When Building Blocks Become Stumbling Blocks

by Christina Lay

Photo 150416348 © Juan Moyano | Dreamstime.com

Pronoun: a word that is used instead of a noun or noun phrase, for example he, it, hers, me, them, etc. (Oxford Online Dictionary)

Exciting stuff, eh? Normally, pronouns tend to be invisible words that carry their load without fuss; words like the, and, there. They are fundamental building blocks of the language that we absorb as we learn the language. They’re just there and we as writers don’t have to think about them much.  So what happens when new pronouns are introduced into the language? To further complicate matters, what happens when no one can agree on what those pronouns are, or if they should be used at all?

I’m talking of course about xe/xer, or ze/zir, or they/them when used to refer to a single person rather than a group.  I’m not here to argue about whether or not these new non-binary pronouns are necessary and deserve to exist. I’ll just go ahead and say that, yes, they do, assume you agree, and move on from there.

I personally prefer ze, zir because Z is a friendlier letter to work with than X. I have a writer’s bias on this.  Feel free to argue for xe/xer in the comments section if so inclined.

I have a suspicion that the incorporation of new pronouns might only be an issue for writers of a certain age.  I know my brain is rather calcified, but I’m willing to stretch and grow. You whippersnappers out there have had a chance to incorporate this addition to the language while your brain is still pliable. Good for you. For the rest of us, it’s a little more challenging.

A few years back, I took my first stab at writing a character who “chose not to gender identify”.  I craftily avoided the new, and therefore jarring, pronoun issue by avoiding using them at all.  I used the character’s name instead, or avoided sentence structure that required pronouns. I also used ‘the’ instead of a possessive like xer.  Imagine my dismay when a copy editor blithely tore through my manuscript, inserting he and him in my pronoun-less sentences and basically ignoring the fact that I’d clearly stated this was a non-binary character. Granted, my effort may have come off as rather awkward, but to have someone completely miss the point was frustrating, to say the least. Imagine what it feels like to bethe person whose reality is so easily ignored or swept aside.  Obviously, I never used that copy editor again, but I’m still grappling with the use of the new pronouns. 

Fortunately, there are more accomplished writers out there who’ve embraced the challenge, writers I admire, and they have managed to incorporate xe/xir or ze/zer so that they effortlessly fit into the sentences and barely jar this old brain at all. I’m guessing this is simply a matter of practice, practice, practice.  

My continuing issue comes not from the perspective of a writer, but from that of a reader.  The writers I referred to have adapted the new pronouns so that it only takes a few pages for the brain to absorb and accept the new words.  The problem is the greater question of what the pronoun means. For good or bad, the words she and he symbolize a host of preconceived notions.  When a writer pens, “She walked into the room” the reader’s brain is already busily sketching in details. Shemeans a woman, with certain feminine qualities.  Now, if the writer wants to stop the reader from getting carried away with their own image of the character, they will step in and fill in details. “She was a large woman with broad shoulders and short-cropped hair” will bring an abrupt end to the stereotyping a reader just can’t help doing in a vacuum. I know, this ‘filling in’ of details is part of the problem with she/he in the first place. Those little words place a lot of preconceptions on the person they are referring to, which is why xe/ze are so necessary.  But their use puts a lot more pressure on the writer to stop the auto fill that a reader is bound to do.

My problem as a reader is that when I read ze/xe, without the guidance of the writer, my imagination slips around like a fish out of water, desperately seeking a form upon which to land.  I know that we have 1. A person who 2. Is not male or female.  Everything else the writer needs to supply.

Example 1: I read a wonderful book by Rebecca Roanhorse called Black Sun, a fantasy based on South American mythos and culture which I highly recommend.  Roanhorse’s character descriptions are so rich and vivid that every character was distinct and clear in my mind. Every character, that is, except the one who was referred to as xir/xe.  Every time the person was on the page, my brain did the fish out of water thing, trying to figure out what this person looked like.  It didn’t help that the first time we ‘see’ the character, they’re wearing a mask. After finishing the book, I went back to find out if my discomfort was merely due to me exhibiting calcified brain syndrome, but I found that whereas every other character was described in minute detail from hair color to body size to what their belt buckle was made out of, this character “wore a long skirt the color of sunset”. They had “dark eyes”. They were referred to as languid and lithe and at one point, the protagonist thought “damn that lovely face”.  But there were no specifics. My mind decided the character was tall, for no particular reason I could find, and athletic, because of their occupation: assassin. Other than that, I wasn’t sure what to think and xe/xir gives me no further clues.  Actually, xe/xir tends to push back against how I want to fill in this sketch. My old brain wants to make them male or female.

Example 2: I’m part of a group that shares short excerpts from their work online each week. One of the writers in that group is writing non-binary characters, and again, she uses xe and xer seamlessly, as well as they/them for an individual.  I have to admit that at this point I don’t know what any of her characters look like. That might be because she’s chosen not to share those passages, but a result I’ve noticed, besides an airy sort of void in my head where a character’s image normally resides, is the complete ignoring of the obviously non-binary nature of the characters on the part of many of the participants in the group. These are all well meaning and skilled authors, but week after week, they persist in referring to these characters as she or he.  Part of it might be due to ignorance of what xe/xer means (a hard sell at this point in our social awareness). Part of it might be inattention. More to the point, I think the writer bears some of the responsibility here for not creating (or at least, not showing these particular readers) more vivid, 3D characters on the page.  I imagine those readers and commentators are experiencing the same slippery fish phenomena that I did, and perhaps because they’re not spending much time thinking about the pronoun issue, they default to he/she and then forget that they have no actual reason to think those characters are male or female. It’s an easy thing to do, given our ingrained habit as readers to engage our imaginations to the fullest.

Part of this is a matter of growing and stretching that calcified brain, to be sure, but we as writers need to be aware of the reader’s potential struggle. If we don’t want our readers getting frustrated and thrown out of our stories, we need to be even more mindful of creating well drawn, vivid characters. If I as a reader know how they look, I don’t have to worry about it.  I don’t have to rifle through my character detail file every time the character speaks or stabs someone. Maybe the mysterious assassin was supposed to remain an enigma? Maybe, but they were a key part of the story, and I wanted and needed more.

Our responsibility as writers is not only to embrace the positive upgrade to our language that non-binary pronouns offer, but to do our part in bringing readers along. Characters who do not identify as male or female need not be vague, or mysterious, or less than fully realized. Yes, we’ll have to dig a little deeper into our well of descriptive powers, but in doing so, maybe we’ll hone our skills, broaden our perception of people in general, and stop relying so much on auto fill and stereotypes.  These are surely skills that will come in handy in real life as well.