Maybe you have heard someone saying “my pronouns are…” and you have wondered what that meant. Why do some people that “look as men” ask you to use she/her when talking about them? Why do other identify as they/them instead? What has grammar to do with people’s gender identity?

The answers have to do with the difference between sex and gender. Roughly put, sex is the distinction between male and female (although this distinction is not so clear-cut, and an estimated 1.7% percent of the world population is excluded by the binary definition^[1]). The definition of sex is therefore linked to the body, and the way we understand it.

What is gender?

Gender is more of a social identity. This social identity is often reduced, again, to a binary: man or woman. People who identify as she or he recognise themselves in this binary: she is a woman, he is a man. That does not mean, of course, that they completely align themselves with stereotypical gender norms of femininity or masculinity, but that they identify as women or men.

Here is the point about pronouns: gender does not necessarily align with the sex assigned at birth. In other words, you can have “male” on your birth certificate and identify as woman. The moment you identify as a woman, you are a woman, because woman is a social category. So let’s say it once and for all: transgender women are women, transgender men are men.

For the record, some transgender people may want to undertake various types of surgery, others may not. Some of them may also be transsexual (they may not identify with the sex that was assigned to them at birth), some are not. Trans* identity can have a variety of meanings.

Now, let’s take a step more: some people refuse the gender binary altogether. Non-binary people can also have a variety of reasons and identities, but crucially, they all refuse this dichotomy. The dichotomy says: either you live in this world as a man – looking as a man, being recognized as a man, behaving as a man, identifying as a man – or as a woman. Non-binary people refuse this binary gender as a social category that defines them. They/them are their pronouns.

Finally, gender identity is different from sexual orientation. People (whether cisgender, trans*, non-binary, and all in between) can be heterosexual, homosexual, bisexual, pansexual, and other things that – guess what – still end by -sexual. But that is another article.

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References

[1] Wikipedia | Intersex

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