The Importance of Pronouns

Our society has a serious issue with improper representation, as a result of our colonial beginnings. Our world, including the media and advertising, is filled with examples of white, cisgendered sexism that affects how people understand what is normal and important. With the trans population being a majorly underrepresented category in mainstream media, they are often gravely misunderstood and disrespected due to their deviance from these ‘normal’ societal projections. Pronouns embody gender identities that intersect with race and sexuality, which then in turn result in successful or failed gender expression, as Puar discusses in his paper Mapping US Homonormativities, (Puar, 71). The topic of pronouns has been met with ignorant and dismissive commentary from those who benefit most from society, which happen to be whose opinions the general public considers ‘valuable’. Cisgendered people have been responding from a place of privilege when transgendered and binary folks have requested to be addressed by the pronouns of their choosing. Responses such as, “I don’t recognise another person’s right to decide what words I’m going to use, especially when the words they want me to use, first of all, are non-standard elements of the English language and they are constructs of a small coterie of ideologically motivated people. They might have a point but I’m not going to say their words for them.”, (CBC, 2016) which was a statement made by Jordan Peterson, a University of Toronto professor who also happens to be a while male, reveals the bigoted and defensive attitudes that have come out of this push for inclusive language. This blog post will be linking language from the CBC’s article about the Medicine Hat case to the greater societal attitudes surrounding the use of pronouns. It is important to note that we are not assuming that the child involved in the Medicine Hat court case is transgender, we are instead commenting on how using the correct pronouns towards those who are not cisgender is a sign of respect that is not always acknowledged.

When we had originally read the CBC article written by Colleen Underwood, there was no mention of pronouns at all. It was revised on October 31st and we noticed that the sentence, “Smith refers to her child as “they” rather than the less gender-neutral pronouns of “him” or “her.””, (Underwood, 2016), had been added to the body of the text. While this may appear to some as mere clarification from the reporter, it symbolizes something much bigger and more problematic than just revised journalism. The initial exclusion of this sentence reiterates the idea that mainstream media does not see the importance that the accurate use of pronouns has to trans or non binary folks. Please take a look at this Buzzfeed video that serves as a testimony to the importance of pronouns to the trans & non binary community:

This becomes even clearer later on in the article, where Underwood uses language such as, “introducing herself as a girl to others”, (Underwood, 2o16), or “…her child woke up in the middle of the night to tell Smith she was going to cut off her penis.”, (Underwood, 2016), after just reporting on how the child’s mother prefers to use ‘they’ pronouns. The author’s use of gendered language is in opposition to the language that is used by the mother within her quotes, where she makes a firm point of using the term ‘them’ when discussing her child. This is an example of our society’s obsession with putting people into seemingly tangible categories, and our inability to accept the wishes of others who identify differently than us. I would hypothesise that cis-gendered folks are not as sensitive to the use of pronouns because they are not at risk of being misgendered, so language like this does not appear to be hurtful or troublesome to them. 

References: