They they they they they

On Right Fragility and Words

They they they. They they they they they they, they they. They they they? “They they they they they,” they they.

They THEY they ThEy.

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I am writing to you with a surreal feeling in my head. I am trying to ground myself in what I know of the sweetness of life: this day, the snow, the sunlight. And the love of words, profligate and ever-replenishing.

Apparently he’s trying to ban pronouns and genders. Banning of words is a trait of authoritarianism, of course, and now we are told that we cannot use certain words to describe ourselves. Imagine being so fragile that you are harmed by the words others use to describe themselves. Imagine how real this is to other people, people in our midst: those who fear all kinds of words, those who fear to think, fear to let others think and to be. Imagine putting up a bumper sticker that says “Freedom isn’t free.” And thinking that freedom to use words costs anything. Imagine a person who wants to limit the words that others use.

I am afforded the ability to use various pronouns by those before me who fought with their lives and their love from before it was legal, and before it was illegal.

………………………………….

My preferred pronouns are she/her/they.

For me, this window opened relatively late in my life, or at least relatively recently. It felt somewhat similar to claiming that I was and am disabled, because I had this first instinct that I didn’t deserve these descriptors, that they needed to be saved for people who really needed them. But the concepts that these words offer—the idea that we, in our humble lives, might describe ourselves as we are—well, that won me over.

It doesn’t cost you anything. It doesn’t take anything from you. It is only additive.

When I figured out that I am a nonbinary woman, I thought, OH. It’s not a big deal.

And in looking back over my life, all these tiny personal moments clicked into place. This is a personal thing; it explained my life to me. It explained my tomboy feral awkwardness in a way that nothing else did. It allowed people I love to understand me within this category. It explained my life-long slight remove and distancing from the concept of “woman,” my sense of being in drag when dressing as a woman. This might be partially because of their obsession with the word, their essentialist perception of this category, their desire to fence and claim it, which has flattened and steamrollered it into barely providing any ground on which to stand.

“They” is like a slight adjustment that harmonizes. It is a concept, an idea, that is only necessary within this world of inexact human expression. I hear a click, I see an expression of truing up, when I encounter the word.

There is no cost to this. There is no mistake to be made. There is no reason why people who love me cannot know this. It is a clarity, in the same way that telling someone you enjoy jigsaw puzzles or are allergic to nuts is a slight clarification. All of these clarifications, shared among humans, add up to love. Words are how we know each other. And I don these pronouns, despite being awkward about it, in tiny ways, because of love. Because I want my tiny display of pronouns to open the tiniest door for someone else.

………………………………….

Or…wait.

If they are so terrified of me in my tiny life, and if I have the power to break their brains with my continued existence, then it sounds as if I am, in fact, quite powerful.

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