Hi there, person who just showed up in my social media notifications with some tired, overused comment about how you are dismissing my clever comment/biting sarcasm/witty response because I (along with many other people) have put my pronouns in my bio. My name is Chris (He/Him), and I’ve been meaning to write this for a while…

Social media profile pics and bios are a quick way to give people an idea of who you are. For example, chances are good you have a picture of some sort of star-spangled cross or an eagle holding a gun or some other obscure image that—like a pointy white hood—hides your cowardly identity and allows you to say whatever racist, bigoted things you want on the internet while maintaining a sense of impunity. You might have something about trump or “MAGA” or “2A” or maybe even some QAnon reference in your bio. And I’d ALSO be willing to bet you have something in your profile identifying you as a christian or a “follower of Christ,” even though a literal moment’s research would almost certainly reveal the things you post to be absolutely DRIPPING with the most insidious brand of bigotry & judgment & hatred.

You probably just read a comment I wrote, looked at my bio, saw the “He/Him” there, and thought to yourself, “THIS IS MY BIG CHANCE! I’m usually not very good at making jokes in my regular life, but I’m going to let this stranger on the internet know that—because of the presence of those pronouns—I don’t respect the things he has to say. I can ridicule him and make “jokes” like these:”

If you are a person who has ever included your pronouns in your bio, you have no doubt seen some variation of the same “joke,” all told by what seems to be a collection of the most boring people on the planet. Sometimes these folks will include a version of the “joke” in their own bios… Stuff like “My pronouns are Fu¢k/Joe/Biden or Fire/Fauci or some such hilarity. If this is you, I’m honestly not sure what made you this way… Maybe you grew up in a home without any sort of love. Maybe an uncle gave you a Jordan Peterson book for your birthday when you were in college, and the timing coincided with that girl telling you she doesn’t like you in that way, and all your anger & shame found an outlet, and you thought, “If I was just more MANLY, THEN she’d love me.” Maybe you are just wholly unable to come up with something original. Maybe someone, somewhere once told you the lie that compassion is weakness, and for some reason you believed them. Whatever the reason, you strike me as profoundly broken people.

So listen… I’m going to do my best to explain to you why I put those pronouns there, okay? It’s not because I feel like I have to tell you I’m a man (although, admittedly my tenor voice has been referred to as “ma’am” in more than one fast food drive-thru over the years). I’m a 6’2″ bald guy who often has some sort of facial hair… I’m not writing “he/him” because I’m worried about being mistaken for a woman. Here’s why I include my pronouns: I include my pronouns because I love my trans, non-binary, and gender-non-conforming friends, family, & community members. That’s it… That’s why I do it. I’m not sure if this is news to you or not, but there are some people out there whose gender is not as readily apparent as mine is… and because I care about those people and don’t want to make their lives even harder, I include my pronouns. I do this to try to make them feel more welcome and less awkward about sharing the pronouns that THEY use, which might not be as easily identifiable as mine are.

When I used to work in schools, we’d do presentations in schools all over Tennessee. When the kids would ask questions, we’d call on them by pointing toward them and saying, “The person wearing the blue shirt” or “The person with the long, dark hair.” Things like that… And the REASON we did this is because sometimes people get the kid’s gender wrong, and it sucks to have your peers snicker & laugh because some dumb educators misgendered you at school. If you’re in a classroom setting, another way to prevent this kind of embarrassment is to simply ask EVERYONE in the class to provide the pronouns they use, rather than only asking the people whose pronouns you are unsure of.

And it’s not just kids or people who are in the process of transitioning who get misgendered. Some people identify as gender fluid. Maybe there’s a woman who is bald because of alopecia, and she’s not interested in wearing makeup or wearing traditionally feminine things that might make it easier for the people around her to identify her gender. Some people feel more “both/and” and prefer “They/Them” pronouns. There are plenty of ways for people to be outside of the norm in ways that don’t fit nicely into a binary model… And as we encounter those people, there are people who choose to do things that make those folks feel more INCLUDED or people who choose to do things that make those folks feel more EXCLUDED. It seems like those of you who are critical of people posting their pronouns belong to the latter group…

People who live in a binary, black & white world struggle to see nuance or anything that resembles a spectrum. And I get it: Things can get confusing when we use masculine or feminine pronouns to delineate between both gender AND sex… Which, by the way, are not the same thing. Sex has more to do with biology, and gender has more to do with social expressions, roles, & norms. Most people grow up being taught that sex is one of TWO boxes: Male or Female. When people find out that—like most of biology—it’s more complicated than that, some people respond with fear and anger at the realization of that complexity. Some of those folks decide to embrace their ignorance, as a sort of “I’ll show THEM” response (as a side note, this is one of the reasons the right wing like to demonize academic & intellectual “elites.” It’s also why you see a coordinated effort to attack both public schooling AND institutions of higher education. People who go to trade schools are a lot less likely to learn about the complexities of human biology).

In most cultures, gender is fairly binary, but MANY cultures around the world include “third gender” categories, like the māhū in Tahitian and Native Hawaiian cultures. Some Native American traditions have four genders: Feminine women, masculine women, feminine men, and masculine men. Most academic & anthropological studies of gender have five different gender groupings where people fit: Males, Females, Androgynous (like intersex people of those with gender liminality), Transgendered (with trans having a meaning of beyond normal boundaries), and non-sexual or neutered people… Eunuchs, for example.

SPEAKING of which (and especially for those of you who identify as christian)… There is a story in the Bible about an Ethiopian Eunuch. It takes place during the early days of the church, when the church was growing and there was a debate going on about whether people had to become Jewish before being Christian, or whether this “Jesus” stuff was for EVERYBODY… Gentiles included. The book of Acts is the story of that growth, and in Acts 8 we learn of a 1) Ethiopian (cultural & racial outsider) 2) Eunuch (a sexual minority who was excluded from traditional Jewish worship) who was reading a passage from Isaiah. Then Philip the Evangelist told this dark-skinned sexual minority about Jesus, they rode past some water, and the Eunuch was BAPTIZED into the Church. Of ALL of the stories the author could have chosen, he included the story of the inclusion of an outsider who didn’t fit nicely into the traditional sexual binary. Think about that for a little bit—ESPECIALLY those of you with “follower of Christ” in your bio—before you ridicule people for attempting to make non-binary and trans people feel more welcome by including their pronouns in their own bios. For some reason that story is not as popular with evangelicals as the couple of verses condemning same-sex relations…

Anyway, during the trump presidency, there was a great, short article written with the amazing title, “I Don’t Know How To Explain To You That You Should Care About Other People.” And in a lot of ways, that’s really what this comes down to… Some people care enough about others to wear a mask to prevent the spread of a deadly disease during a pandemic. Others don’t. Some people care enough about others to vote to fully fund our public schools so that poor kids can receive a quality education just like rich kids get. Others don’t. And some people care enough about others to put their pronouns in their bio so that a group of people who are used to feeling like outsiders feel just a little more “normal.” Others don’t. I’m PROUD to post my pronouns, just like I’m proud of the trans, non-binary, & gender-non-conforming people in my life… And your worn-out jokes don’t make me mad as much as they just make me feel sad for you. I can’t imagine being so profoundly broken that I actually feel ANGER at seeing another person doing a simple act of compassion in order to make a non-binary or trans person feel a bit more welcomed & included. That seems like such a sad existence to me…

Thank you so much for reading. If my writing is meaningful to you, and you’d like to support me or leave a tip, you can BECOME A PATRON, leave a TIP ON PAYPAL, or Venmo me at chris-boeskool. If you want to get a notification when I write something new, you can subscribe to this blog. And if you want to follow my on social media, you can do that on FACEBOOK or on the shitshow that TWITTER has devolved into. And please, PLEASE… Don’t let bigoted dipshits badger & bully you into not doing a small act of kindness & compassion that can make vulnerable people’s lives just a little bit easier.