Navigating the Gender Conversation
How do we navigate gender discussions? A feminist porn star weighs in.
Our mission at tabú is to empower millennials with accurate, engaging sexual health content. With 60% of college students learning about sex from porn, we thought, “why not get insight from someone in the industry?” While porn is a great form of sexual expression that allows us to play out our fantasies, it is important to remember that what you see in porn does not reflect reality. We’ve teamed up with the witty, brilliant, and insightful Lorelei Lee to dispel the myths and answer all your questions about sex!
Dear Lorelei,
I’m very much in love with a trans man who prefers male or gender neutral pronouns. Like anyone in love, I’m dying to shout it from the rooftops and basically flaunt my awesome relationship wherever I can. So the other day when one of my oldest friends wanted to see pics and ask lots of Q’s about my new love, I happily obliged. The problem is she kept referring to my love as a “she” (after I was very clear about his preferred pronoun). After interrupting my friend a few times with a “he” for every “she”, I felt annoyed and tired so I dropped it. Is there a better way? I feel like telling someone once should be enough, but it clearly isn’t… How can I really drive the point home regarding my partner’s preferred pronouns when some of my friends don’t get it?
XO
G
Dear G,
Get ready for the long answer. I realize there may be more information here than you’ve asked for, but since I know there are not a lot of resources out there for the cis partners of trans people, I’ve erred on the side of excess. Also, below my response is a list of resources for trans folks, just in case it might be useful to any reader.*
I completely empathize with your exhaustion. It is so frustrating when you’ve finally found real love and the people you most expect to support your new relationship end up being people you have to support instead. It is in fact the responsibility of each of us to unlearn all of the transphobia, racism, classism, sexism, whorephobia — you name it — that the world has taught us, and yet all too frequently it is the oppressed who take on the work of teaching the world how to stop oppressing them. Sometimes we feel motivated and armored to do this work — we go to rallies, attend Pride parades, create petitions and contact legislators, we speak up and we write things down. Often, it feels much easier to do this work in big ways, on a large scale, than to face the countless daily heartbreaks and microaggressions committed by those who are closest to us, by those who we are certain have the capacity to do better.
I’m sure you know that to misgender a trans person is to dismiss their personhood. Failing to use the right pronoun implies that their identity, their entire sense of self is meaningless to the speaker.
I know that there are many people who believe that words don’t hold a lot of power, that we are overrun by “political correctness.” But these tend to be the same people who are most concerned about their own gender performance, who will be the first angered by any implication that they’ve failed to represent their gender identity “correctly.” This idea that there is a correct way to be gendered and to perform gender is taught to us from birth. As soon as we are assigned a pronoun, the world begins to sharply and definitively reflect the socially-agreed-upon meaning of that pronoun back to us. Babies who have not yet discovered their own fingers are swathed in blue or pink, dressed in bonnets or baseball caps, are told they are “strong” or “pretty.” We are taught as children that to fail to live up to the expectations of our assigned gender is to be humiliated, to “throw like a girl” or to fail to “sit like a lady.” Gendered language is utterly institutionalized, is a part of nearly everything it is possible to do in the world. When that language has been misapplied to someone their entire lives, the power of every word is compounded. All of this is to say that even if your friend’s misgendering of your partner is (as I suspect it is) unintentional, it is deeply insulting.
It is likely that your friend simply does not understand the importance of her words. Though a confrontation might be uncomfortable, you will have to be very direct with her. Explain to her that though her misuse of pronouns might not seem like a big deal to her, it is causing hurt to you and potentially to your partner. If she is a good friend, this will be enough. She still may slip from time to time, but she will make the effort and she will learn. People can and do change.
I know it can seem overwhelming to have to teach the people close to you how simply treat your love with the basic respect. Because this person is one of your oldest friends, it will probably be worth it to have this conversation with her, and perhaps even to have more than one conversation with her. This does not mean you have to have this conversation every day, with every one.
It’s okay to decide when to have these conversations and with whom. It’s also okay for you to take time away from friends and loved ones as they do some learning. It’s okay for you to tell them that they need to do the work of unlearning transphobia without you. You do not need to support them every step of the way. To a certain extent, you get to choose your boundaries.
Of course, choosing these boundaries is made more complicated by the fact that it is not your body being misgendered. It is essential that as you move through the world in this new relationship, you understand how your partner would prefer you handle conversations with strangers about his gender and about his body. For example, while it’s often good and useful to speak up against transphobia in general, there are instances in which speaking up in front of your trans partner does more to alienate them than it does to support them. You probably know that it’s never okay (and can be dangerous) to out your partner as trans without their permission, but it also can be othering to correct someone’s pronoun usage when your partner is there to do it (or to choose not to do it) themselves.
Most of us don’t have to constantly have conversations in which we point out our gender identity — as you’ve experienced in just one conversation, this can be exhausting — and it’s likely there are times when your partner simply does not want this conversation to happen, when they don’t want it pointed out that they are trans, they simply want to be a person.
You absolutely must discuss this with your partner. Have a conversation about how they would prefer you handle their misgendering. It’s likely that they will want you to handle this differently in different contexts (i.e. with friends vs with strangers). Have a game plan for when uncomfortable situations arise.
Unfortunately, it’s likely that pronoun usage will be the least complicated of your concerns. Inevitably, both strangers and people you care about will ask invasive questions about your partner’s body — about surgeries, hormones, about what they look like naked. Like pregnant people and sex workers, trans people are frequently objectified by friends, family members, and total strangers who somehow think it’s okay to ask them intimate questions they would not ask of anyone else. Even people who might recognize that it’s inappropriate to ask these questions of your partner directly might think it’s okay to ask you. Unless your partner has for some reason given you explicit permission, you should never talk about their body in a way that’s different than you would talk about anyone else’s body.
Even more complicated is that there will be times when you yourself might want more information about your partner’s body than they’ve shared with you. You might feel that this desire for information is motivated by love. You might feel that you want this information in order to better support them. Please, tread lightly. Never insist that they share every bit of self-knowledge as soon as they have it, and err on the side of not asking every question that comes into your mind. Allow them their privacy knowing that all too frequently the world will not do the same. Know that there is so much pressure on your partner to cultivate a gender identity and a gender presentation that will strike the balance between making them comfortable in the world and making them comfortable in their own skin. As cis people, we frequently have the privilege of taking our bodily privacy for granted. Even more often, we have the privilege of not having to ask ourselves the thousand questions about what every element of our body or behavior MEANS in relation to our gender. It’s essential we both acknowledge these privileges and work to ensure they’re granted to everyone.
Finally, I urge you to try to forget all of this as often as possible. I urge you and your partner to go home together and close whatever doors you can and to cultivate the joy of your love with the myopic, utterly selfish and shameless pleasure humans are supremely capable of. I urge you to try to love each other as uncomplicatedly as possible. To take all the joy you can get, every day.
*Here are just a few of the excellent U.S.-based organizations providing resources for trans folks and allies, in addition to leading the fight for full trans equality:
- Transgender Law Center
- The National Center for Transgender Equality
- Sylvia Rivera Law Project
- Trans Lifeline
- The Trevor Project
- TransJustice at The Audre Lorde Project
- Trans Latina Coalition
- The Peter Cicchino Youth Project at the Urban Justice Center
Additionally, the Trevor Project maintains a search engine for finding local resources and a list of resources for people outside of the U.S.
Send your questions to: xoxoloreleilee@gmail.com or tweet them @missloreleilee. To ask more questions about sex and get answers, download Tabú in the app store today!
