“They” May Have the Right Idea.

When I was around 12 years old, I thought I was gay. I wasn’t attracted to boys so much as I was attracted to gayness. I didn’t actually know any gay people, but I was affectionate, emotional, passionate, interested in fashion and art, and loved musical theater…and these were stereotypes of gay men in the late 1960’s and early 70’s; I thought I would fit in with them more than I did with the boys I knew. This feeling was supported by my being called “faggot” a lot.

Of course, I had no idea of what being gay meant, and, being a pre-pubertal 12 year old I had innocently conflated my behavior, mannerisms, interests, and appearance with a sexual orientation (which was far beyond my true comprehension at the time).

Looking back, it was nice to have a community to identify with in some way during early adolescence. However, within a few years it became clear to me that I was heterosexual, and my “way of being” just non-conforming for general expectations of adolescent masculinity.

The parallel evolution of feminism during that time — it was the era of Ms. Magazine — helped me to understand issues associated with gender and sex role stereotypes. With this insight, I was able to resolve, and accept, my identity as someone who might be seen as ‘different’ by others who had normative standards for what it meant to be a man, but also to understand how my own early ideas about gay people were shaped by social bias.

This all came back to me recently during a long conversation with a new colleague who uses “they/them” pronouns. I learned three things:

1. They see ‘he/him’ and ‘she/her’ pronouns has having negative subtexts in society and have been the victim of sex-role stereotyping that conflicted with their sense of self and interfered with their aspirations.

2. Both the LGBTQ community and feminism have shaped their world view and helped them to understand and accept themselves; they even hate the phrase ‘non-conforming’ because, as they said: “Conforming to what?”

3. This decision had nothing to do with their sexual orientation

Now, if you are now wondering what they “are”, you are just making the case for gender neutral pronouns. I don’t know whether my new colleague is a boy or a girl and, since their gender is completely irrelevant to the context of our relationship, I don’t care — with the added benefit that I am less likely to impose on them any unconscious gender bias I might hold. There’s a wonderful freedom this has created in our working relationship. While I am man with a wide range of behaviors traditionally associated with femininity, I have still benefitted from the patriarchy. So, I am going to embrace and celebrate those who want to eliminate the inequities that gender-related expectations can impose on them. They may just have the right idea to neutralize the social construct we call gender.