The apology of the ingenuous

I’m convinced my intent is innocent.

I like to think I’m a world-citizen. Average, really — aware of diversities in people, and lucky enough to have interacted with various ethnicities, religions and nationalities. An environment like that is bound to make anyone more equitable, and my intent is no different from the next person’s — to treat in a fair manner whoever I encounter. I take pride in knowing a lot of very dissimilar people, and more recently, I’ve spent time with people of various genders.

This is something of a novelty.

I’ve only lately learnt that sex refers to biological features while gender is more an expression of personal identities. Yet it is only when I actively include in every conversation the possibility that people, regardless of their biological appearances, can have any gender that I truly realize how varied gender can be.

I’m thankful for this realization. It’s consciousness-expanding. My old intent, of treating everyone I meet with equality, is taught something new all the time.

The problem, though, is in the expression of this intent.

The problem is while I am thinking equitable thoughts of everyone, I am doing a mighty poor job of communicating those thoughts; and am unconsciously propagating inequality. The moment I use language as my tool (and how can I not?), I see snares. Behind every question, every choice of words, lies an unforeseen trap. In an effort to make my speech fairer, I sense language is itself inadequate, simply because of how even the most innocuous words (like the verb to cook) seem to have connotations of gender.

As convinced as I am of my intent, I find my speech flailing.

How am I even to conduct a basic conversation without an assumption of gender? Is making an assumption in the first place okay? Is not making one any better? Depending on whom I am speaking to, and what culture they come from, would I be in danger of offending them by making or not making an assumption of gender? Is it even possible to understand personalities without at least some bias of gender creeping in? A startling thought: What pronoun am I to use to speak about individuals? They seems adequate and correct but somehow so impersonal.

It appears I am condemned forever to police my language; rethink every word before speaking to ensure I am, in fact, fair and equitable always. The task is monumental. Human nature being what it is, policing my own language becomes impractical, predicting my audience’s reaction impossible. I am in danger of being overly politically correct, where I find myself being correct not for equality’s sake but only so I don’t somehow offend anyone.

An added danger to policing my language strikes me. Isn’t that the beginning of restricting my right of free speech? Should I even have to treat every situation with kid gloves? I want a world where my speech is a reflection of my equal thinking, not one where I am constantly reminded of inequality and am second-guessing myself.

I become my adversary. My own ears hear multiple interpretations, sense gendered undertones even where none is implied. I swallow my words, control my tone, worry whether the person I am speaking to will think me discriminatory. My quest to communicate my equal way of thinking compels me into perpetual silence.

So far, I’ve navigated these tricky waters by intuition alone — I see who I am talking to, my level of familiarity with them, perhaps how on edge they are and how correct my language should be. The words I use change depending on my audience and the context — but isn’t that an unequal way to approach this in itself? Can’t my language be gender-neutral without the pressure of having to think about it on a case-by-case basis?

There is no rulebook, but maybe one needs to exist. Perhaps there is only so much I can do by myself, unaided by a language that has over time become so gendered. Perhaps I need to force language to adapt, campaign to change brotherhood into personhood, mankind into humankind, for waitress and waiter to become server.

The idea catches my fancy. To use such fairer language seems to be the best way to express fairer thinking. If we are to have any kind of trust in language, a faith that words will mean what we want them to mean, then surely global language itself must change? It doesn’t have to start big either. Even demanding that gender questions on identity-documents have more than the three options of male, female and other would be a huge step. After all, if male and female can have their own categories, why should the others be lumped together? How many others can there be?

It turns out…a lot.

A short Internet search throws up an ever-growing list rife with glorious options: male, female, genderless, gender-queer, gender-curious, androgynous, third gender, bi-gender, pan-gender; and my personal favorite genderfluid, which to my visual mind suggests a humorous understanding of the bewildering world I have suddenly found myself in.

I dial my enthusiasm back.

I could demand that people change their words, for documents to include more than three options, or for people to say humankind, but where would that road end? I am in danger of becoming offended at the least provocation; where words, no matter how polite and correct, leave me feeling dissatisfied because I suspect they are being used to discriminate not to equalize.

Perhaps then the questions I am asking are wrong.

Like Descartes, I must start only with a knowledge of myself. Before I start a movement to change language altogether or even to change my own personal use of this language, I must understand my response to this language. Begin not with how the world approaches the many genders there are; but how I respond to my own gender. An objective method is likely to spin me off into discovering as many genders as there are individuals. A subjective approach seems more accurate, where I may be confident of at least my own attitude.

And so I conduct a thought experiment. If someone refers to me with a pronoun based on my sex, will that offend me? Quite frankly, no. I am referred to by the pronoun of my sex all the time. It’s something I identify closely with.

But what if they referred to me with a pronoun I did not identify with?

There the lines become blurred. I feel a certain dissonance, like microphone-squeaks through an otherwise perfect performance. In my head I eavesdrop on an imaginary conversation, where two people constantly refer to me with the wrong pronoun. Used once it’s a little jarring, but I let it pass; used twice, the pronoun becomes irritating; used repeatedly, I start to get more indignant. I have an urge to correct the two conversationalists while trying to mask my resentment about their assumption.

And it is only when I acquire some distance from this thought experiment that I question: Why did my reaction change so quickly from being taken aback to being irritated and finally to being offended? If the rest of the conversation portrayed no signs of inequality or presumption, and the pronoun the two speakers were using were simply that: a word replacing my name, then why the shift in reaction?

Could it be (and I cringe slightly) I am to blame?

Is my interpretation my responsibility?

Being offended by that which had no intention to offend… Perhaps, it is not language that is at fault, as though it came into effect itself, for having all these connotations and associations with gender; but my personal interpretation of those words. The offense I felt originated not from the conversationalists’ gendered use of language, but the meanings (and more importantly, weights) I ascribed to their words.

The analysis is disconcerting.

I wonder if I responded so severely to a simple error because somewhere in my oh-so-equal mind, I am still making distinctions on how I approach gender. That I am, in fact, not as equitable as I’d assumed.

The thought disturbs me.

After all, I rarely ever react if people get my ethnicity wrong, or assume I follow this or that religion. I don’t see myself getting up in arms about other aspects of my personality — whether my occupation (which I truly identify with); or my role in my family (which I take pride in). If someone were to think that my ethnicity, occupation or familial role were any different — if the imaginary conversationalists got those aspects wrong — I’d be more amused than offended. Has the thought experiment exposed my own hypocrisy? Surely, if I were truly equal, I shouldn’t have been bothered with a pronoun. If the intent were clear, one word should have been as good as the other.

I revisit all the many gender-tags I stumbled upon.

Perhaps having an infinite array of genders in the world is not nudging us towards a future where infinite gender options on a document spiral the individual into an identity crisis. Perhaps having so many gender options is nudging us to a time where there will be no need to have a gender column at all! Much like ethnicity and religion, which are slowly becoming a redundant identifier, gender would not be anyone else’s business but an individual’s business alone.

Perhaps the need is not to adapt words to their non-gendered versions, but for our responses to those words to mean more. To not campaign to change brotherhood to personhood or some such, but for it to mean what it does in its most fundamental sense: an alliance of people linked by common interests. To not change the term waiter or waitress into server, but for the term waitress to become a gender-neutral title of occupation, much like doctor, teacher, lawyer, and, in more recent times, nurse. And finally for us not to be bothered by the pronoun that people use to describe us, knowing that whichever pronoun people use, the intent stems from the same equality.

Perhaps a world like that would truly be gender-equal.

Where we rethink not our use of gendered language, but our responses to such language itself; move beyond gender while we create our own interpretations; practice an inward assessing look instead of an outward judgmental one.

I pause to examine this.

I began my quest hoping to learn how to communicate my equal thinking, but I may have found another beginning. To not change language first and thinking later; but change thinking — and thinking of our own thinking — leaving language no choice but to follow, whether through inclusion of new words, or by having broader meanings ascribed to existing words (like nurse), or through subversion of some word-meanings altogether. I’d like to allow language to expand its reach, become more inclusive organically, adapt to signify more without an equality-demanding whip. I’d like to give language a chance at doing with gender what it is trying to do with races (through agnostic words like African American) and with occupations (like sex-worker).

And for my part, I will assist language.

Learn to discover a person’s true meaning. Respond to the intent behind words. Try to use varying pronouns, look for better alternatives, and perhaps create my own gender-neutral terms. And if I’m feeling particularly fluent, maybe even deliberately interchange waiter and waitress. I might provoke someone into conversation, and with luck from conversation to thinking!

I know that this is in no way a foolproof theory. There are dialogs to have, gaps to fill, counter-arguments beyond one scholar. But for now at least, I may once again embrace words and language as tools for my expression.

And use these tools to explore whether my intent is, in fact, innocent.