**This is a guest blog post written by HiBob employee (Bobber) Tali Soroker (she/they). Tali is a loving, non-binary cat parent to non-binary cat Jerry (he/they). They are an avid reader, motorcycle lover, amateur crafter, and can often be found playing in the dirt (some people call it gardening).
Take it away, Tali 🙂
This past week was Non-Binary Awareness Week, culminating with International Non-Binary People’s Day, which we celebrate on July 14 every year. Woohoo! But, awareness and visibility of the non-binary community are important all year. And not just for non-binary folks.
The way the world sees us has an undeniable impact on how people relate to us. In their book, The Transgender Issue: Trans Justice is Justice for All, Shon Faye explains, “[t]he way we are all taught, from a young age, to make the link between visible biological sex traits and behaviour can be extremely powerful in shaping our intuitions about other people.”
It’s easy for us to mistake something for “fact” when our culture and the times we live through undeniably influence our perception of the truth. Take the pronoun debate. Today, the pronoun debate is all about whether “they” can be singular or not.
In the 19th century, the pronoun debate was about whether the generic “he” in legalese excluded women. In case you’re wondering, the courts at the time decided that it DID include women when it came to paying taxes and criminal offenses. It DID NOT include women when it came to voting…
Clearly, conflicting opinions about correct pronoun usage are not new to this century. Actually, the history of non-binary gender pronouns goes back much further. The Oxford English Dictionary traces the first use of the gender-neutral singular pronoun “they” back to the 14th century.
It’s eye-opening to realize how differently different languages and cultures express gender. For example, many languages, like Persian (Farsi), have gender-neutral forms built in. Others, like Mandarin, are genderless, meaning the “nouns and pronouns don’t have a marked gender.” In 2015, Sweden officially added a gender-neutral pronoun to the existing gendered pronouns.
I hope that this post will help you explore how gendered language touches all of us. Instead of doubling down on our own experiences, let’s work together to make sure our language and how we use it meets the needs of our diverse, global culture and community.
Language is part of our culture, and culture matters
Fresh out of university, I moved from the United States to Israel where the native languages are Hebrew and Arabic. These languages use entirely different alphabets, are read from right to left (instead of left to right), and are inherently gendered: Everything from nouns to adjectives to verbs has or indicates a gender.
When I moved, I used she/her pronouns. I wanted Hebrew to roll off my tongue naturally, so I spent years practicing the feminine conjugation of verbs in my head just to “get it right.” I was so busy worrying about making friends at lunch (and speaking as much like a native as possible), that I didn’t give myself the time to consider how the gendered language was impacting me.
New culture. Who dis? Contending with your identity in a new language.
A year ago, I came out at work as non-binary. Suddenly, I was having conversations with people about my gender almost every single day. Pronouns were a big part of those conversations, of course. But it’s more than that.
When the conversation was in Hebrew, the gender binary became unavoidable.
Before this, I had never given myself the space to consider the impact of people misgendering me. It was “just” language. It should be easy to ignore, right? But all of a sudden, it was hitting me directly in the face every day and in every interaction.
I’ve given this a lot of thought, and I realized that people misgendering me wasn’t anything new. I just understand its impact more clearly now.
I’ve always struggled with people’s immediate reactions to me as “a girl.” I have always hated gendered stereotypes and felt hyper-aware of all the ways that I didn’t “fit.” I was that child who would grab as many chairs as possible when the teacher asked the boys in class to help move them.
In Hebrew, I have to deal with the fact that no matter how people see or describe me, the gendered nature of the language compels them to, grammatically, call me a girl. I’m not just strong, I’m a strong girl. I’m not just cool, I’m a cool girl.
How do you tell your story?
You may be thinking to yourself that none of this has anything to do with you. If you are cis-gendered or live in an English-speaking country, it might be hard to see the connection. But let me ask you this…
“A father and his son are in a car accident. The father dies. The son is rushed to the ER. The attending surgeon looks at the boy and says, ‘I can’t operate on this boy. He’s my son!’ How can this be?”
You might know this riddle, it dates back at least to the 1970s. Still, in a study published in 2022, 80 percent of participants couldn’t figure out that the surgeon was the boy’s mother. I remember the first time I heard the riddle, and am sad to say that I didn’t get it, either.
People don’t discount the mother because they don’t think she’s capable of being a surgeon. The thought that she is a surgeon doesn’t even occur to them. The point? Gender constructs impact how we see and relate to people even before we know them.
Pick a card, any card! But also, there are only two cards.
The devil’s advocates among us will be quick to say that our categorization of people based on how they look is not only natural but necessary.
But have you ever received a compliment that didn’t feel like one? Do you find yourself frequently correcting people’s assumptions about you? How would you feel if someone innocently misgendered you?
For some of us, these things happen all the time. People put us in one of two boxes, and we all fall somewhere in comparison to how our culture idealizes our box (i.e. gender). We all fall short. In their book, None of the Above, Travis Alabanza reflects on how the fact of their transness itself is wrapped up in the perception of others. They say:
“I believe my transness is a reactionary fact, not an innate one. I am trans because the world made me so, not because I was born different. I am trans because the system the world operates through forces me to be so, not because of genetics. I am trans because of you, not because of me.”
I don’t know who you are, but (hopefully) you do. No one else can tell you who you are, how you identify, or how to express yourself. They can’t tell you what is the best way for you to communicate and connect or what your pronouns are. But we can all do a better job of being aware of our biases and how rare it is for the people we interact with to neatly fall into this “idealized” gender binary, no matter what their pronouns are.
This is all just to say that even if you identify with the default pronouns that people use for you, you can’t avoid the impact of the gender binary. As Shon Faye says, “cis readers will recognize inequalities often endured by trans people that they personally, or other minority groups they are familiar with, are also experiencing.”
So… now what? What we can all do to create a more inclusive society.
1. Get over it
Ironically, the first thing I would say is: Get over it! Justin Hester in a recent panel, “Being Non-Binary in a Binary World,” rightly reminded us that no one is as obsessed with our gender as other people. Alabanza also wonders, “if [they] can find [their] transness when no one is looking for it.”
This might sound surprising coming from someone writing a blog post about non-binary awareness, but I don’t actually care about my gender. I care about a lot of things, just not about my gender.
I care about being othered and contending with false assumptions people constantly make about me. I care about how people treat me because I don’t want to be treated as an “X,” but as a human being. I care about being and expressing my authentic self without fear of retribution.
2. Think before you speak
To make their point about the pervasive impact of the gender binary, Alabanza structured their book around seven phrases they’ve heard throughout their life. Phrases like, “So when did you know?”
Just like Travis, people tend to say the same things to me over and over again. “I don’t get it.” “I’m going to get it wrong, sorry in advance.” “Well, it doesn’t work in Hebrew.”
Being confused or unsure about something is valid. I can guarantee you’re not the first person to feel this way. But if our mutual goal is to empathize with and understand people, we need to be open to asking questions, answering them respectfully, and admitting that everyone has different identities, gender expressions, and perspectives. The point is that we’re all in this together.
If you don’t understand something, you can always ask. But more than that, don’t forget that we are all learning. I wish there was an all-inclusive guidebook laying out the answers. Without one, I find that Google does a decent enough job.
Recommended For Further Reading
3. Inclus-ify your language in general
Talking about something that someone said? Instead of “I was talking to this woman, and…” you can say “I was talking to someone, and…” When you meet someone new at work, ask them if they have a partner instead of assuming their romantic or sexual orientation.
I think we can all be more aware of the unnecessary qualifiers we add unconsciously when we talk about others. Is it really important to specify the gender of the person we’re talking about? Is their race or sexual orientation relevant? Probably not.
As innocent as our intentions may be, the way we describe people to ourselves and others has an effect on our perception. Remember that study about the riddle? It found that “introducing gender-neutral language (‘child’ vs. ‘son’) reduced bias by up to 50%.”
Let’s take the next step, together
There is a lot to do. The good news is that we aren’t aiming for perfection. We aren’t aiming to uncover some greater truth. All we’re aiming for is to be (at least) slightly better and more inclusive today than we were yesterday.
Whether you’re exploring your own gender identity and how language plays a part, or you find yourself lost and scared of making mistakes, know that you’re not on this journey alone. You don’t have to know or figure everything out right now. No one can ever know everything or avoid every mistake. The next step, no matter where you stand, is being mindful about communicating in a kinder, more inclusive way 24 hours a day, 365 (or 366) days a year.
