'.
Consistency requires you to say "Their pronouns are they and them." Color me confused !
8
As far as I know, we male and female straight people never asked for a new label (cis) but one was assigned to us anyway. The authoritarian nature of the new-speak is a deep turnoff for me. That some good hearted people and/or people deeply invested in seeming woke welcome the opportunity to garble language (plural pronoun for an individual) and re-label themselves cis so they can participate in delusional thinking does not create a mandate for everyone else.
Poor Rachel Dolezal never had this kind of support for her deeply felt and fully lived identity. What is the difference? Why are some non-reality based identities celebrated and others rejected out of hand? It seems to me that if we legally and culturally accept some, we have to accept all. If we don't, then aren't we being as arbitrarily restrictive as some say the gender binary is? It doesn't pay to think critically these days.
154
I’ve never understood straight people’s aversion to being called “cis-gender.”
It is not an arbitrarily invented ideological term... it is a scientific, clarifying term used in the medical community to differentiate between e.g. biologically female people who identify as more normative women, versus biologically female people who identify with another gender identity/lifestyle.
The clarification is important for healthcare providers because cisgender people require different approaches and types of medical care than people with minority gender identities.
1
@Katie
Read up on the Hypatia feminist journal controversy:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypatia_transracialism_controversy
And, Emma, it is indeed ideological. The sex-gender dichotomy is the definition of ideology. It's a purely cultural framework with no basis in scientifically established fact. You can't even prove it! It's not falsifiable; the argument for its existence is a perfect circle.
5
Emma Kathryn, the term cisgender was invented by a German sexologist in the 1990s and then came into frequent use amongst the gender studies crowd. It is not a medical term of art although some doctors use it no doubt.
The word cisgender’s meaning is clear: to describe a person whose gender matches his or her biological sex. Most of us simply call that normal and don’t need a new label for it. That is why many straight people have an aversion to the term. It attempts to turn us into just another letter in the LGBTQA alphabet identity hit parade. We are not. We are the indisputable biological norm and need no term other than man or woman to describe us.
13
I’m emotionally drained from reading this article then turn to the comments and find the biggest effect it had on readers was annoyance at the use of the plural pronoun. I can’t say that I’m binary, but it sure would have been nice (or would be) to not have the pressure of conforming to maleness/not femaleness. In our culture, we just can’t allow anyone to be whatever they are or want to be if they don’t conform to rigid, acceptable categories (which all too often means white, heterosexual, cisgender male). Anyway, I was moved by this article and I wish these folks the best. I admire their courage in their pursuit of authenticity.
9
Except in rare circumstances, XX defines female and XY male. People might be males who like to wear dresses and makeup and arrange flowers or women who present as butch or people who prefer to wear dresses or suits at different times. But these people are still men or women — not something in between, not two people in the same body.
58
@Bookworm8571 Sex vs gender, not the same.
Here's a question that has bothered me for many years: Why is it that we need to specify gender in so many documents? Is my gender relevant to driving, for example?
10
@Up There
In documents where identity is actually important, such as a license to drive that is assigned specifically to you, then gender (with the rare exceptions discussed in this article), along with age, are the two most immediately validated identifiers.
As to your specific, I'm sure you are aware that gender is VERY statistically relevant to the manner in which you drive.
1
Not to driving, no.. but for identifying bodies, yes (re: licenses.)
1
@Up There Excellent question! I imagine it goes back to when women did not have full legal rights. It does seem irrelevant and unnecessary today.
I can't help but wonder if the hundreds of chemicals that have invaded our bodies in the past decades, especially those that have been shown to affect human hormones, have something to do with the proliferation of people who are trans or non-binary.
My heart goes out to everyone who is "different" from the herd. It's hard enough to be female in what is still very much a world-wide patriarchy.
13
@Samsara
You might try googling "The Estrogenizing Environment"
1
Biology is clearly not so simple as XX and XY, just look at all the variants of the sex chromosomes and you will quickly realize that, but it also cannot be driven by an anecdotal wish list where anyone can pronounce that their gender is "THIS". We are absolutely NOT non-binary at birth but rather there are genetic phenotypes that generate behavioural, (sometimes social and sometimes physical infrastructure and yes even both). The vast majority of people are gender male and gender female and while that is not a fact that many of the LGBTQ+ world want to hear it is biological reality. That said there is no reason to then say "that remaining percentage is false" because that is also incorrect. We truly do not know the inherent causes of variant gender and I do question that given enough time there may very well thousands of so called genders which who knows may be true but I fear that our current Western Society allows for a lot of time of intra-personal and maybe not enough about survival, ie: I knew an 8 year old who wanted a sex change and I recall reminding her parents that when she was 4 she told me she wanted to be a pony when she grew up. All that to say we need to pursue this issue with openness and not the current standard of each extremism where it is ALL OR NOTHING. Maybe we will find that there are 10 theoretical genders and 990 self identifiers will feel hurt forever but that has to be better than there only being 2 which is utter biological nonsense.
2
They are not "variants". They are abnormalities. Just because there are babies who are born missing arms or legs or toes, we have not changed the description of a normal human being as having 4 limbs and 10 toes.
I fully support people's right to identify themselves and live their lives however they choose. And I just don't get why some people are so threatened by another person's choices. It doesn't harm anyone.
However, can we just create a new pronoun for non-binary people? Trying to read this article, using a plural pronoun to refer to a single person... it scrambles my brain. I mean, we add new words to the dictionary all the time; it shouldn't be a big deal.
Maybe I'm just too old.
7
Because it is just not about "pronouns". Look at what has happened in Canada and the U.K. where "equality acts" have given males access to rights, opportu cities and spaces that women fought long and hard to obtain and have left women with no way to push back. Males are encroaching into what used to be considered safe spaces for females: women's prisons, women's shelters, women's sports, women's dorms and on and on. Males are showing up at women's waxing salons demanding to have their testes waxed by female employees. The erosion of women's rights is happening right in front of our eyes with the most frightening part, the brainwashing women have been subjected to with so many of them openly "embracing" this erosion without realizing what is really going on: a new insidious form of oppresive mysoginistic patriarchy.
1
This story perpetuates the myth that non-binary people all want to switch genders. Not so.
2
Species dysphoria is also a thing, with its own Wikipedia page. "Species dysphoria is the experience of dysphoria associated with the feeling that one's body is of the wrong species." It's only a matter of time before we see the corresponding article here about it.
33
The biggest issue that comes up is that there are 72 different genders currently and how do we determine where and when people can and can’t mix. For example in the UK there’s a big push to make all change rooms restrooms etc. completely gender-neutral. But a lot of women do not feel comfortable getting changed in front of other men.
The second issue is one of self ID currently in Canada any man can say he’s a woman and I access any female only places such as shelters change rooms. When abuse victim complains about having to share a room with a man it was threatened with the human rights complaint
You also have the issue where rapists are claiming to be women and the statistics get written that way. There was a case in the UK where rapist was put into a female prison rape for five more women before being moved out.
It’s simply not as simple as there is no gender. When abuse victim complains about having to share a room with a man it was threatened with the human rights complaint
12
Sounds like a new, insidious, dangerous form of patriarchy to me. We, women, fought so hard to gain the right to safe spaces, opportunities and rights only to have them invaded by males who even there to tell us they know better than we do what being us is all about. Gaining more privilege and rights by taking away privilege and righrs of others by force sounds like very male behavior to me.
2
As an English Major, I can get behind it all, except for using "they" for one person. It's ultimately unworkable, and only gives fuel to those who find the whole topic threatening.
10
@Rose As an English major, you might find it interesting that the Oxford English Dictionary—who should, if anyone would, know what they're talking about when it comes to the English language—traces the use of singular they back to the 1300s.
https://public.oed.com/blog/a-brief-history-of-singular-they/
I accept that there is a true gender identity issue at the root of some of these individuals’ experiences.
But it also seems that there is a body dysmorphia, not different from individuals who are anorexic in a false need to be skinnier, or who get disfigured by multiple plastic surgeries (irrespective to gender), or who take steroids or compulsively need to work out to get jacked.
At the root of these aforementioned people’s struggles is a need to be inherently different from what they are, and they never actually are happy with what they see in the mirror.
22
@David M
I'm a non-binary person who does not struggle with body dyspmorphia. I could stand to lose a few pounds and I sometimes wonder what it might be like to transition physically, but the former isn't what we're talking about here and the latter is more on the level of speculation and imagination for me.
Not all of us seek transition.
3
So we can agree that being non-binary is about gender and not sex as human animals are biologically binary: male or female, with very few cases of abnormalities, that can not be changed and very different from individuals who call themselves "non-binary" beacuse they reject their biological reality, dysmorphic individuals? If so, wouldn't playing to their rejection of reality make things worse for them? Isn't calling them women or saying they are "no different than women" a disservice to them?
How other languages, with masculine, feminine and neuter nouns, cope with this will be interesting to see. Maybe ditch masculine and feminine for neuter.
The use of the singular "they" is hard to get used to. It always reminds me of plural majestatis.
In Germany there is the right to enter "diverse" as gender into the ID since December. A request in federal parliament in May this year showed that 70 people so far had made use of this.
Furthermore, while there might be as many individual perceptions on Gender as there are individuals, there are only two sexes. One that creates male gametes, and one that produces female gametes. There are no non-binary gametes, and only the binary ones are able to reproduce themselves.
I am hoping for every person who feels nonbinary that they find themselves and their own identity. That they do not fall into the hands of charlatans, who want to take advantage of their insecurities and vulnerable identity. Be them doctors, pharmacists, psychologists, other insecure people.
And I want to add one more thing: It is o.k. to be straight. Seeing this used as a kind of insult in this article is highly irritating.
23
Seriously interesting how many more people are concerned about the pronoun and not the person.
I’m more interested in how we will view all of this in 20 years.
“One” seems to be a perfectly good solution to the plural “they.”
8
On the one hand, according to Kai who is nonbinary, “we’re all born nonbinary. We learn gender.”
On the other hand, according to most people who are gay, sexual orientation is inborn and not learned.
Both Kai and binary gay people are in the LGBTQ group. But they seem to disagree about the origins of their state. So gender is learned but sexuality you’re born with? I think Kai might need to consider their statement a bit more.
15
@Laura Sexual orientation and gender are two different things and these concepts are not mutually exclusive. Most of us do not choose whom we are attracted to. We also learn what it means to be a man or a woman and the pressure to conform to one or the other are immense, however arbitrary some of the distinctions between what is masculine and what is feminine may be.
@Laura
I'd say Kai is totally right on this. Gender is removed from sexuality - it is a social construct - fully and completely - it is the societal norms to which "males" and "females" are expected to conform to and those norms are completely changeable depending on the culture and era at which you are observing.
What we may see today as 'feminine' - lets say wearing long, curled wigs, lace and makeup was masculine if you are looking at the 1600's. Men in today's Thailand wear what western men would consider to be a dress -a piece of women's clothing, but it is not considered to be feminine there. Masaii women shave their heads - something that we in western cultures generally consider to be 'butch' - but there it is feminine. In the US we think of tech work (computer programming) as a mainly male profession and feel the need to encourage women to take it up - in India it is often considered to be women's work... not macho enough for men to do.
That is gender, yes it is learned, no it hasn't anything to do with sexuality and I can understand why it frustrates people. If you are already struggling with your sexuality and what society expects from you vs how you feel, to add in the pressures to 'be' either feminine or masculine cannot help, especially when the choices forced upon you - what to wear, how to cut your hair, what to enjoy doing, what job to have - are basically random and based on nothing but the fad and fashion of the moment.
1
I suppose we are all non binary to a greater or lesser extent. I certainly hav e my "male" days and "female" days and traits. In terms of dress our society allows women more freedom to flow back and forth than it does men. One day a flowy skirt and heels, the next jeans and cowboy boots, and no one bats an eye.
3
I get the idea but what I’m seeing in the pictures looks emphatically binary. Maleness dressed or presented in ways (hair,nails) that reference femaleness, or vice-versa. It’s more like ultra-binary.
Maybe Bowie did “non-binary” better- instead of fem or butch the look was more “androgynous”.
What’s the big deal?
I’m neither for nor against this. I’m non binary on this subject: I don’t care.
22
To people who complain about grammar: You do know that languages evolve to meet changing needs, right? If you have ever used the pronoun “you,” which was originally plural, to refer to one person, you’ve demonstrated my point.
5
I don’t care how important the issue is — reading about the contents of a therapy session and what a therapist thought and felt about their client feels like a violation. This is a pandora’s box, and I’m wondering why the NYT had to crack this open.
10
I am interested, sympathetic, and respectful to these important concerns.
But not of co opting the plural pronoun and changing articulation.
Non binaries and we as a society need an added adjective or new singular pronoun other remedy.
They is here does not work. Worldwide.
7
She are here.
He are here.
I am embarrassed somehow to be distracted by this. But I shouldn’t be.
3
@Jim
In general, you can keep the verb tense grammatically correct. Thus he and she maintain singular verbs and they maintains the plural. Context tends to reveal if we're referring to one person, as in "who forgot their glasses?" or many, as in "can all of you over there move to your left?"
In all honesty, I don't think other people care about your gender identification was much as you think they do. If you walk into the office this morning and tell everyone you want to be called Kumquat today, I'm going to think you're affected and full of yourself, and if you change it again tomorrow I might tell you fairly pointedly that you're not entitled to consume that much of my mental bandwidth, but if you're otherwise a decent, hardworking person, we'll probably get over it.
I think society in general is more tolerant than you think it is, by which I mean most people are interested primarily in themselves and won't bother you as long as you don't get in the way of that all-consuming love for The Great I. So just be the change you want to see and things eventually will smooth themselves out, okay, Kumquat? Now how about we get back to work?
20
Yes but why is "female" considered make-up and dresses? This seems to be an equal problem—such that for some people wanting to express as a woman means getting all dolled up? And men are not allowed to dress in whatever way they want? THIS is what needs to change to begin with.
52
"Pushing against the bounds of gender" -- ??? Is that really such a great idea? Is there not some benefit to living in a culture of boundaries and norms? Are we awarding brownie points in a status competition for sexual confusion? How much of the ideological bushwah from the universitiies is behind this campaign to valorize psychological dysfunction? Personally, I don't accept the premises of this article.
22
nonbinary makes so much more sense to me than trans since you cannot know the experience of one binary pole even if you have known that your birth assignment to the other binary pole is incorrect.
2
I'm going to read this story, and research the topic. Interesting. and I may get short story ideas from this. But honestly, at first glance....
1
I linked to the article on Asia Kate Dillon and was struck to see the hostility in the comments. It was as if Asia’s identity was some kind of attack on the writers—as if Asia’s request to be treated the way Asia wanted in some way diminished them. They needed to lash back. These writers had a powerful need to deny and that Asia’s situation was real. Interestingly the comments to this article are, on the whole, more compassionate. I wonder why? Because Salem is in pain and struggling and Asia is successful and seemingly has it together?
I am old enough to remember the first times the feminist movement entered my life as a teenage boy. Many people were furious about it. White privileged women thinking that they didn’t have equal treatment? How dare they place themselves in the same shoes of black people! Shame on them! And the same thing later with the gay rights movement.
If you compare what people go through by being born a certain way, having to call them by pronouns you find inconvenient is not a huge deal. I would taught that you should treat other people the way that you like to be treated. It just isn’t that big deal.
Having Asia Kate Dillon in this world is a great gift to all of us. The more diversity and the more acceptance the better. And Asia’s example just might help Salem get through the pain of growing up.
And as you can see, I wrote this without disrespecting Asia Kate Dillon or Salem or using a plural pronoun.
2
Living in San Francisco has provided me with a different perspective... I see a celebration of lifestyle everyday. I see people who are happy like me (straight white male) from many different lifestyles... and i see people who are unhappy and no matter what i do; what i think; or what i say... they will always be unhappy... Their only hope is to lessen their misery and the only way to accomplish that is to make me miserable... kinda like vegans... it's not enough for them to be vegans (miserable) they want me to be a vegan too... BUT everyday at 4pm i have an ice cold glass of whole raw milk and a peanut butter cookie made with copious amounts of butter... it makes me happy!!!!!
5
You can’t read this article and not feel empathy for the confusion and torment felt by most everyone profiled. That said, feeling empathy doesn’t mean society has an obligation to adopt a grammatical construct that literally makes no sense. It’s equally disturbing that proponents of this grammatical change then label anyone who opposes such a change as being a bigot. No, we aren’t bigots. The use of “they” to refer to an individual is simply stupid and causes confusion - it’s so contrary to common sense that it will achieve nothing more than a backlash that this element of our society can ill afford. Come up with something that makes sense and doesn’t tip the apple cart on our langauge and most reasonable people will comply.
30
The grammar argument is exceptionally aggravating as it demonstrates that the person doesn’t understand that LANGUAGE CHANGES AND EVOLVES.
To suggest that the English language is some immutable arbiter of truth is deeply, deeply silly:
“Hath in the Ram his halfe cours y-ronne,
And smale fowles maken melodye,
That slepen al the night with open ye
(So priketh hem nature in hir corages:
Than longen folk to goon on pilgrimages, And palmers for to seken straunge strondes,”
But yeah... I get how respecting Salem’s pronoun choice would really affect the language...
1
@Lana Lee sure no problem. We'll "evolve" our language to language used when Beowulf was written to accommodate the desires of less than one half of one percent of the English speaking population. Very sensible
4
@Lana Lee
But that passage from Chaucer still follows the grammatical rules of number. Substitute “hir” [their] for “his” in the first line and you might think that there is more than one sun being referred to, that “sonne” is plural. I could see dozens of misguided dissertations on medieval astronomy resulting thereupon.
5
Perhaps it best to void all gender labels.
2
@clarity007. Why do those who are comfortable being the sex they are, need to erase it? Why do we need to twist ourselves into linguistic pretzels? I do not want to be gender neutral, nor do most people.
5
This is so hard to understand. If one is born with a penis and testicles, doesn't that make one male? Can we really change our sex just by denying it? One can change brown eye color by wearing blue contact lenses, but the eyes are still brown. Or, do the eyes become blue because one "feels" that they are? I don't understand how one can just deny one's sex just by calling oneself something else. I cannot turn myself into Beyonce just because I call myself Beyonce. I remain myself. Calling yourself "gender fluid" doesn't remove the penis you were born with. Are these folks suggesting that having a penis does not make you male?I am not making light of this. I am open to understanding and trying to grasp what Salem and Tate and the rest would like me to understand.
23
Gender is something that is a biological fact. Whether or not you identify as non binary does not change that fact. Gender is a biological fact. Just like there are male and female dogs there are male and female humans. In mammals males genrally have penisis and females have vaginas. These are biological facts. How you identify is something that you learned. You learned to identify as non binary as a result of your upbringing. That is a learned bahvior.
132
@Charles Brown- There are humans across the sexual spectrum, that don't fit the either or category. Some people are born with organs of both genders. That is a biological fact. And it's even more cpmplex than that. Please do more research before stating opinion.
Learn. Understand more. Be well.
51
@Charles Brown -
A person's sex is a biological fact. Their gender is not.
One does not learn to be trans, non-binary, or cisgender.
40
@Charles Brown biological sex is not binary. It is estimated that 1 in 1,600 births, the child is not XY or XX. There are many other variants (single X, XYY, XXYY, XXXX, etc.)
So there are millions of people that don't fit into the simplistic (and factually wrong) binary biological model.
Also, gender identity has nothing to do with biological sex anyway.
4
Yes, this reminds me of a woman named Rachel Dolezal. A white woman who identified as black. In every way. As the result, she lost her job, was widely harassed, persecuted and mocked.
Only some types of identification - the politically correct ones - are permitted in the identitarian universe.
448
She lost her job because she lied.
18
@Kai It really is the same thing. The line between races is way fuzzier than the lines between genders
22
@Kai - "Identified as" is a nothing, that is it is private. "I demand you identify me as" is another matter, and is a petty tyranny power move, and that's where the trouble starts.
16
Simply as a practical matter, I wish another solution could be devised instead of using "they/their" as a pronoun for a single individual. It makes speaking and writing too confusing.
253
The pronoun “They” accuratelyrepresents the state of identifying as both male and female.
3
@TS According to whom?
10
But that’s not the case here, is it? Salem identifies as neither.
3
I want to learn all I can about non binary people but it was almost impossible for me to read this article because of the usage of the plural pronoun in referring to a singular person. It should be easy to call a person by any name that they prefer but it is terribly difficult to retrain an English speaker, even a sensitive and well meaning one, to change a lifetime of "grammatically correct" pronoun usage. This seems to be an artificially imposed impediment to the full integration of non binary individuals.
270
As mom always said - practice makes perfect. The more you do it, the more natural it will become for you. It's a very small thing to do to make people feel more comfortable and seen. Make the effort to be a person of good will.
5
@Pat Yeaman - I agree that we should continue to use "they" in the plural as that is our cultural norm, and languages are nothing if not cultural norms of communication.
That said, "they" in the singular has historical roots and we use it daily in its derivative forms. Example: "Each person should have their passport ready to show the customs inspector."
3
@Jo
When I am uncomfortable it is my work, the work of my ongoing maturity, development, unfolding, to understand the nature of my discomfort. It's not someone else's job to make me feel more comfortable.
And why do you assume Pat is not a person of good will? Time was taken to read an article, participate in a public forum discussing the content, and an interest in learning more was expressed. Your instruction "Make the effort..." seems misplaced, kind of "judgy" rather than good will.
13
In these discussions I always feel there is confusion between sex and gender. Sex is a biological fact, gender is an artificial construct invented by a society. I don't think someone should subject themselves to body altering drugs, surgery and the possible side affects to change something about themselves (gender) that is projected onto them by other people.
122
@Greg M Sex isn't always a biological fact. What of XX people born with male reproductive parts (and vice-versa)? What of chromosomal anomalies that are not clear male/female?
7
@Greg M
Surgery and hormone treatments do not alter gender. They alter primary and/or secondary sex characteristics. This makes it easier for the individual to feel comfortable in their body and be more easily identified as their chosen gender. Many transgender people are in fact transsexuals. However the term transgender is preferred by many; for one thing, the term transsexual is often (erroeneously) taken to mean something about sexuality. Second, many transgender individuals choose to have no surgery at all or a limited degree of surgery.
Do you think that cisgender males with enlarged breasts should subject themselves to surgery?
12
@childofsol Have you checked in with the 'cisgender' men to see if they approve of being called that?
104
Can someone explain to me that a person who wants to be nonbinary still needs to wear makeup and dresses to fulfill "their" supposedly nonbinary identity?
This is just the old masquerade of femininity dressed up in 21st century political correctness (and bad grammar).
And why do I always get the feeling that people who want to be called "they" constitute a mob?
84
Because you associate makeup with woman-like behaviour doesn’t mean it is. For these people, make-up might be a way to get closer to their ideal self, no matter if it’s also commonly used by women as well
4
Have you ever had friends who changed their names? Perhaps through marriage, perhaps because a birth name was found unsuitable? Perhaps because doing so marked a new life ahead? Did you adjust? Most of it do. The mind over times begins to adapt and become familiar with this new reference.
And so, we can learn to embrace "they" and its new use, until our evolving language births a better, non-gendered pronoun.
12
Hear hear! We can deal with slight grammatical discomfort if it makes lives substantially better, which I believe it does.
4
@Diane
For communication purposes, using a general-case pronoun for a specific case person is needlessly confusing. It smacks of "we are not amused" self-aggrandizement. Unless that is the point, of course.
So please, devise an acceptable alternative, to allow an interested and supportive party to understand this and related articles more readily!
7
@Diane - The fact is, most people don't want to learn to embrace "they". And the people are correct - this use of "they" is just not necessary.
5
Isn't there a danger of anonymizing a person too much using "they" or "it"? I would think that might make someone's identity diminished and further weaken the sense of self. Not sure what the solution is. Maybe "dys" for dysphoria tho that sounds like a putdown. Any minimal fringe identity in the U.S. struggles given mass media. Speaking of fringe, I wish the Kardashian fetish would go away.
5
@poslug "Dys" isn't going to work because not all of us experience dysphoria. If it helps, using singular they for those who request that you do so is one of the easiest and most personal things you can do for them. It's neither anonymizing (or, at least, no more so than "he" or "she" is) and it shows a minimum respect for the lived experience of this other person. Doing otherwise invalidates that experience.
1
Ok, let's go over it again, imo, as history has taught us.
This legit progressive issue like all others in history is best dealt with slowly but surely.
What I mean by this is for the offended group to get what you need, not what you want.
If you put get want you want first, you are very likely to lose getting what you need.
The greatest example of this was Lincoln. The abolitionists wanted black freedom, even total equality immediately even if it meant breaking the constitution.
Lincoln believed in saving the union first and then ending slavery.
Because without the former he could not get the latter.
He accomplished the death of slavery in four yrs., whereas the abolitionists could not do it since the birth of the country in 1776.
6
If our society is going to accept the concept of non binary sexuality l (a good thing), I think it’s time for some new pronouns: because “they” is way too confusing—and not at all accurate. In English we use “they” either for the plural or when referring to a non specific person. It’s like using “X” in algebra. It means, “some person in general.” Using it for persons of non binary sexuality gives the impression that “they” are just a placeholder, filling in until we have a real person to fill the blank in the sentence. Surely people who don’t identify with the male or female sex deserve pronouns that can be used gracefully in speech and writing.
37
So if a person has split personality are they called they?
2
Personally I think a new pronoun should be created. They is confusing and it refers to a thing not a person. Language is as fluid as gender, shouldn’t we expand it rather than contain it to a preexisting term. Why not te/tem?
14
I’d prefer to stop using he/she and just get a new singular pronoun for everyone. Pronouns don’t connote age, or ethnicity, or other characteristics - why should a persons gender be an inherent part of how we reference them?
2
@Emily I wouldn't shut down the idea but it would be a tough sell given the overwhelming majority of people, both male and female, find the current pronoun system helpful in communication. There are inherent differences in males and females, both genetic and learned for over 99% of the population. Eliminating that to serve a very small segment of the population, while noble, is, for me, a step too far.
1
I'm sorry, but I do not understand If being male or female shouldn't determine your actions or self image, why does it matter if you're called male or female? You can a masculine female and a feminine male, so what does it mean to feel like you don't fit into either group? If you're biologically male or female, what relevance does it have on your life if someone calls you one or the other? I feel like this is doubling down on the concrete nature of gender norms rather than defying them.
65
@Marcus You are correct. This is a very conservative movement.
5
Maybe the term “gender fluid” is a key. Ideas like “binary” and even “spectrum” evoke images that are far too rigid.
A bigger problem, though, might actually spring from the term “identify”. Think about gender (whether physically, psychologically, socially or “whateverly”) as it is expressed in so many ways by so many different people - AND as it is expressed in so many way by the same person over the course of a lifetime, a day, or a moment. Thinking that way makes it hard to avoid the conclusion we are ALL somewhat “gender fluid” in different ways and to different extents.
Some individuals are cursedly blessed with a compulsion to act out ways of helping us all come to an understanding of “fluidity” (in terms NOW of gender) whether or not we value this insight which might be liberatory, disruptive, or catastrophic to so many inherited forms, roles, responsibilities, and “identities”.
The roles and responsibilities of any society involve a myriad of pressures, some of which can indeed be quite oppressive. Roles and responsibilities often involve various levels of personal discomfort and challenge. One way we cope is to internalize into our “identities” what was originally felt to be imposed. But not all that gets crustified into our self image is really crucial to fulfilling necessary responsibilities.
An other sense of the term “identity” involves affiliation or even tribalism. Fluidity reminds us how some limitations are also constructs that can be altered.
3
a singular person can't be plural
347
@nancy drew See above comment "The Oxford English Dictionary describes a history of they-as-singular with a formal usage origin dating to at least 1681, possibly earlier.".....
7
They can if they identify as both male and female.
2
@nancy drew
The article helped me understand their perspective. They are not either-or, not either male or female. They fluidly identify as neither gender and/or both, simultaneously and pluralistically. I was also able to infer that, in addition to plural self-referential pronouns, the pronoun ‘It’ may also be used to reflect a non-binary identity.
I'm fine with "they" or "them", but it stopped me short to read "themself". That's just not even a word. Can we agree that grammatically speaking they should refer to themselves as themselves?
11
I really don’t care how people decide to self identify one way or the other. But I do have I’d with this trend used here where they say someone was “assigned female at birth “. Unless we are dealing with someone born inter-sexed which is extremely, then no, they were born female and corrected identified based on their XX chromosomes and their matching external appearance. Assigned female at birth sounds like someone randomly gave them a number like at a deli counter. They fact that the person later disagrees it doesn’t change that.
73
I attended a class yesterday discussing 'the spectrum' and a young person (I assumed she was female) said there was no such thing as gender and it was a cultural and societal construct. I almost scoffed out loudly, and instead looked down and rolled my eyes and desperately wanted to leave the room. That's saying something, considering I've been a member of the LGBT community for over 50 years. It also irritated me that they changed the gay rainbow pride flag to add brown and black to it to 'represent everyone.' Forgive me, but no one is blue, red, purple or yellow in color and our flag isn't meant to represent the color of someones skin.
The endless labeling and bifurcation of the LGBT movement getting out of hand and I find it silly and exhausting.
204
@Sasha Love
"I attended a class yesterday discussing 'the spectrum' and a young person (I assumed she was female) said there was no such thing as gender and it was a cultural and societal construct."
You seem to be confusing gender with sex. Sex is at least nominally binary, i.e. people are born, usually, with organs of one sex or the other (intersex births being the exception). Gender, on the other hand, is socially determined; it *is* "a cultural and societal construct".
To not understand this is to make, essentially, the same mistake as those who can't accept or understand homosexuality. For a gay person, this could arguably be called a kind of self-loathing.
Being a member of the LGBT community doesn't endow one with a comprehensive understanding of human sexuality and gender roles. Quite obviously. Nor is it a free pass from having to try to understand.
8
@Sasha Love excellent post. Sadly because your LGBT community is finally being embraced by the majority and celebrated you have others who want to also get that long earned respect by coming up with easy and quick ways to make them feel like a marginalized group. I really hope I am wrong but I think it will set your movement back has the general population will get fed up and loop LGBT in with these new fads.
14
@Anatomically modern human The presentation was an hour long on gender, sex and romantic attachment. It was an hour long lecture and included about 20 labels for person under those three subjects.
3
Kudos for this community for breaking apart societies gender roles and stereotypes.
But sex and gender are two different things.
You can’t ask for acceptance from society before you yourself even know who you are and who you wish to be.
Until one develops their own strong sense of self, without self mutilating surgery or hormonal treatments one is asking for a tortured existence.
Asking the rest of us to change accepted use of language will only had more frustration to the journey.
We will look back at the currently emerging practices of this movement as seriously flawed and destructive.
274
@Enough
+100
Transgender people are suffering from a type of body dysphoria.
Other types of dysphoria are treated by therapy so the individual can gradually adapt to feeling comfortable in their own (healthy) body.
I wonder if advocates for HRT/SRS would also advocate for stomach stapling as treatment for anorexics?
30
@Enough We will look back on this fad as far worse than flawed and destructive. We will look back and file it with the satanic abuse hysteria and recovered memories frauds of the 1980's, which destroyed thousands of lives. Or sexologist John Money's biologically ignorant insistence that sex roles are purely learned, and that parents can determine the sex of a child purely by how it is raised; he and his acolytes inflicted enormous physical and psychological harm on kids with ambivalent genitalia.
We will live to see the day when doctors and parents are jailed for surgically and hormonally mutilating children in the name of this currently fashionable but biologically preposterous gender workeness.
39
To all those who believe the english language cannot, should not, change I offer Shakespeare's words on gender fluidity:
"Alas, our frailty is the cause, not we!
For such as we are made of, such we be. . .
O time! thou must untangle this, not I;
It is too hard a knot for me to untie!"
Viola, in Twelth Night, dressed as a man.
10
@ML
Who knew very well she was a she.
2
How someone could read this article and focus on a pronoun goes to the heart of the problem, which is the pain one endures living in a culture determined to punish for non traditional sexual orientations.
16
@Interested Bystander
I wish I could recommend your comment a thousand times.
2
@Interested Bystander This culture is actually very accepting of non traditional sexual orientations. We're not all that interested in teenage angst.
12
I'd like to suggest 'e' as a gender neutral pronoun. it is part of 'she' and 'her' and can use similar forms - eg 'er' instead of 'her' or 'his'.
4
I wish all the best to the people for whom freedom from gender identity is a relief and a validation.
I wish all the best to the people for whom "freedom" from gender identity compounds their struggles with personal identity and mental health.
I hope the people who take it on themselves to help others achieve self-understanding, the parents and teachers and therapists, will be wise.
57
I teach at a boarding school where we have had several non-binary students. From my perspective, the only real consideration is that school be a safe place for these students. Part of that is using preferred pronouns. But much more important than that is withholding judgement. So many of the comments in this thread come from a place of judgement, or resenting non-binary people for wanting special treatment. In my book, if you are in high school and have the courage to stand up in front of your peers and say you'd like to be addressed as "they," then the least I can do is abide by your wishes. I get it wrong all the time, but that's ok. My students gently correct me. We all try to help each other be better people.
299
@Roger Reynolds
I agree. People make these so called rational arguments when really they are prejudiced and are being dishonest about it. Maybe they cannot face how they feel.
It is ok to feel prejudice and it is good to be aware of it and work on yourself. Start by respecting the wish people may have to be called what they want to be called.
We can adjust to things. This one may take a little work and it will happen and be fine. Give it a try!
9
@Roger Reynolds So if I decide I will be a German Shepard today, you should abide by my wishes and call me Rover?
25
@Roger Reynolds What a great and heartening comment. And I agree with you about the judging voices in some of these comments. As a child, though born female, I never thought of myself as male or female. I was Just ME. This was the 50s. I related more to Tom Sawyer than Becky Thatcher, he had lots of adventures, was clever and fun. She was all those goody two shoe girls I hated. I liked dolls and pretty dresses once in a while. But I loved playing hard and climbing trees and having adventures more. My mother stuck me in boys jeans for play because I made such a mess. I never wanted to be a boy, I just wanted to have the kind of fun boys had in those days. As a teen, being a girl was ok, I loved clothes and had crushes on boys and had boy friends, I did miss playing baseball and climbing trees. Now days I could have been athletic as teen, not then. Now past menopause, I am just ME again, neither male nor female. It feels wonderful. Yes people think I am female and I wear pants mostly so I don't have to shave my legs and they are comfortable. I am creative, never have followed the rules much. I never wanted to have sex with women, loved sex with men. while I do not mind having a female body, it is not who I really am. It is more like a piece of clothing. A male body would be ok too. I know the American Indians, at least some tribes had about five sexes or definitions of them, which enraged the puritans. I admire your nonbinary kids and your great support of them!
9
The only issue I have here is with the plural identity. This is essentially and completely a mistake as it corrupts a fundamental and necessary element of human evolution, the "I". One needs only read about human body chemistry and makeup to see that we are the sum of billions of parts. That said, the identification of the I at the helm is important and should not so quickly be abandoned.
6
I do support, respect, and feel for people on the gender spectrum or who are trans-sexual. And, I understand that being properly respected and recognized is important to all.
But, given the amount of discussion on this issue, you would think that it affects a significant percentage of people rather than 0.6% of the US population. I feel somehow that we are all being manipulated to more and more wedge issues to the benefit of our 0.01% and corporate overlords.
47
Reading the article I could feel the anguish and despair. Anybody who thinks that we choose what gender we are and who we love is devoid of empathy and compassion.
I remember in the past in my dreams at night I was a man. I always wondered why.
As an artist I struggled to define myself as German? As American? I wanted to be one or the other.
Now with age I embrace both and reject both and live in both worlds and both languages but do not belong to either one of them fully. Alway an outsider. I embrace it, I am familiar with it,
I see my daughter struggle with her identity and not belonging to either family fully. German, American, Cuban. What I tell her is that she has opportunities that others do not, that her perspective is broader and richer for it.
Who are we to judge others, but rather let us embrace, hug , give and support. Do not reject!
76
I've long known in myself that sexuality is neither heterosexual nor gay, but a spectrum in between rather like colors. I've known for a long time that I am not 100% hetero, but I am not bisexual.
In high school and college, although people came out much later (this was 30 years ago), friends were all along the sexual identity spectrum (including asexual) and the gender spectrum. How many self-identified women feel excluded because of "masculine" traits, and genetically-identified men feel a pull toward feminization? Doesn't it make sense that just as there isn't 100% black or 100% white, there isn't 100% female (or few) or 100% male?
And yet at least in English we have very few "masculine" and "feminine" words and articles. One thing we have to find a way around is Mr./Ms. Perhaps M.?
As a teacher, I've started using multicultural names that are less gender-binary in class examples - like Caro and Jax instead of Joan and Peter. It's funny to see how my students refer to these fictional examples - typically it is my Asian students who struggle the most, assigning one name to be male and the other to be female.
In ten years, this will all be mostly irrelevant. My children's generation is much more fluid and accepting than Gen X and Boomers. A wonderful, thought-provoking article - thank you!
73
I happen to think our gender identity is part of what makes us human, and I would not want to instill the idea of gender binary names in classrooms as a positive step.
19
@Julia Scott
The norm for the human species, as with most animals, is that an individual is 100% male or 100% female. It is an unfortunate abnormality to be born otherwise. That said, we as society must accept differences and respect all human beings no matter what their differences may be.
11
@Julia Scott The non-binary option instead of Mr, Ms, or Miss, is usually Mx (pronounced "mix" or, rarely "mixer").
6
Seeing the intense visceral reaction to the use of non-standard pronouns here, I wonder how much of the opprobrium directed toward non-cis individuals is due to the structure of English which makes it so uncomfortable/difficult to think of animate beings that are something other than "she" or "he", as the only other alternatives--"it" and "one"--seem cold, barren, soulless, in comparison.
It is strange to think that our own grammar can betray us (or at least leave us at a loss for words, and worse, of empathy), but that seems to be a part of what is happening here.
7
The issue at hand is not, as this piece, suggests, a problem created by society's assumption that individuals will identify with the gender they own. It is a psychiatric issue. Folks that cannot or will not identify with one gender or the other are, themselves, victims, not of society's prejudice, or disapproval of their chosen lifestyles, but of a psychiatric derangement that should be treated in therapy. Changing genders, transitioning, the whole ball of wax, does not address the underlying issue: the need for effective treatment modalities.
10
@heyomania, I don't think it is helpful to suggest that our current dilemmas involving sexuality and gender identity can be addressed with psychiatric interventions. I sense that these changes reflect neurological changes, both genetic & environmental in origin and occurring both in utero and post partum. There is no voluntary component and there are no moral dimensions for the individual. Until we eliminate environmental contamination by hormones & hormone mimicking compounds, we will face continued disruption of basic anatomical & physiological development, neurological and otherwise. The chemical manufacturer's association will subvert these efforts with the same misinformation and political dirty tricks still in use by the tobacco industry. It is difficult to envision any advantage to the survival of the species that most of us nostalgically refer to as homo sapiens.
@Caroline Majors
Ahhh... the complexities of language.
You indicate that, according to the OED, the "they-as-singular with a formal usage origin [dates] to at least 1681".
In the early 1970's I sent a letter to this paper's Russell Baker to protest his use of this construction (e.g., "everbody has their excuse"). He wrote back explaining:
"It's a concession to the women libbers."
I think we can agree that Baker's explanation wouldn't have had any traction with late seventeenth century lexicographers. Nonetheless, in a way, Baker's rationalization of his own usage seems to lend support to Caroline Major's affirmation of respecting individual agency.
5
As a cis gender person it is so confusing to learn about and understand what it means to be non binary, i can only imagine what it's like for the person experiencing it. i hope Salem finds peace. They are very brave!
5
When I was born it was illegal in most states for a black skinned man to have consensual sex with a white skinned woman. People put me in the box they wanted me to be in, which most of the time wasn't "their box". I also was very into "boy" toys and sports and disliked most "girl" things. All I have ever wanted was for people to see me, not the box they wanted to stuff me into.
So for Salem and others who want to be seen instead of their box, I'd like to welcome them to the Human race. And if tomorrow they ask me to call them Hannah I will do my best to remember. Their name, hair style, preferences are all small facets of who they are. Changing any or all facets still will not change the fact that they are a human being first and foremost. Please see them, not their box.
197
@skramsv how do I clap in a comment!!!! Well said!!!!
2
@skramsv Luckily, the black men in your example were not being preyed upon by unethical doctors and others who told them they could bleach their skin and make them a different color. Oh, wait...
1
I worked on one of the tv shows with the nonbinary actor Asia Kate Dillon and remember very clearly doing the camera tests with them prior to their being cast. Before meeting Asia, within my department, we had the conversation about the pronouns they preferred and it was they and them. As someone who makes very concerted efforts for the actors' comfort as part of my job, I viewed the preferred pronouns Asia wanted used as just another aspect of my job. When they came in for the camera tests, I had a one-on-one conversation about specific needs for their character look and I took that opportunity to have a conversation with them about the preferred pronouns. It was easy, it was mellow and it was not something that threw off my whole world to speak of Asia as they or them. I don't understand the resistance to just identifying someone as they ask. It's really not hard and it had no negative effect on my life. Being seen for who someone feels they are and respecting that is just a human thing to do. I thoroughly enjoyed my season with Asia and am happy they are still a huge part of the show. They are cool and a pleasure to work with. And what you cannot see, you cannot be.
203
It’s improper grammar. And I don’t see how identifying someone as he or she is constricting. Are you saying calling a female ‘she’ means she can’t do certain things or act a certain way? Or that calling a male ‘he’ means he can’t do certain things or act a certain way? From a scientific standpoint you’re male or female. How you act or present yourself in life is your business. A single person is a he or a she, not a them. Yes we all have multiple sides but encased in a single being.
338
@Laura What's wrong with using "one," as in "one prefers to be considered nonbinary rather than either male or female." "They" refers to more than one--not just two but perhaps millions. Much less confusing and more precise to avoid "they," "their," "them" when speaking about what after all is just one person. "One" avoids assigning gender, is more specific and can also be possessive ("one's").
100
@Laura
Your attitude is certainly the right one. I just think we need some new pronouns. To me, calling an individual "they' seems so depersonalizing. It seems to distance ... them. I'm having trouble getting used to it.
41
The pronoun thing is a problem. My daughter has a gender-neutral friend, and, I gotta say, the burden of trying to keep one's words straight can really stomp on a conversation. I'd suggest to non-binary folks that, if their preference is for this to be a non-issue (which it is), they should agree on something better than they/them for the singular pronoun. Come up with something good and we'll gladly use it. The lack of a gender-neutral singular pronoun has been a problem since forever anyway.
18
So agreed!
@dan
What about 'thee' and 'thou' ?
Archaic second person singular but fairly familiar
sounding and already a part of the English language.
I believe it was the late writer Ursula Le Guin who confronted this issue in her utopian novel "This Side of Darkness." If I remember, there was a whole society of people who were non-binary, and they were visited by a binary ambassador from Earth. The novel is visionary, and I recommend it to anyone for the insights the author brings to the fore.
7
@Ignacio Gotz "The Left Hand of Darkness." An interesting read.
4
@Ignacio Gotz Her novel deals with people who can actually change sex as opposed to people who wish to pretend. A fantasy novel is fun but has nothing to teach us about reality.
3
Yes , it was “The Left Hand of Darkness.” It is a classic. Also in Virginia Wolfe’s “Orlando”, the main character travels through time and swaps sex from female to male and back. I highly recommend both.
I think this is confusing a human rights issue, with a biological reality. The importance of being "male" or "female" is the most profound distinction in our species. It is the only pair of our species that can procreate. This distinction is not unusual. It appears that within many species in nature there is a binary recognition of individuals members. The female role and the male role of the species. How one feels about their gender or how one identifies with gender is an infinite number of integers on the spectrum. The notion that that those integers should now be grouped into some new named categories will inevitably be arbitrary and can always be challenged by the next sub-set of feelings. Everyone should be treated equally, and everyone's feelings should be respected and accepted. As much as possible and practical, I think we should call everyone by the pronouns the choose for themselves, for example Ms. But, I believe, it is an overreaching inconsiderate, imposition to expect everyone to change the pronouns that describe the fundamental building blocks of the species to fit individual comfort levels.
91
@BB I'd like to know all the animals you've interviewed and/or observed to make this statement "It appears that within many species in nature there is a binary recognition of individuals members."
Can you point me to the journal articles you wrote on this subject. Did you observed enough animals to know for sure that less than 1% may or may not be gender binary?
I'm a cis-gender male.
2
@BB
Plus, it is highly confusing to reference an individual with “they” or “them”. I can support people being whatever gender; or both if “they” choose, however calling “them” by these labels is not the identifying of the non binary person.
This is confusing and further separates people from attempting to understand or support “them”.
2
@ChrisYou make the accurate point that I am not a scientist, and that I am only using (possibly incorrect) common beliefs and teachings about other species that I accept. Nonetheless, it does not mitigate against the primary point that that there is a basis for a binary expression of gender (procreation) as well as a basis and a right for everyone to feel how they do and be treated properly by others. By the way, the only people who's gender I care about are those with whom I am intimate. I don't understand why people find it necessary to share randomly?
2
Is gender a spectrum or is it a complete fabrication of societal norms? If it is a fabrication are we (the non non-binary) just the ones living a script?
I’m a masculine, empathetic, loving, gentle, weight-lifting, ambitious, non-confrontational man. I have plenty of contradictions, but my cisgender status makes them seem pretty standard.
Contradictions are everywhere. I’m fine living in that space, but apparently most people aren’t.
14
It must be very difficult to feel that one is nonbinary in a binary world. Indeed, the distinction nonbinary v. binary is itself a binary opposition. There is no escape. If you're happier somewhere beyond male v. female, you should go for it. Asking everyone else to catch up with you, however, will be more problematic.
I am curious, though, why the formulation must be neither/nor rather than both/and.
20
@Juniper It's just the human condition. No one is stereotype. Pointing this out here is apparently not allowed.
1
I, too, have struggled with the use of “they” as a singular pronoun. However, I struggle more with the alternative (the invention of entirely new words). “They” has always been used as a singular pronoun, even if such usage was incorrect; so I think it is more likely to gain widespread acceptance than the alternative. Like other commenters, I find it hard to get used to—but change is hard, and this is a worthy cause.
Language is not fixed. It changes as new communication needs emerge. This is one of those times when change is needed.
12
@Jen If one prefers "they", I will use "they" for one. But if one is using it to refer to a singular person, why can't one use the singular form -- they is, they does, they exists, they brings, etc.? Can't I just know how many places to set for dinner?
2
@Jen I was thinking the same thing while reading the article and concluded it's my problem and something to which I should adjust. :-)
1
Any of us can identify as what ever we want, along many continuum. But are there any biological markers (similar to X or Y) that can unequivocally determine or differentiate those stops along the gender continua?
8
My heart aches for Salem. But seriously, surely we must be able to come up with a pronoun that is not a total distortion of the word “they.”
“They” means plural. It stops the reader when used, as the Times just did, for a singular person. It’s like calling the heat a flame produces, cold. It’s like saying it’s sunny out when it’s cloudy. It makes no sense. Salem, you have my understanding and empathy in so many ways. Maybe you can help us all push for a pronoun that doesn’t coop another word. Where are all the linguists? We — as in us all — clearly need help here.
85
@Jax It. Some languages have pronouns that are not gender-related. The equivalent in English for the singular is 'it'. Why not use 'it'?
30
@Luciana I gather some might bristle at the idea of being an "it", an object pronoun, rather than having a person/subject pronoun.
I think non-binary people should just tell us what they want to be called... English is one of the biggest languages in the world and it will literally be impossible to make broad changes to something so integral to the language as the subject pronoun which is used in pretty much almost every sentence relating to a person. And new people and kids are learning English every day. There is just no way this change will ever happen from a logistical standpoint.
@Luciana
Yes, I agree that "it" is appropriate, unfortunately it's also interpreted prejoratively.
"It" seems somewhat less than human.
2
There is nothing new under the sun. The human experience is wide and deep and we are just beginning to understand it. Or not, in the case of some comments. More’s the pity.
But I am open to learning and hope that they who struggle can find it in themself(ves) to be patient with me. I am now more conscious as a result of this great article and its brave subjects. Thank you all.
12
I hate using "they" in place of a singular pronoun. There are many ways to form sentences with out the use of the pronoun. Try using the person's name.
169
I really hate the term cis- . I suppose everyone will stop using it now?
389
I do too. Just because I'm not defying my born gender/sex does not mean I need a category imposed on me.
85
@tundra
I love the term cis.
When I was little I identified with the song “I enjoy being a girl” fully aware none of the stereotypical balderdash in its lyrics remotely applied to me—somehow the title sentiment still rings true, though hard to pinpoint why. So many feminine social assumptions and obligations are a complete chore to me. For a frivolous example, I’ve rarely worn makeup, would generally prefer wearing a uniform to shopping (not that others, however gendered, shouldn’t enjoy those things). On the other hand, I birthed a baby, and that was great. To get there, I had to learn more about my body, which is amazing. I cannot imagine how miserable the opposite feeling, dysphoria, must be.
I always resented sexist claims of biological limitations especially where I easily excelled (now I work in a male-dominated STEM field). The social advantages of maleness have always been clear to me.
There seem to be several gender-related but distinct axes we can map ourselves on, depending on our innate desires and our genetic dice roll: cis to trans, homo to hetero, feminine to masculine, fertile to infertile, parental to childfree. I’m in the middle on some of these and more extreme on others.
Cis is one of my extremes, I embrace it.
2
@tundra Me too! Can't stand it! I'm not a cis-gendered male. I'm a man. Full stop.
58
Having recently read the book "Babel" by Gaston Dorren, it got me thinking about how some languages are more gender neutral than others, & how languages change in their vocabulary and construction of sentences with time. With English becoming a global language, this push to make it more gender-neutral may have real benefits for everybody. A gender neutral God and church worship. Easier learning and speaking for second language learners. Maybe more efficiency in sentence construction. Maybe even clean up spelling!
3
Gmp,
But what is the argument in favor of creating gender-neutral pronouns? As far as I can discern, the demand stems not from linguistic logic but from feelings. The more strident feminists dislike the traditional default he/him/his used for the generic, unknown person because they feel that it is discriminatory and exclusionary, even though there is nothing intrinsically nefarious about the expression "To each his own." Nor is there anything intrinsically nefarious about using feminine pronouns to refer to nations, vessels, and concepts like liberty and justice.
At bottom, language is conventional; but if it must change, I would rather the impetus behind that change arise from reasoned utility, or even beauty, than mere feelings arising from perceived slights and resentment.
17
@gmp Japanese has no gendered pronouns, and the honorific “-San” is gender neutral (rather than Mr/Mrs), but Japanese society is deeply gendered. So the lack of male and female specific pronouns does not cure all of society’s perceived ills.
1
I sense though that binary thinking could be at the root of our challenges with gender fluidity. male-female, yes no, white black but reality is mostly multiple shades of gray. Us humans existentially avoid facing reality perhaps because it can be terrifyingly boundless and also perhaps because as we shape it with our thoughts and choices we are then accountable.
2
In some ways ironically these people are closer to God than any of the most devout people. They physically embody the conundrum of the Omega, and with their struggle in being accepted in society will come to a unique personal understanding that normal people will never fully understand.
2
@M
I seem to recall the saying that someone “was closer to God” was a euphemism for saying that the person was crazy or schizophrenic. “...will come to a unique personal understanding that normal people will never fully understand”. Interesting.
6
As a trans/non-binary adult I generally appreciate this article. But I wish it hadn’t focused so much on only Salem’s story, as they seem generally to be a very troubled person struggling with many obstacles to happiness. There are so many of us who are not miserable, with supportive communities, families, rich careers, partners and all the rest... and we think about things other than the torment of our gender identities. I worry this article gives the impression that being non-binary is an unliveable hell—which just isn’t true for everyone. I look forward to meeting Salem in 10 years when they have settled into a supportive and comfortable non-binary adulthood.
332
@Gordon Hall Thanks for your perspective. It is important and necessary. Good to recognize that there are persons who are confidently non-binary. The few I know appear to be successful people.
The article seems a little manipulative by playing on sympathies for Salem's struggles. That makes me question the perspective of the article, suggesting that it is is more political than objectively journalistic. But, nonethless, a significant article addressing a current concern.
4
@Gordon Hall - I follow the blog of a trans woman who is the sibling of my brother's best friend, and someone I've known literally since birth. Her blog is filled with misery, even though she is now a 35 year old adult and fully transitioned. Her blog is also open to comments so other trans people write in and say the same thing - that life is miserable and so very hard. Some of them sound extraordinarily depressed. I think many trans/non-binary people are not a very happy, well adjusted population.
23
@Gordon Hall. Thank God someone who feels this way actually feels happy! Admittedly this is a tough situation to be in in the majority culture we live in but kudos to you for choosing to enjoy your life. The media so often portrays gender identity differences as a bottomless pit of sufferring
This article was really hard for me to read. I kept getting confused about who the writer was talking about and having to go back and reread the same sentence again and again. To be honest, it was exhausting.
416
Was just also reading the article about the no perfect victim movement in China in the story the people have the same last name which could make that article a challenge to read as well.
3
I see I'm not alone in this: we need to find better pronouns. The use "they/their" is simply unacceptable.
133
@andywonder Why is it unacceptable? It's better than s/he and "his or her." Who wants to be one or the other or worse - an "It?"
It is awkward at first but when you begin to use it IRL, you get used to it.
11
@Julia Scott
But it seems like it is analogous to labeling someone, which could have disastrous results. Suppose you’re in a business meeting and say, referring to a certain John/Jane VP that had just left for another meeting, “I will get it to them this afternoon and follow up for their comments tomorrow”. Now everyone at the host firm is exchanging baffled glances...
19
@Julia Scott
No, sorry, but it is not better than s/he and "his or her." At least they indicate singularity.
It's not popular, but I might use "thon".
13
I think there are a few species of amphibians that are able to change gender at need, so you could say nature-wise there is a precedent.
5
So if you’re non-binary how do you decide which bathroom and sports team to choose? Should we be thinking of having a third option for these institutions? Might be the best solution.
6
@Marg
Most schools cannot afford new lockeroms and bathrooms
5
@Juanita K. Sure they can. They had to add them when more women started participating in sports. Think of the "family friendly" or single genderless bathrooms that are also more accessible. Unless you feel it's necessary to have a urinal in every bathroom.
I'm fine with anyone using the women's restroom. It's far nicer. After all, I use the men's room when there's no line at the sports arena and the women's line is a mile long....
10
It’s very simple you go in the change room where you want to. Most commonly this is men going to change a woman’s areas
To everyone who is struggling to understand the usage of they/them referring to one person, you are simply acting like it is too hard because you do not want to understand or respect people who are different than you. Language is reworked all the time and it is not that hard to understand. I highly doubt you are linguists or that you are always perfectly grammatically correct. Call people what they wish to be called, just like you are called what you wish to be called. It disturbs me that this article is trying to tell you how hard it is to be different and yet all you can do is gripe about the language used and act disgusted. Nonbinary people are not hurting you, they are hurting and they are hurting themselves because of how society sees them. Also, as Judith Butler discussed, we are born with a sex (male, female, intersex) but we perform our gender. You do not need to be born female and present as female, nor do you need to be born male and present as male. Femininity and masculinity are societal creations. It only has meaning because society has made it so and we should be open to allowing people to identify, dress/look however they wish to. Society would be greatly improved by all of us being ourselves and respecting each others presentations.
37
@C: No, we're struggling because it's too confusing to call ONE person by a PLURAL pronoun. It makes no sense in English.
Further, "call people what they wish to be called" requires that I somehow know (or guess) what everyone's "wish" is. Suppose I decide that my pronoun is "glebic" - are you willing to use that in EVERY conversation with/about me? I'm going to be really insulted if you don't!
22
People are tripping up over word usage. Sure, reading all those theys, thems and theirs in the singular made for an awkward read, though I believe that was the intention as it clearly illustrates one predicament of not identifying with one's assigned sex that cisgender folks can see.
Nonbinaries don't have a monopoly on this usage, however. I recall that from elementary school right into college, my teachers taught that if you were writing in the singular about "people in general" or if you simply didn't know the gender of the subject, then one should always use the male pronoun. It seems that around 15 years ago using the male pronouns in this fashion started to fall out of favor.
3
@Rhonda
I had professors back in the 1980s demanding that we use gender neutral pronouns only when it was not possible to use the person's proper name and wrote in 3rd person. This was also a required style for many science and engineering journals.
2
I've been thinking a lot about the use of they/them. Would using ”one” work in place of he/she? As in ”one is nervous about using one’s new name.” German has das (neuter) and they/them seems like it could be replaced with a less confusing word. My friend’s daughter is now they/them and I thought they/them were multiple people coming to my house. I was legitimately confused bc I hadn't been briefed that the girl was now non-binary. When I use the term girl I mean ”they used to identify as a she”, no disrespect.
10
@Lambnoe, One is good, and cannot be binary.
I have no problem with letting people be who they are. However, this business of screwing up pronouns is just plain dumb. It is a degradation in our ability to communicate accurately, since singular and plural get mixed up. It leads to misunderstandings that are not good for anyone. Can we find another way? Maybe a new set of pronouns? Expecting everyone else to jump through hoops in our language is disrespectful to the majority.
249
@MHW
So there are different pronouns in use that people have come up with. I know a lot of people use “they” because it already existed in English. And people use singular they all the time when they do t know to whom they are referring. Plus, “you” is both plural and singular. It’s really not that hard to grasp since its already pretty commonly in use. People tend to get tripped up when they are referring to one specific person who they know, not because they can’t, but because we have been conditioned to put people into boxes labeled “he” and “she” and when someone refuses that it often ends in violence or disrespect because “it’s too hard”.
9
Ok, how about this then....most of us simply don't want to be bothered with it.
Better?
38
@MHW
Here's a suggestion, use proper names instead of pronouns. Much easier and is far less confusing.
4
I’m almost 40. I get called “sir” on a regular basis. I’ve been called “sir” while wearing blush, mascara, lipstick, and a silk blouse that made it clear I’m not a man. I’ve been getting misgendered since I was about 5.
The people who misgender me are lazy, in a hurry, and misinformed. I have really short hair and I love the tomboy and butch aesthetic. It makes me feel like me. I don’t need to be overtly feminine just to make it easier for someone to figure out what I am.
There needs to be a place for anyone and everyone who doesn’t want to fit into a narrow preconceived notion of what “right” looks like. If you’re that upset about the grammatical revival of a pronoun that’s been in usage as a singular since 1375, maybe you need a new hobby. If you feel the need to belittle other human beings with trenchant references to octopi, inbreeding, or snowflakes, maybe you’re a petty human being. Get over yourselves and let people alone.
298
@Mathilda Maybe we all just need to be ourselves and not worry about how we are being perceived by others. I once had a female "friend" come up to me and tell me she enjoyed being behind me in an aerobics class because I looked so funny and awkward when I exercised. I decided right then and there that if someone was offended by my appearance, they could look in a different direction. It's not my problem.
16
@Mathilda
Hello Mathilda: Please don't take these questions as me being "lazy" or "misinformed" (or judgemental), but rather as sincere questions from someone who come from a different experience.
- On the one hand, you state that "There needs to be a place for anyone and everyone who doesn’t want to fit into a narrow preconceived notion of what “right” looks like." On the other hand, you began with the assertion that "wearing blush, mascara, lipstick, and a silk blouse... made it clear I’m not a man." If the goal equality is to break binary notions that clothes are gendered, then why would/should clothes or mascara "make it clear" that the wearer is a woman? Can't a man wear mascara as well, and still be allowed to identify as male?
- From my own experience as a 57-year-old gay man, I can understand that there are times when we're confronted by people or situations that make us feel frustrated (or even angry). However, I'm reluctant to assume that everyone who doesn't immediately understand me or immediately use the language that I prefer is necessarily "lazy" or "misinformed." If I prefer to call my spouse "husband" and someone keeps using "partner," I'm willing to cut them some slack, and not assume laziness (or non-acceptance); after all, we've been thinking through these issues our whole lives, whereas for other people, they might be newly learning our perspectives. Isn't growth to mutual understanding, acceptance, and reconciliation a two-way process?
101
@Mathilda YES! I trained sir and ma'am into my language when I went to college (in the 90s) because it seemed polite then. Now, I'm trying to re-train them out of my vocabulary because, as a non-binary person who gets called "sir" all the time, I want to avoid making anyone feel that momentary sense of disconnection that I feel when being misgendered by them.
5
We want all our citizens to be treated with respect & dignity. As civilized people we owe each other that much. But we aren't going to change 500 years of English grammar at the legislative level so a tiny minority of confused individuals can feel more comfortable. Using "they" for a singular person is too much. The whole concept of gender identity is coming to a head. A few weeks ago California decided that their public school kindergartens would include instruction on gender identity. Truthfully that any adult would think that a 4-year-old child, can be trusted to “understand” their gender identity when they still exhibit firm beliefs in magic is officially scary. We need to hit the brakes on this. We need some good unbiased science on this before we move forward. We need a rational framework on how to proceed. Maybe what we really need to do first is decide is this an ideological or scientific debate. If it is an ideological debate which many of us suspect...i.e. some states offering drivers 29 gender options, including “pangender,” “two-spirit” & “genderqueer”...then no respected scientist will ever get involved. Why risk ruining your career? We know progressive fanatics will silence or get them fired under the guise that they are bigots. It's emotional and moral blackmail of a most insidious nature, all under the guise of "safety". So maybe right now; sadly scientific investigation on this subject is impossible. Is there still a place for common sense in our culture?
507
@Bill Brown it really does not matter if it’s scientifically researches. The fact of the matter is these people exist and want their gender to be represented. There’s no one crying out for all the possible gender identities out their to be put on licenses or other legal documents, most people are just asking for an “x” or for it to not be noted at all. Besides, when things like sexuality and gender are “scientifically” researched, it often ends up being a way for people to try and “cure” trans and non-binary people or to act as a gatekeeper for trans and non-binary people who may not be considered trans if they don’t experience x, y, z.
13
@Bill Brown. In answer to your last question, no, and there hasn’t been for years now. We’ve been gish galloped from both directions. Trust is also a casualty; went to its funeral years ago.
9
@Kieran Could you please define 'gender identity' in a way that most of us can understand? Because when I ask, I get the most superficial answers, like a certain preference for clothes, or makeup. I have a very hard time believing that a preference for make up is something innate. And this explanation smacks of sexism, as if the very definition of women is based on clothes and make up, and, of course, high heels. If there really is something like gender identity, I wish you or someone could clearly define it.
83
This is a sensitive and well-drawn piece on the difficulty some individuals have just being a person -- in this case, a person with issues of gender identity. It's ironic that so many of us focus on one aspect only of the entire spectrum of issues: that "they/them" is hard to get your head around in talking about a singular person. Lacking seems to be empathy for epic struggle, the longing to fit in, the pain of self-acceptance. I certainly get that pronouns in flux are a hassle -- but can't we focus on the extraordinary pressure non-binary people are under in our society? Surely our shared humanity can outweigh our discomfort over a nuisance in noun-pronoun agreement.
26
@minidictum because using a different pronoun is SOOOO hard.
3
@SGK
Personally, I don't think the pronoun confusion indicates lack of empathy. I for one am saying that the pronoun difficulty may be making it harder for people to empathize even if they want to.
13
@SGK But they don't have to be under this pressure. It only happens when they call attention to themselves by insisting on being treated differently. PS Who doesn't experience the 'the epic struggle, the longing to fit in, the pain of [achieving] self-acceptance' ?
10
I hope one day people can just be who they are without thinking about preconceived roles. Though my husband and I are cisgender, our roles are not entirely comforming. He works in a female-dominated field; I'm the one who owns the tools, does home repairs, works on cars, studied math and science and communicates in a more direct fashion.
While I certainly cannot relate to the pain the individuals featured in the article experience, I have experienced reactions from people who 1) "dumb it down" if I reveal my gender in DIY forums 2) take pity on me as if my husband is failing in his role or go after my husband for not taking care of these things (even his lesbian co-workers gave him a hard time!) 3) have accused me of cheating or removed me from class in university math classes where they simply didn't believe a female belonged in the department or 4) act "amazed" that a female can do the "man's work."
I wonder how much of the gender-confusion (for lack of a better term) is in part related to individual rejection of traditional gender roles in conjunction with societal or parental pressure to conform.
More teenagers and young adults are exploring gender identity than ever before and can connect with others online, which might make some feel relieved that there are others like themselves, but make others feel more alone, since it's possible even the nonbinary label can seem restrictive. It's a complex issue to be sure.
12
@Rhonda
There’s nothing wrong with people being cis and breaking gender norms. In fact, I find that cisgender people visibly breaking gender norms is helpful for non-binary people to exist. Cis men can totally wear dresses and cis women can wear suits. This doesn’t have to do necessarily with just breaking gender roles, but realizing that ones gender is more expansive or different than woman and man.
6
@Rhonda I really resent the term cis-. Does that give me the right to demand everyone who has taken it up, abandon it immediately?
30
@tundra I haven't taken it up. This is probably the only time I've used that term because it doesn't bother me personally, and because it made sense to me to use it in this context.
Most people in their daily lives don't have to make use of special terminology to explain their positions or place in life. Therefore, if I knew you IRL, then it wouldn't be embedded in my understanding that you would be cis-anything, nor would I stop to think of whether you are "heterosexual" unless you were to bring it up.
If you say, "Hey, don't call me cis-", I would totally respect that.
Hi Salem. I'm also non-binary-ish (used to ID as a transgender man, now somewhere on the transmasc spectrum.) I'm also in my 20s. And I'm less than an hour down the road from you. Thanks for sharing your story. It means so much. Don't read the comments on Twitter; it's nothing you and I haven't heard before. Keep your head up, because I swear on everything that things get better. They don't get any less difficult, but you come to learn that the best things on this planet -- like community, and music, and art, and fashion, and partners (if that's your cup of tea), and your chosen family -- make the difficult things worth fighting through.
Also: if you're looking for more resources, I'd suggest the LGBTQ Center of Durham and iNSIDEoUT.
143
Another badly written article about nonbinary people. This is pride month. Us LGBTI folks are celebrating in the midst of a full on attack on our human and civil rights by the Trump Administration. Decades ago, all the “research” on gay men was on psychiatric patients; those results were unfairly applied to ALL gay men, giving a false picture of healthy gay men. Now you’re doing the same thing to nonbinary people. Yes, nonbinary people who have the bad luck to grow up in transphobic, homophobic places suffer because they are surrounded by prejudiced bigots. This article also continues the false belief that nonbinary identities are new. Many cultures have provided third gender roles for people who didn’t fit a culture’s traditional gender binary. I knew I was nonbinary in high school, even though there were no labels. I’m 52 now and happily married to my transgender wife. Biological sex, gender identity (gender), gender expression and sexual orientation should not be conflated. Our culture severely polices gender expression. It suppresses natural behaviors of gender nonconforming people. If people weren’t boxed in, we’d see a range of gender expressions and identities. What’s the difference between a masculine cisgender woman, butch lesbian, and nonbinary person? You’d have to ask. We’re not the same. Gender is a spectrum. Stop telling feminine boys to act masculine and tomboys to act feminine. Let everyone be themselves without fear of discrimination and violence.
23
This old hetero guy wishes you the best. its tough being human. Do what works for you and ignore the rest.
343
@Tim Amen! A hetero, self-identified XX female mother middle-aged wife completely agrees. I find my faith guides me here - WWJD? The person who ate with the diseased, hung out with the poor, and stayed with the tax collectors? He'd have had no problem with pronouns, names, gender fluidity... he'd have followed the greatest commandment - to love thy neighbor as thyself. No her or him there!
30
66 and have been active since the nineties talking to people online in forums and such, it isn't something that is new, it is only something you just couldn't see with the closed minds that the matrix of cis binary created to simplify your world outlook, your agents there make sure you are in line and thinking the way they want you to.
It's ridiculous to even debate the fact that your birth sex is your birth sex, and it is only assigned as the Dr sees fit, they never do take any tests to find out in you are intersex, which is a big deal in how they are treated by Drs.
Gender is the thing that you feel like who you are, it is none of anyone's business despite the agents of the matrix demanding that it is.
Your gender is not the same thing as your sex, it can be, but it doesn't have to be, it's the reason there is the words sex and gender, otherwise just sex would be sufficient.
Gender is not a biological thing like sex is, it's your own view of who you are and it borrows words from things like the binary sex, because there isn't much language to use.
Sexuality is who you want to have sex with, there are no rules, but the matrix demands that there be rules, because they want to control everyone, the agents of this matrix are generally seen as evil beings.
So you have your sex, you have your gender, you have your sexuality.
None of it is anyone's business and none of it is wrong in how you see, feel and present it, there are only the agents of the matrix who demand conformity..
9
@Lambnoe
Each and every one of us whether as individuals or as anonymous members of a group will be referred to with descriptors based on context: pedestrian, pet-owner, parent, voter, Oregon resident, cisgender. None of these words is meant to change your personal identity. And, while you and many other cisgender people may not refer to yourselves as cisgender, you will be referred to as cisgender in any discussion which compares or contrasts people who identify as the gender they've had since birth, and those who identify as a different gender than their birth gender. That's the beauty of language; we don't need to say "the person/people who walk along the roadway or cross the street." every time we refer to a pedestrian.
4
@childofsol
People aren't born with a gender, they're born with a sex. Gender is a social construct and until you're a member of a society it's irrelevant.
Love and peace to you Salem! I like your new name.
It was initially hard for me to imagine what it's like to feel differently about one's own gender from day to day . . . But then (as a ciswoman), I also vary: stilettos to flats, frills to no-fuss, cleavage to crew neck. How much "femininity" do I want to project today?
I realize those choices are extremely trifling compared to the the choices nonbinary persons face. But just wanted to mention, in this spirit: Aren't we all on the same spectrum? Let's let every individual person be the expert on who they are.
16
Interesting. It seems only laudatory comments are being posted.
26
Nature in humans produced male, female and a very few intersex babies. The few intersex people are infertile. Language allows that gender deviate from paralleling sex, but nature remains the same.
70
@David
Not all intersex people are infertile
3
@Kieran And intersex people are not exactly rare; 1 in 200 would be a conservative estimate; one study places it at 1.7%. The very low figures are for babies born so ambiguous that sex cannot be assigned without further testing, but those are only the most serious cases. Many more become apparent later or even go undetected.
And don't forget that each of those "few people" is a living breathing person just like you with feelings and a place in society, not get casually dismissed as inconsequential!
3
@Kieran By definition they are. If you're a female with non-classical adrenal hyperplasia, you're basically a hairy woman with potentially some fertility issues that can be treated with hormones. You're not intersex. If you're an XY individual with testosterone insensitivity and you are born with ambiguous genitalia and retained testes, you are intersex and you are infertile.
10
Thank you so much for writing this piece. Genderqueer people exist, regardless of what society may say. Gender and gender stereotypes are society's way of trying to understand the complexities of the human mind. When there are people who don't fit neatly into a box as all people do, society tends to pretend they don't exist. We made up gender, and we are having a hard time stopping. It's understandable why we are so scared. Not knowing who someone is can be scary. But that just means that we have to learn that there are people out there who don't fit into these fictional gender boxes, just as you and I don't fit into other boxes. We need to change.
18
Thank you so much for writing this piece. Genderqueer people exist, regardless of what society may say. Gender and gender stereotypes are society's way of trying to understand the complexities of the human mind. When there are people who don't fit neatly into a box as all people do, society tends to pretend they don't exist. We made up gender, and we are having a hard time stopping. It's understandable why we are so scared. Not knowing who someone is can be scary. But that just means that we have to learn that there are people out there who don't fit into these fictional gender boxes, just as you and I don't fit into other boxes. We need to change.
3
Thank you so much for writing this piece. Genderqueer people exist, regardless of what society may say. Gender and gender stereotypes are society's way of trying to understand the complexities of the human mind. When there are people who don't fit neatly into a box as all people do, society tends to pretend they don't exist. We made up gender, and we are having a hard time stopping. It's understandable why we are so scared. Not knowing who someone is can be scary. But that just means that we have to learn that there are people out there who don't fit into these fictional gender boxes, just as you and I don't fit into other boxes. We need to change.
3
Thank you so much for writing this piece. Genderqueer people exist, regardless of what society may say. Gender and gender stereotypes are society's way of trying to understand the complexities of the human mind. When there are people who don't fit neatly into a box as all people do, society tends to pretend they don't exist. We made up gender, and we are having a hard time stopping. It's understandable why we are so scared. Not knowing who someone is can be scary. But that just means that we have to learn that there are people out there who don't fit into these fictional gender boxes, just as you and I don't fit into other boxes. We need to change.
3
Even something as foundational as the English language is designed to oppress and obscure the reality of those of us who are not living at the extreme ends of our gender continuum.
I too found "they/them" to be confusing an awkward at first... but I found it gets easier with use.
It's just new and different... sort of like when I had to stop using a mouse when I got my first lap-top.
14
One significant issue not touched upon by this article, but highlighted by reading it is that communication is impaired by the ambiguous use of "they/them". It stands out that an important step to aid acceptance is to avoid ambiguity in the subject of conversation or writing. English language has evolved toward clarity but the use of "they/them" caused me to re-read the sections of the article to ascertain who was the subject. Even though I am accepting of non-binary individuals, I can see why others may be less accepting based on significant issue.
28
This is the first article I've read that reflects my family's experience with our youngest child. Thank you, Mr. Bergner and Salem.
16
At 44, in a small town high school in the late 80s and early 90s, very frustratingly, students were not yet comfortable coming out, this was in relatively liberal Massachusetts. It happened pretty much right after and when I got to McGill, obviously the calculus changed. That said, having having had challenges with the confusion of trigger warnings - in some cases a serious threat to free speech on left, (I say this as a firm liberal/Democrat - for example, I can imagine students opting out of WWII historical works of writing like Night, in an extreme case, that seems like the endpoint of the route taken, or in 2040, a glossing of presidencies like Trump’s) and microagressions (a term that has luckily seemed to recede), I can at least see their point, despite firm disagreement often. But gender identity and pronouns have opened up and I see clearly: these pronouns are the future and that is not only a reality, but a good thing. As often with social trends and environmental trends today, I am also proud to note that Gen X was the generation that broke through publicly in the 90s and 00s. I hate to Boomer-bash, but the generational divide may be too far to breach in general from Gen X and younger. It is the challenge of the Boomers to understand this gender reality as is it is their challenge to understand the insane America they are leaving those of us under 50 and to let us finally lead. It will be too late eventually. The bravery of Salem inspiredme to tears. Onwards.
9
@nancy drew: You are a fundamentally rude person.
15
As a boomer, I'm still listening, reading, learning, and trying to understand. It is a challenge. I have one humble request, if at all possible: please create or develop a pronoun that is not male, female, and definitely not plural. I envision something similar to the back-in-the day transition to Ms, which was not Miss (single) or Mrs. (married). I get so confused reading their/them and trying to figure out the number of people that are being talked about. It would be helpful. I'll help promote it.
502
@Sunrise
They is used as a singular as in when there is a person at a distance who they can't make out very well. They might be doing something that looks strange to them, so they refer to the person as they, as in 'what are they doing', so singular.
To be so stuffed as to not consider that they them and their can't be singular is very limited thinking, and I'm not accusing, just saying. Just as people can open their hearts to other people, so can they open their minds, the ultimate goal for anyone is to be able to simply see things and understand them. When you reject the ideas that some people have, you are rejecting them, and though unintentional, it is very degrading to that person, imagine it happening to you all day every day. They them and their is as simple as just using the word, it isn't going to make you anything other than more open minded, the goal, yah know?
12
@Caroline Majors
Mx. is new to me. How is it pronounced? I'll use it because it adds to the clarity of communication and understanding. Would you accept the pronoun "one/oneself" as suggested in another comment? Is that an acceptable compromise between the plural and singular?
11
@Sunrise Mx. is pronounced as you probably think it is: as “mix”.
No, I wouldn’t accept “one/oneself” because my pronouns are she/her/hers.
When a non-binary and/or trans person tells you their pronouns are they/them/their, then those are the pronouns you use to refer to them. End of discussion. This isn’t hard.
12
Thank you for this clear, compassionate, and beautifully written piece!
8
Yes, the gender boxes are exploding.
Among Gen Z, binary transgender people are present and accounted for. They are understood (at least in my New England life), and everyone knows someone who is trans. The trans kids at our high school are, for the most part, successful and mainstream.
But non-binary? Oof. No one knows what to do with them, and they don't seem to know what to do with themselves. It sounds like torture and looks like torture. Mental health professionals have no idea what to do.
One young person I know, after many years of multi-faceted mental health struggles, is now saying their non-binary. I don't know what to make of this - it seems to me that identity in all its forms has been an overwhelming challenge for this kid from the beginning. Their gender expression has always been overwhelmingly - aggressively - female (lingerie as clothes etc.).
I'll listen and learn, since I don't think that we should have rigid notions of gender. But I'm not going to pretend that it isn't really hard to understand.
58