‘gender-bender’

any mailings frommy 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 nonconforming, 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 aremen, and there are women, and now there are people transitioning between those two, but that’s pretty much it.

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.