INTHEBLACK February 2022 - Magazine - Page 53
their
her
he
they
she
our
just as it is grammatical to say ‘You are the new CEO’
to one person.”
MAKE THE EFFORT
The effect of being addressed by the wrong pronoun
varies from person to person. For some, it is just a
matter of receiving an apology and moving on, while
for others the impact on mental health can be severe.
Ball says Switchboard Victoria regularly receives
calls from people seeking advice on how to have a
conversation about their pronouns, and that some
people face hostility when they ask others to address
them using a different pronoun.
“We hear from people that the conversation is still
weaponised and volatile, and it is pretty awful to think
that people are worrying about that. How do we make
it easier, so that people are not so stressed that they are
worrying about that? It should be as simple as being
able to say, it’s an extension of your name.”
Ball offers some advice for those who worry about
getting it wrong with others. You can try by simply
asking them which pronoun they prefer. If you take
a guess and make a mistake, simply apologise and
move on.
“I’m a transgender person, and the most important
thing for me is that, if someone gets my pronouns
wrong, they just say sorry. It doesn’t need to be a big
performance – don’t go into a shame spiral. Just treat
it as if you had just called the person the wrong name
– that’s embarrassing, but you can get over it.
“I think for me, as a trans person, as long as I feel
that the intention is good and it’s not bullying –
they’re not deliberately getting it wrong – then I will
be fine.”
Centre: Joe Ball,
Switchboard Victoria.
Image credit: Breeana
Dunbar.
GENDER-NEUTRAL LANGUAGE
AROUND THE WORLD
Top right: Andrew
Apostola, Portable
Languages around the
world have evolved their
grammatical forms
differently in an effort
to recognise and
accommodate diverse
identities.
English: English
grammar does not
distinguish between
genders, except in
assigning a masculine
or feminine singular
pronoun. English speakers
can use “they” and
“them”, or other
gender-neutral pronouns
like “ze”, “hir” or “xey”, in
order to avoid gendering
someone.
Spanish: Spanish has
feminine and masculine
cases added to all nouns.
In the US, some people
use “x” or “@” to create a
gender-neutral noun:
“Latinx” or “Latin@”
instead of the binary
“Latino” and “Latina”.
Swedish: The word
“hen” was added to the
country’s official
dictionary in 2015 as an
alternative gender-neutral
pronoun to the male
“hon” and female “han”.
Genderless: Genderless
languages include
Armenian, Bengali,
Persian, Turkish, Georgian,
Chinese, Japanese, Korean
and most Austronesian
languages (such as the
Polynesian languages).
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