Let’s Talk: They/them Pronouns

Let’s talk about they/them pronouns for a singular person.

Let me tell you the story of what inspired this post. In English class, we’re currently writing a short story, and my main character is the usual, our favourite enby in this nook of the internet, my very own, January Grey.

I, naturally, used they/them pronouns for them, because, well, that’s who they are. That’s what feels right, that’s what is right for them. It’s what I’m comfortable with using for Jan, and it’s what I’m the most comfortable being used for myself.

When my teacher first pointed out the “their” and asked if I meant “her” (I’m AFAB), it was fine. I was a little irked, but shook my head, saying no, I wanted to use they/them, resisting the urge to come out as genderfluid in front of the entire class. Then here’s where it happened. He pointed out a “them” and told me it was a plural pronoun and can’t be used for singular. I didn’t almost cry, I did cry. Shed a few hardly noticeable tears and wiped them off discreetly later. Call me sensitive, but after not being able to ask people around me except a close few friends to use my preferred pronouns, I was projecting through January with that aspect as well as many others.

It was all I could do to not full on cry, because January’s identity is so special to me because they represent me in so many different ways. They mean a lot to me, almost like- and I'm not proud of it because it's really not how authors should be with their characters- January is a part of me, which makes them the most important character I've ever written.

It really didn't help that we had a new seating plan, and the teacher was jokingly calling us sir/madam before pointing us on our way in at the beginning of the class. I hit my head against the handle of my hockey stick, no joke. That was bad enough already, and now I had to forfeit January's pronouns? Yeah. Not to mention I was having a pretty bad day already for reasons I won't go too far in to.

Honestly, as much as I want to hold a grudge against my English teacher, I can't bring myself to hate one of the few teachers I've had that are both nice and actually good at their jobs at the same time(Oops maybe I shouldn't have said that... Ah well, not like any of my teachers are gonna see it anyways).

So, let’s talk about using they/them as singular pronouns. It has actually been accepted by a lot of publishers/editors, magazines, newspapers etc., and of course, society, for the most part, accepts it. So that's one of the reason I was annoyed as well as upset. Even Charles Dickens, Jane Austen, Henry James, and one of my idols, F. SCOTT. FREAKING. FITZGERALD, all used they/them as singular pronouns in their works at one point or another, some more than a few times.

Yes, they may not have been referring to a non-binary-spec person, but still, my English teacher's point was it couldn't be used as a singular pronoun, not about there being a problem with me writing a non-binary character... at least I hope. I don't actually know if he knew January is non-binary, I never specified that far, but I feel like it was fairly implied. So time to give them a bunch of dysphoria in this short story as a big of a side plot as I can to compensate, also so I can project once again.

I'm honestly sad that this is a topic I have to be discussing and advocating for like this in god-darn 2024 near 2025. It's sad, it really is. Let's quote a screenshot I found of one of Tim Sutton's socials here.

Someone: Do you support gay rights?

Tim:

-looks at calender-

-it's 2012-

-20goddamn12-

Of course I do, and I really hate that it's even still an issue.

Yep. That was from twelve years ago, and things have hardly changed for both the gay and trans umbrella community. I too hate that it's still an issue. I hate that people have to usually explicitly state that they support queer rights or members of the community will be afraid or at least hesitant to reach out to them or come out to them. I hate that people use "making gay marriage legal" and "getting rid of stigma around lgbt+" as presidential and vice versa election speeches, because hello? Why was it illegal in the first place? It's like saying "if you vote for me as president I'll make racism stop."

It's a given. We shouldn't need to be doing that, there shouldn't have ever been a need to ban discrimination. People should be allowed to be who they are without fear of shame and violence, people should be able to use the pronouns they want without fear of judgement.

You know, for a moment there in the English classroom today, I was ashamed. I was scared.

My teacher had previously talked loads about all humans being equal, treating everyone the same, so on and so forth. Yes, I doubt there was any transphobic implications there, but as most of my friends know, I tend to overthink to a probably not great degree. So in that moment, I wanted to break down and cry not just because of the January's pronouns thing, but because for a moment, I wondered if there was something so seriously wrong with me that the teacher who seemed to be an upstander against discrimination had made a transphobic implication(once again, I doubt it was anything of the sort, but again, overthinking, and you never know).

I don't think I've felt that bad about myself in a while. I hardly feel bad when mean, unreasonable people flat-out insult me or call me out, but it hits hard when someone truly nice makes a comment with even the slightest implication against me.