Pronoun games

KAT ZUBKO

I don’t remember the first time someone used the pronoun “he” to refer to me recently, but I do know that people refer to me that way close to 50 percent of the time now.  Customers started to call “sir” across the aisles of the bookstore I work at to get my attention. At first, I ignored them. I didn't know whether they were referring to me, or to one of my coworkers. After a while, I answered to it. I've never corrected people for calling me “sir” or referring to me as “he”. I find it suits me as much as female pronouns do.

I identify as gender-queer. I am a female-bodied, masculine-of-center person. I don’t have a problem being called a butch lesbian, although the term “woman” has always been a problematic one for me. I don’t identify as a trans-man, although I have considered whether or not I am trans. I don’t know why I started being read as a man about six months ago. I have been masculine-presenting for years and have never been read as male in the past. When people suddenly began referring to me as “he” and “sir,” I was confused because although I am not trans, I was thrilled.

My friends, waiting in the wings to support whatever trans-identity I might one day adopt, asked whether or not the thrill I received from being read as male was an indication that I might actually be trans.

“How does it make you feel when people refer to you as ‘he?’” they asked. “Do you feel like it fits you better?”

The ultimate answer was I felt that neither female, nor male, nor gender-neutral pronouns fit me better than any other. I thought about it quite a bit and came to the same conclusion I did before: I am not trans, but gender-queer. Yet the question remained: Why did I find being called “sir,” “buddy” and “bro” so exciting?

The answer is complicated, but it can be boiled down to this, at least for me: When people, usually men, read me as male, I feel as though I am part of a club that I have never been included in before. I tend to be read as male by men more than by women. Interacting with cis-men when they perceive me as male is vastly different from when they interact with me as a butch woman.

I am hard-pressed to explain why these interactions are different, but they definitely are. When men perceive me as male, it is as if we are in on something together, something that women are not privy to. It is if I am winning a game, a game of male performance. Of course, the men who read me as male do not think of it in those terms; it is a world they are already immersed in, and I imagine that they take for granted most of the time.

Pronouns, like all terms in any language, are part of a language game. Ludwig Wittgenstein coined the term “language game” to describe the way we use language to get on in the world. For him, mastering language meant mastering the rules of the game. We learn these rules from interacting with other speakers of our language. We master the pronoun game early in life without thinking about it. We learn the difference between genders, and that men are referred to as “he” and women as “she”. However, it is a bit more complicated than that.

 In the pronoun game, we use reductionist ideas of what it means to be male or female, which are the genders we are given as children. “He” refers to someone with a penis who has secondary sex characteristics as well, just as “she” refers to someone with a vagina and corresponding secondary sex characteristics. Because we don’t all walk around naked, in our culture at least, we have to infer certain genitalia based on those secondary characteristics. Things such as body shape, facial hair, voice pitch and mannerisms give clues as to which pronoun is appropriate. Gender performance and proper names offer us more clues so that we quickly learn which pronoun we ought to assign to an individual.

The pronoun game is a way of getting on in the world, just as all language games are. It is a heuristic, which provides us with a nice little packet of information about a person. Upon hearing one word being used to refer to a person, “he” for example, we can assume all sorts of things about that person, depending how critical we are about gender constructions. When we hear someone referred to as “he,” we can assume that person has a penis, is able to grow facial hair or liked playing with trucks as a child rather than dolls. An exhaustive list of all of the assumptions we are given by gendered terms is massive, but impossible to pin down exactly.

The constellation of our assumptions somewhat depends on how critical we are about the social construction of gender, though to a great extent, these assumptions go largely unchallenged until we reach a certain age, if they ever are. These assumptions, in turn, give us information about how we ought to act toward a person. We rarely if ever think, “Oh, he referred to that person as ‘her’, so that means it is impolite for me to ask how old she is.” But that is exactly the kind of thing we can deduce from the use of the pronoun “she.” Of course, gender performance and the physical differences between men and women offer us clues about how to act toward someone based on gender. Pronouns, however, allow us to deduce a system of assumptions and values without ever having to set eyes on a person.

For me, the use of the pronoun “he” while referring to me makes me feel like I am pulling something off. I have been able, albeit unintentionally, to perform the male gender to the point where some people refer to me with male pronouns and other male terms. The person referring to me this way, as far as I know, is unconsciously playing the pronoun game to the best of their ability. Enough signs, whether physical or behavioral, lead them to decide that “he” is the best pronoun to use. I am partially thrilled because I am exploiting a lacuna in the system of reference in play. There is no correct pronoun for me to use to refer to my gender because I identify as neither man nor woman. I have exposed a flaw in a system of reference and occasionally this flaw becomes apparent to the other person if they are tipped off to the fact that I am female-bodied. I don’t know how often this leads other people to critically examine the use of pronouns, but at least their assumptions about gender have been momentarily challenged.

I would like to leave it at that, to simply say that being male-gendered is thrilling for its deconstructive potential. The other side of the pronoun coin, for me, is that when I am referred to as male, I feel like I gain male privilege in that instance. That male privilege, however brief it may be, is something with which I still have to reckon. It is something that I haven’t yet fully understood.