He/She/They: How We Talk About Gender and Why It Matters

by Schuyler Bailar

According to Dr. McLean, gender is “an array of mental and behavioral characteristics that relate to and differentiate from and go beyond understandings of masculinity, femininity, and neutrality.”

This deified view of transness was found all around the world. Dr. shawndeez (they/them), an Iranian American independent scholar who completed their PhD in gender studies at UCLA, told me that in various indigenous societies around the world “our transness was a fixture of our spiritual height.”21 Trans people were seen as “really useful vessels between this world and the spiritual—our transness gave us this extra access to this divine wisdom.” shawndeez believes transness demands that we cultivate “a consciousness that is so open,

so spacious, [it] invites higher dimensional thought that we’re not really seeing in the everyday mundane very earthly realm.”

I want to live my life constantly integrating new information and updating my thoughts, beliefs, and opinions. I hope you will join me.

Write about the five most memorable experiences you’ve shared with the individual using the correct pronouns. Every time you misgender them, gender them correctly three times in three different ways. (E.g., “He is going to the store to get his groceries because they are necessary to him.”) Do not do this in the person’s presence; do this on your own or in your head. Correct yourself in your head, always. Even if that person is not around. Do some soul-searching on your own gender. Seeing someone else’s gender correctly might require the release or deconstruction of societal constraints, boxes, or expectations of man- or womanhood. Investigate why it’s hard to call this individual the correct pronouns: You might be embarrassed. If this is the case, read Daring Greatly by Brené Brown (she/her) and start to build some shame resilience. You might see this individual only as who you want them to be instead of who they actually are. This is where some of that soul-searching could be beneficial. You might consider talking through your feelings about who you want this person to be or who you thought they would be with a trusted friend, a therapist, or a family member—but not the individual themselves.