you know i just got done reading JUDITH BUTLER
This one goes out to all my cisgender friends, comrades, colleagues — all of you. It’s a weird one, because I’m absolutely confident that there will be non-binary people (trans people in general, honestly) who disagree with me, or who think I’m making a big deal out of nothing. And that’s fair! But I want to say it, for myself.
A very accurate depiction of me at work (by me, at work).
I’ve been navigating the world of work for about two years as an out non-binary person. When I say ‘out,’ I mean that I’m out to my immediate coworkers and I don’t feel uneasy wearing a pronoun pin, or referring to myself as ‘they.’ (I do a lot more talking about myself in the third person than most people, which is a side effect of being deeply obnoxious.) I’m not in the habit of, say, announcing my pronouns at the beginning of every meeting, or introducing myself as non-binary to every new person I have to work with. My mindset is very much that I’m there to do a job, not to relitigate the question of my identity with everyone around me; my pronouns matter to me, but they are the absolute least of it when it comes to being treated with respect at work, and I’ve been in enough bad work environments to recognise that.
In my current workplace, at interview, I asked whether using they/them at work would be a problem, and was met with the most professional, practical response I could have wished for. Yes, it would be okay; yes, my new manager would let the team know; yes, I could put my pronouns in my email signature; yes, if anyone got shitty with me about it then HR would back me up. My immediate coworkers refer to me as they, and correct themselves with minimal fuss if they slip. I work in an academic environment, and the students I have email contact with are very astute about my pronouns — occasionally I get a ‘Dear Mx M____,’ and though I’m a first-name-basis email user, it always makes me happy. I’m not even the only non-binary person in my workplace! Right now, I’m incredibly lucky.
That’s why it stands out to me, at this point, whenever I have the following interaction with people who know about my gender:
cis colleague: “Hello ladies! Or oh wait actually it’s very binary to say ladies isn’t it, I’m so sorry”
me, Waverly: “It’s genuinely fine”
cis colleague: [looks intently at me] “you know I just got done reading Judith Butler”
Or this one:
cis meeting chair: “This is obviously a real issue facing women in the workplace.”
meeting: [continues for like ten minutes]
cis meeting chair: [looks intently at me] “I should say that I’m sorry to have said women in the workplace when what I meant was parents in the workplace, of whatever gender, that the parent is or is not”
me, Waverly: [grim silence]
cis meeting chair: “there’s more than two genders everybody”
Like… the intent is there, and I truly do believe that intent is important. Not everything, but it matters, especially in environments where not everyone has the same awareness of sensitive social issues. I’m tough enough to speak up when someone is being a bona-fide asshole about gender situations, but I’m hardly going to berate a coworker for a well-meaning but poorly-phrased statement about biological sex, when I could talk to them about it or (crucially) get on with my dang job instead.
But the extremely public apology, extremely directed at the sole trans person in the room, extremely dragged out well past its natural end point, is a performance, and it is not for the benefit of anyone who is trans. It’s awesome that you’re reading Judith Butler; it’s great that you know there’s more than two genders. But both these scenarios build those get-out-of-transphobia-free cards into an apology that’s really just prolonging the moment of frustration for the trans person listening. I literally just want to move past it, every time. I’m tired, okay?
Don’t do this.
But Waverly, you ask. Wav. Pal. What are we supposed to do instead? You can’t tell me you just want us to ignore it when we fuck up.
Correct! Here are some alternatives you might wish to try, if you have ever hit me with the wrong pronoun and felt the urge to tell me in self-defence how much you love Janet Mock:
Email me after the fact. A colleague did this recently — he got my pronoun wrong during a casual chat with the team in my office, went away, and sent me an email later that afternoon apologising. This was cool, because it didn’t put me on the spot, it didn’t call undue attention to me, and it meant we could have a secluded, text-based chat about pronouns more generally, without at any point derailing my actual work. Score!
Correct yourself quickly, and move on. “Waverly said she was going to — sorry, they were going to make a phone call. After that we can catch up!” (This is an unlikely scenario, in that I hate a phone call, but work with me.) It keeps us on task, it shows me you care, and again, it doesn’t turn the entire focus of the interaction to me. Love that for us!
Honestly? You don’t even have to correct yourself, or apologise. Just move on, and use the right pronoun next time. I’ll notice, and I’ll appreciate it.
I know for an absolute fact that I don’t speak for every trans person here. That being said, I’m usually very open to taking questions about my gender, at least with people who I know are in good faith. When I first came out as agender at work, I had a conversation with a colleague who knew almost nothing about gender identity, and who had a lot of questions about how I experienced my identity. So I answered them! It was good for me to have space to articulate my gender situation in depth; it was good for her to have someone to ask, rather than to risk making recourse to the internet; it was good for us both to have a kind, respectful conversation, and it brought us closer as colleagues and friends. I’m never mad at curiosity. Ask me on a lunch break, sure — but do ask me, even if you’re worried I’ll take umbrage at your questions. The worst I’ll say is ‘can we reschedule.’
Gender is weird! I’ll be the first to admit it. It is okay to have questions and it is understandable to trip over it sometimes. Just don’t trip into a deep hole of performative allyship and then try to race everyone else in the room to the bottom. Surely we all have better things to be doing.
