There have been some very public giggles (like this one) about the right-before-our-eyes public transformation of Olympic medalist and reality TV dad Bruce Jenner. While Jenner himself has yet to shout from the rooftops that he’s transitioning into a woman, his growing breasts, French manicures, and longer locks seem to be in line with major changes, not to mention rumors that he’s filming an E! docuseries about his journey and may sit down for a tell-all interview with Diane Sawyer.
Fortunately plenty have heaped praise on Jenner too, including his mother, because a Hollywood star coming out so publicly will hopefully give comfort and company to those with fewer resources and support systems who might also be struggling with their identities. And Jenner has some headline-making buddies as he paves a path of change and understanding.
The University of Vermont made news recently by announcing it will now give students the opportunity to choose the pronoun by which they would like others to identify them. The New York Times recently profiled a student there, “Rocko,” who wants to be referred to as “they.” The school isn’t getting caught up in the legalities of the proper nouns and pronouns. New pronouns and first names are simply being entered into school records and a campus-wide system as requested by students so that faculty and others may properly identify them.
UVM isn’t the only college campus widening the acceptance net either. Administrators at the Graduate Center at the City University of New York (CCNY) determined last month that salutations including “Mr.” and “Ms.” will no longer be used to address students because they said Title IX, which protects students from gender discrimination in academic and sports, dictates it could go against a speech code policy.
The shifts on these campuses may be small since there are so few people who will be affected by the change, although they’re not imperceptible, especially as they apply to the emotional health of those who feel at odds with the gender with which they have always been categorized. Yahoo Health writes that by using “they” and abolishing formal gender salutations, some people feel freed “from the pain that being called the wrong pronoun can cause” — all of which is “essential to ensuring the health and well-being of students, regardless of gender identification.” The suicide of an Ohio transgender teen in January should be a wake-up call to everyone who thinks in black-and-white terms that they’re not only color blind, but dangerously insensitive.
Maybe it’s not Jenner’s intention to be the poster-person for the transgender community, although by not running away and even potentially stepping forward, he, like UVM and CCNY, is still helping advance the conversation so that more people have the opportunity to take some comfort in knowing they’re not alone. Still, it’s not entirely unusual for celebrities and forward-thinking higher-learning institutions to speak out and up. The three of them together hardly means everyone will immediately accept the idea that more than two genders or sexes can exist, or that there is or can be a gray area. To that point, if the comments on Yahoo Health’s story are any indication, the paradigm shift will be hard for plenty of people to embrace or even just accept from a distance:
I can’t even. I really can’t. Listen folks … gender identification issues (and same-sex attraction) are real. But it’s not something we should be running out and embracing. We don’t embrace other biological faults and screw-ups, we seek remedies to mitigate symptoms, prevent such flaws, or fix present ones. So why the heck are we pandering to this? If you are gender confused, I am sorry for you. Truly, I am. Instead of focusing our time, attention, and funding for acceptance of these biological flaws … let’s focus our time, attention, and funding on finding ways of fixing biology’s mistakes.
Transgenders make up about 1% of the population, if that. So why exactly are we completely re-writing our social system for less then 1% of the population? I support Transgenders and Homosexuals. I think they should have rights, just like the rest of us. If it makes this boy happy to be a girl, I don’t care. But I don’t expect the boy/girl to be allowed to change the structure of our social system to suit him/her. You may correct people, ask them to address you however you like. But don’t expect them to make a blanket policy just for you. Everyone has to compromise sometimes, because the world was not constructed just for you.
“Students who take it as a given that they will be called by their professors, peers, and other school employees by the pronoun that correctly reflects how they self-identify their respective gender.” There’s the problem. People the pronoun that reflects how they see others, not the pronoun “that correctly reflects how they self-identify their respective gender.” Sorry, but I’m not going along with this nonsense.
Not understanding or agreeing with something though, doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist or isn’t someone else’s reality — or that it simply isn’t OK. Those of us not struggling with or questioning our gender, sexuality, or degree of queerness still have a responsibility to be respectful and sensitive to those who are. Period.
Small changes in how we address people — even if there’s only a few of them — and allowing others to step into the shoes that make them feel most comfortable without judgment are critical moves. What makes a man and a woman isn’t necessarily as simple as a few chromosomes; this has always been true, although what’s changed is those who fall into an “other” category don’t need to keep feeling like aliens now. “Different” and “worse” are hardly the same thing.
Boulder activist Ash Beckham once said: “Say what you mean and mean what you say because the words that you choose matter.” And while the words you choose might not matter to you, there is likely someone else for whom those words could be the difference between life and death.