Pronouns and Privilege: An Essay in Vignettes

1. I'm seventeen and dating a boy for the first time. He is a gentle, sweet, young man, and I'm pretty in love with him. I hate being seen in public with him. Having dated girls for most of high school I was used to walking around ready for the abuse to fly from people on the street, and I was ready when it did. Walking around with K. I was constantly and painfully aware of the privilege I had. Privilege is funny that way -- before you know that you wear it, it's an invisible cloak and you never know how much it protects you and lifts you up -- once you have it, you notice the distance between you and others (or you and who you were) constantly, and it's painful, hard. It's hard to give privilege back, say "no, thank you". I didn't like being read as straight, I didn't like the approving glances I got from strangers, like this relationship was so much better than the ones I'd had with girls. I hated it.

2 . ED, my gay, biracial, boss at OldJob, is talking to me about something, and I say something about "someone I used to date" and he says "Oh, did he...". And then he catches himself and talks about he can't believe how sexist he of all people just was. I say that we all do it sometimes, and that with me it's a good guess either way, and with TP (who he has met) you would be equally accurate either way.

3. I'm having a networking coffeedate with someone who works at the DreamJob place of employment and mention that I'm going to RedState for a visit in June to visit the person I'm dating, and she uses "he" and I use that to, wincing slightly, knowing that it doesn't quite fit, but not ready to go seven rounds on gender identity in an already tense situation. Ditto with regards to my aunt's reaction to finding out that TP lives in LiberalCity in RedState. "Oh, what does she do there?"

4. I had been dating TP for longer that I would like to admit before I fully integrated hir gender identity in the way I see hir. For a long time I (mostly) unconsciously continued to think of TP as "really a woman", as the decision to start T loomed closer, and as we talked about it more, I realized that this has to change and, finally, I think it has. How do I know? My boss, mother, and sisters continue to use "she" for TP, even after meeting hir, and I wince the same way I wince when someone uses "he". Sometime I'll have to decide whether to enforce the most complicated grammatical shift ever onto my family, but for now I'm just happy that I wince.

5. I'm talking to my queer neighbor (as if I had just one, ha!) about her partner who is working class (a cop, so sexy in the uniform) and butch, and about TP and pronouns. She says that she doesn't think her partner identifies as a woman, but neither does she have pronouns to use to describe the place where she is -- the partner identifies this as being about "not having read Kate Bornstein, or Butler". Those two writers aside, I point out that I think it is about class, and priorities. TP is getting a Phd in English Literature. Pronouns will be important to hir because language is of primary importance.

TP, and the people that surround hir, use privilege everytime we use the correct pronouns for hir. Beyond that, I shift in and out of privilege, like a garment that is visible only to me. Everytime I use "she" or "he" they are both inaccurate, but differently so, I never thought that letting people assume I was straight could feel so subversive or that being recognized as queer could feel so erasing. I don't know how all of this works, or what I think about it. But I do know that I feel the same way I did when I was seventeen and walking around with a boy on my arm for the first time, without the tools to handle the new ways the world was handling me.