Cisgender privilege on full display in The New York Times
A non-binary response to Farhad Manjoo’s opinion column “It’s Time for ‘They’”
Last week, The New York Times ran an opinion column titled “It’s Time for ‘They’” — written by a cisgender man. He later discussed the column on Slate’s daily podcast What Next, and disclosed that, even though he put ‘they/them’ in his Twitter bio, he hasn’t even asked his wife to use these pronouns for him.
It took me several days to decide whether or not to write this piece. I cycled from a direct critique to a roundabout guide to better allyship — but I landed back here after reading what the parent of a trans kid wrote on this topic six years ago. In it, he responds to a teenage girl who asked about using they/them pronouns in solidarity with non-binary classmates. This passage in particular stood out to me:
In my opinion, if you are committed to it, then do it. The one thing I would say, however, is that if you decide to do it and then you give it up because it becomes too complicated, too much of a hassle, too tiresome to educate others, and so on, that’s when it becomes trivialization.
In that case, you did it on a lark, and when it became too much trouble for you, you stopped. Those who must use gender-neutral pronouns for their own…
