Magic for Liars

by Sarah Gailey

We spend most of our students’ freshman year teaching them that words have power, and we don’t waste that power if we can help it.”

It’s no secret that I’m a big Tana French fan. In her most recent book, The Searcher, the protagonist spends some time reflecting on the difference between morals and manners. Manners, he figures, are correct words and polite usage, whereas morals are about how you try to impact the world around you. When I wrote this line and the lines around it, I was (can you believe it?) still identifying as female. The words that folks use to refer to female people – words like she and her – never quite sat right with me, but I didn’t pay too much attention to that feeling until I learned about the idea of being nonbinary. Words like ‘they’ and ‘them’ felt right to me in a way that ‘she’ and ‘her’ never did. When people use the wrong pronouns to refer to me, I almost always figure that it’s an accident, and to me, that’s a matter of manners rather than a matter of morals. Still, those words have power. The word ‘they’ has the power to make me and a lot of other people feel seen, understood, and cared for. That’s a kind of power I never want to waste.