I realize this is a weird way to come back after a year plus of absence. I even had to go through old posts in the Bad Yogi Facebook group to find a link to my own blog, because I couldn’t remember how to get in.
To sum up, 2022 has been a lot more about emotional/spiritual development than it has about physical development. Physically I’m in the worst shape I’ve been in since 2018. Emotionally and spiritually, I’m in the best shape I’ve ever been in. I have even been working on gradually decreasing the dose on my antidepressant, and the next step is going to be to come off of it entirely. Turns out I mostly just needed to stop shoving all my emotions aside and actually DEAL with them. I was introduced to the conecpt of “shadow work” this year, and it sucks and I hate doing it, but it’s also one of the best, most magical things I’ve ever done for myself.
Enough catch-up. Now to the reason I thought to write this…
Last Thursday, I, my son, and my boss were staying late to put away the weekly pharmacy order, which we do every Thursday. My boss, who is a wonderful woman and I don’t want anyone to ever think otherwise for a moment (I call her my “Arizona Mom” and I’ve mentioned her before), has a grandchild who in the last year or so has self-identified as non-binary and is using they/them pronouns. We were discussing a conversation my boss had with someone else, in which she stated her belief that “they/them” is a terrible set of pronouns and she wished her grandchild would come up with something better. (For the record, she has no issue with her grandchcild being non-binary.) She thinks it doesn’t make sense because they/them already means something in English and it’s a plural, etc. I did tell her that it’s not grammatically incorrect, but I am unable to come up with convincing verbal arguments on the fly. This morning in the shower, as so often happens, I realized what I should have said, so here it is.
I preface this with the statement that I am a cisgender woman and do not presume to speak for any non-binary person or non-binary people in general. This is only how I understand it, and please feel free to educate me (gently, kindly, and respectfully, please) if I’m way off base. And please bear with my made-up example story I’m starting this explanation with.
Say, hypothetically, you are outside a grocery store and you notice there is a dog left tied up outside the door. A stranger passing by also notices this dog. We live in Arizona, it’s hot AF, dog looks thirsty, you’re both concerned. Stranger asks, “Do you know whose dog that is?” You reply, “No, but I hope they come back soon!”
See what you just did there? You used the pronoun “they”, because you have no idea what gender the owner is. And because you’ve never seen the owner and you have no preconceived notions about them, your (English-speaking) brain was totally fine with using “they”. You didn’t even bat an eyelash. Now let’s continue our example.
Owner comes out of the store as you and the stranger are watching from a distance. This individual is completely androgynous. From their style of dress, hairstyle, etc., you have literally no idea if this person is male or female. This freaks your brain out a little, because it is used to being able to immediately label anyone you meet as “male” or “female”, and swiftly apply the appopriate set of pronouns. The stranger comments, “Oh good! There they are!”
See? Not grammatically incorrect, even though we suddenly referred to this one individual with a plural-sounding pronoun and accompanying verb conjugation.
What I’m saying is that I think (and this is just my supposition, again) that many non-binary individuals feel that the English language does not currently contain an accurate pronoun for their gender. And some people have adopted ze/zir or other variants, but for many that just doesn’t seem right. So in English, we use “they” as a placeholder when we have no idea what set of pronouns to label the individual with. And I hypothesize that many non-binary individuals don’t know either… they just know that “he” is wrong, and so is “she”. And when you only have two options in your language and they’re both wrong, what do you do? You fill in the blank the only way your brain knows how… “they”. And maybe once someone presents you with a better idea, you’ll adopt that, but for now our language is terribly limited on this front.
And for another example of how we are completely comfortable using “they” as a singular pronoun when we don’t know the gender of an individual, here’s one that happens in the pharmacy all the time. People have a terrible habit of setting everything they’re carrying down on the counter when they come to pick-up. Purse, keys, sunglasses, other purchases… all on the counter. It happens quite often that something gets shoved into a corner where its not easily visible and I, on the other side of the counter, cannot see the item at all. Usually it’s sunglasses, but sometimes car keys. In the instance of keys, usually another customer spots them first, holds them up and goes, “Someone left their keys!” Then they usually joke, “They’re not going to get very far without them!”
See? We have no idea what gender the leaver of keys is, so we’re totally comfortable with “they”. And it’s my belief (somewhat backed up by my own experience) that when people like my boss struggle with applying “they” to a non-binary individual, it’s because they either knew the person before they identified as non-binary and already had mentally assigned pronouns to that person, or if it’s a stranger, the person presents physically as more “male” or “female” so your brain wants to slap a pronoun-label on them.
I say “somewhat backed up by my own experience” because a good friend of mine has a child, assigned male at birth, that I first met when this child was three years old. I had a pretty good run of referring to them as “he” before they self-identified as non-binary a few years back (they are now sixteen, I think?). And yes, I slipped up at first and I still do occasionally. English is my native language, and my English-brain wants to label everything in English. However, I have the benefit of speaking a couple of other languages too, and it hasn’t been too difficult to add “they” to my vocabulary as a singular pronoun. And to point out why this is a benefit, let me give you a real-life example of my first day of German 101 back in 2003.
My professor, one Herr Miller, opened the class completely without prior comment, picked up a chair, placed it in the center of the room, then pointed at it and very authoritatively announced, “der Stuhl!”
Nobody said anything for a long moment. Then Herr Miller said, in English, “If your brain just went, ‘Wait a minute… that’s a chair! Not a Stuhl! That’s been a chair my whole life!’… I’m sorry to say that you are going to have a lot of difficulty with this class.”
He was right, because our brains like to label things. That is one of the primary functions of our brains… to catalog and identify and label everything we come across in a day. Think about it… as an adult, how many things do you see in an average day that you absolutely cannot identify? Probably none. And in the event you should stumble across something you can’t readily identify, your brain goes into hyperdrive trying to pin it down… is it a liquid? A solid? Does it look like anything we’ve seen before? What is it similar to? Our brain desires to label this thing ASAP, because it is not at all comfortable with not knowing. Everything must have a label!
To sum up, my hypothesis is that many non-binary individuals choose to go with they/them pronouns because that is the “label” our language uses when we don’t know… they know intuitively that “he” and “she” are both wrong, but they don’t know what the right thing is yet, so they fill in the gap with “they”. And maybe someday, maybe even soon, our language will evolve to include another “standard” set of pronouns and they will go, “Yes, that’s it! That’s me!” Or maybe, as the new generation grows up with individuals in their midst who increasingly use they/them pronouns, English-speaking brains will just grow up with the idea that it’s a completely normal set of pronouns for an individual to use and it’ll be a non-issue. Only time will tell, I guess.
Meaganmorphosis - My Journey to Authentic Spirituality 