It’s a whole new version of a gender-bender

Until recently, I never heard of the word “misgender.” To me, gender was clear, and you couldn’t miss it. Boys were boys, girls were girls and Liberace was neither. The fact that I even reference Liberace goes to show how old I am, how backward and cisgender and heteronormative (other words I am just beginning to include in my vocabulary). But lately, I’ve been seeing articles and hearing podcasts where enlightened folk tell me about how there are more than two sexes, I mean genders, and that I need to be vigilant not to use the wrong words to label them. To be more specific, it’s now incumbent on us to use the correct pronouns when addressing someone who, regardless of what they might look like on the surface, is not a “she” but a “zie.”

If you are scratching your head at that last sentence, you clearly did not go to Bryn Mawr College, one of the fine Seven Sister institutions that produce some of the finest minds in the nation. Then again, I went to Bryn Mawr College and until I read about this pamphlet they’ve recently circulated, I wouldn’t have known the difference between “she,” “zie,” “sie,” “co,” “they,” “vi,” “kit” or a few other variations of nonsense.

Now the fact that I called it “nonsense” shows how Neanderthal I am when it comes to this gender stuff. It might also be the reason I haven’t yet received any mailings from my alma mater for my upcoming 35th reunion, and I’m fairly certain it’s also the reason that the school has not responded to my repeated requests for clarification on the promulgation and distribution of “Asking For and Using Pronouns: Making Spaces More Gender Inclusive.”

That is the title of the pamphlet that my school has put out there to make the gender fluid feel more comfortable in what they call the community. I am fairly certain that the community they are referring to is the Bi-College community comprised of Bryn Mawr and Haverford, and not the community at any number of mental hospitals in the region.

By this point you might be saying, Christine, you are really trying to be clever and all you are managing to do is show how little you know about gender dysphoria, gender fluidity, gender bending and good manners. Because that is ultimately the point of this little primer on what pronoun to use when you aren’t sure that you are dealing with Bruce or Caitlin, or a variation thereof.

Here is a direct quote from the pamphlet: “No matter your gender identity, gender can be very important to someone’s sense of self. To incorrectly gender someone can cause the person to feel disrespected, alienated or dysphoric (or a combination of the three.) It is very important to know that you cannot visually tell someone’s gender. This means that you can also not visually tell if someone is transgender, non-binary, genderqueer, gender non-conforming, gender-variant, etc.”

My head hurts and we’re only halfway through this column.

I understand that society is evolving, and that the Kinsey scale of sexuality is now as obsolete as that old movie “Reefer Madness.” Just as society’s standards have changed with respect to the use of certain controlled substances, so has it changed with respect to our views on sexual orientation and gender. I believe, truly, that we need to respect people who do not share our values or principles, as long as they don’t impinge on core beliefs or conscience.

But I refuse to live in a world where Lewis Carroll is considered scientific fact, and we’re all shaking the shards from Alice’s Looking Glass out of our hair.

There are men, and there are women, and now there are people transitioning between those two, but that’s pretty much it. You might disagree because apparently now we are supposed to be open to the Heinz version of identity (52 varieties of gender,) but your magical thinking should not force me to learn a whole new crazy language of made up words.

I will not call someone “they” simply because “they” want me to. I wouldn’t even call “Sybil,” she of the multiple personalities, “they” because she was essentially one person with a fractured id. A single person cannot be a plural, no matter how much “they” want it. Sister Mary Emanuel from 10th grade English would take the textbook and throw it at your head for even suggesting that heresy.

So if, by chance, I do get an invitation to my 35th anniversary, I will show up with bells on my toes and a nametag with a quote from Shakespeare’s “A Midsummer Night’s Dream:”

“Though she be but little, she is fierce.”

Just so they’re clear on the pronoun.

There are men, and there are women, and now there are people transitioning between those two, but that’s pretty much it. You might disagree because apparently now we are supposed to be open to the Heinz version of identity (52 varieties of gender,) but your magical thinking should not force me to learn a whole new crazy language of made up words.