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Gender & Sexuality Studies: Gender Pronouns

Gender Pronouns, Get Them Right!

Understanding Gender Pronouns

Sign saying "hello, my pronoun name is"Gender pronouns are the terms people choose to refer to themselves that reflect their gender identity. 

Knowing and using a person’s correct pronouns fosters inclusion, makes people feel respected and valued, and affirms their gender identity.

Internal vs. External Experiences of Gender
 
•Gender Identity: One’s internal and individual concept of self as male, female, a blend of both or neither – how individuals perceive themselves and what they call themselves; one's gender identity can be the same or different from their sex assigned at birth
 
•Gender Expression: External appearance of one's gender identity, usually expressed through behavior, clothing, body characteristics or voice, and which may or may not conform to socially defined behaviors and characteristics typically associated with being either masculine or feminine.

 

Why the right pronouns matter

It’s important people, workplaces and organizations support people’s use of self-identified first names, in place of legal names given at birth, and self-identified pronouns, in place of assumed pronouns based on sex assigned at birth or other’s perceptions of physical appearance.

Being mis-gendered and/or misnamed may leave the person feeling disrespected, invalidated and dismissed. This can be distressing and threaten the person’s mental health.

Transgender and non binary people are twice as likely to have suicidal thoughts than the general population, and are up to four times as likely to engage in risky substance use.

Having at least one accepting adult can reduce the risk of a suicide attempt among LGBTQ+ young people by 40 percent.
The Trevor Project’s research has found that LGBTQ youth who reported having at least one LGBTQ+-affirming space
had 35% reduced odds of reporting a suicide attempt in the past year — the strongest association being with LGBTQ+
affirming schools.

If you’re hearing about singular “they” for the first time here, this one-set-of-pronouns-fits-all solution may seem counterintuitive. But singular “they” has usage dating back to the 1300s, according to Merriam-Webster (2), which notes instances in works by Shakespeare, Austen, Thackeray and Shaw. Nonbinary people themselves have also existed throughout history, employing “they” and a variety of other pronouns and titles in cultures around the world (1).