The Problem With Pronouns

 I have been struggling for several years to become consistent at using "they/them" pronouns for someone I love, someone I've known almost half my life. During almost all that time, I and others referred to this person with "she/her" pronouns. I don't give a damn what, if any, gender this person is. The struggle arises from other factors.

I grew up speaking English. Like many of you -- including the person in question -- I have studied another language. So I have some appreciation of the profound differences between speaking one's native tongue and speaking a language in which one is not fluent. I believe these differences explain why changing my pronoun usage has been so difficult. Caveat: I'm not a scholar in linguistics or any related science. I'm describing an experience, one which I've done my best to study from the inside. (Second caveat: the English people under thirty-ish have learned may well be more flexible in structure.)

When I speak English, the basic building blocks require no conscious thought or effort. Verb forms, the ordering of parts of speech, and other such features of the particular language I speak -- all these fall into place at what I'll call a pre-conscious level. And from what I can tell, pronouns fall into that category. In the English I learned in the mid-1950s, the English in which I'm fluent, a single known human being takes the "he" set or the "she" set of pronouns. (Unknown humans are another story. I don't know whether, at some time before my era, using "he" for all unknown individuals was automatic, but it isn't for me.)

So, the building blocks are in place. Next comes adding the substance of what I want to say. This does require conscious choices. Even more deliberate is the next layer, one of nuance. Does the word that has come to mind have the right connotation? Is it sufficiently evocative? Will it fall pleasantly on the ear?

The final step, if I'm to use "they/them" for a single known person, amounts to slapping a filter on the top of this stack of words and meaning. It's the very last step before I open my mouth. Indeed, it often comes a fraction of a second later, and what I say comes out with hitches and interruptions, last-minute saves. 

Here's the ironic and most upsetting aspect of this process: the more I care about the content of what I'm saying, the more emotional significance it has for me and for the person I'm saying it to, the harder it is to remember to add that filter. So the more it matters, the more likely I am to sabotage the communication and hurt someone I love.

I understand, at least to some extent, why pronouns matter so much to this person and others like them. (Phew! Got it right that time.) Gender is a deeply personal matter, and being referred to with the wrong pronoun -- at least, for this person and many others -- feels like an attack. They don't see the errant "she" as just a part of speech. They view it as an insistence that what they know and feel doesn't matter. And even if it happens rarely, just knowing that it could happen means that every minute in the unreliable speaker's company is an ordeal of continuous stress.

I wish this person would make their own attempt to understand. And I have a more desperate wish, even less likely to be granted: that they, and others facing the same impasse, could revisit the symbolic heft they accord pronouns. Giving pronouns such power makes no-win situations, broken relationships, and broken hearts nearly inevitable.