The first time I
was asked to share my name and pronoun, I felt pretty upset. Why make gender so
primary, right here at the beginning of this event, as we introduce ourselves
to each other? I was in the woods with a bunch of Jewish activists, trying to
escape the gender binary and fight the patriarchy. So I said something like
this: “My name is Mimi, and you can use ‘she’ to refer to me, as long as you
understand that doesn’t say anything about who I am and what I’m capable of.”
I was at a point
in my life where priming gender was really hard for me. “Priming” refers to the
idea that simply bringing up a social category, such as gender, results in
psychologically (and maybe subconsciously) bringing up the stereotypes
associated with that social category, such that the pressure associated with
those stereotypes has a stronger effect. I felt that identifying myself along
the gender binary meant making myself vulnerable to expectations based on gender.
Just because I didn’t think twice when people refer to me as “she” didn’t mean
I was totally comfortable with everything in the category of “woman.”
Five years
later, having learned a lot about my own and other people’s experiences of
gender, and having more access to multiple means of both escaping the gender
binary and fighting the patriarchy, I came around. Friends, colleagues, and
co-conspirators at Keshet taught me many valuable lessons about how to be an
ally to transgender, genderqueer, and gender variant people. I came to see my
own privilege in the fact that when a person is left to their own devices to
guess what pronoun is best to use when referring to me, that person will always
choose “she.” At least, people always have, and I my guess is that they always
will. So I never have to fear being “mis-pronoun-ed” (someone using the wrong
pronoun to refer to me). In addition, I don’t have to endure any uncomfortable
or tense moments when I first meet someone, as they figure out what pronoun to use.
In fact, I’d never actually thought about what pronoun I use until that moment
in the woods with the fruity Jews.
Now, opening a
space by inviting everyone to share their name and their preferred pronoun has
a lot of meaning for me, on multiple levels.
- We get to make our space safer for trans and gender variant people: We directly address the fear/discomfort of being mispronounced by establishing preferences at the beginning of the event
- We get to complicate gender: Through this ritual, we demonstrate our belief that gender is not always binary and is not always obvious by looking at someone.
- We get to stand in solidarity: People always have referred to me using my preferred pronoun without me having to say anything. But by saying something anyway, I am putting myself in alliance with people who need to specify their preferred pronoun in order for other people to know what to say.
For these reasons, I have come to value sharing names and pronouns as an
important ritual for setting the space of a community event or retreat. In my next post, I share some questions that have come up in introducing this
ritual to my current community.
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