Pronouns Happen

Over the years I’ve gotten to hear (and sometimes to overhear) people talking and talking about me. Some of my favorite conversations to hear and participate in are ones about the use of pronouns. There is a general lack of knowing what to do when it comes to pronouns and me. It’s funny, you most often hear that children are amazing in their perceptions- they will either “read” you right away and call you on it or they will take you at face value and continue as it nothing was out of the ordinary. I’ve found that often children are the one’s who get confused the most.

There have been a number of times when children have come up to me and asked if I was a boy or if I was a girl. Sometimes I just shrug my shoulder, sometimes I ask them what they think (of course they can never pick an option they think is the “real” one). Once I had a child look me over for a few minutes and then turn to his mother and ask “is she a boy or a girl?” The mother knew me (on a not too personal level) and simply answered, “That’s Jo!” So, apparently I’ve become a new pronoun all my own. I’m not a he or a she but a jo.

For all that, I hold a special appreciation for children when it comes to pronouns and accepting someone. So many adults are blatantly derogatory and won’t use the pronouns they’ve been told to use. Some are good about it, most aren’t. 

“It’s very hard to transform pronouns into a conscious process instead of an assumption based on social signals that have been instilled since birth. However, [people’s] willingness to fail at the difficult task of active thinking where non-thinking has existed is not okay.” -Dean Spade