Dembroff and Wodak's Radical Claim

In other courses that I have taught, I have intentionally made space at the beginning of the semester for students to express their pronoun preferences to me and the class and made a point of sharing mine. My reasoning was that I wanted to avoid unintentionally misgendering students myself, having students misgender each other, and to acknowledge (although I wonder if I was ever successful at this, without saying it explicitly) that trans and non-binary folks are welcome members of our community who deserve respect.

Reading Dembroff and Wodak's (2018) article "He/She/They/Ze" has generated some questions for me about the wisdom of this practice. In this article, the authors defend what they label as the Radical Claim, that "We have a duty not to use gender-specific pronouns to refer to anyone, regardless of their gender identity" (372). I found the arguments the authors make in section 4.2 regarding privacy particularly compelling. By using gender-specific pronouns we not only risk misgendering folks whose gender identities we don't know, but forcing people into circumstances where they have to either disclose personal information they might rather keep private or else choose to deceive those with whom they are interacting.

Suppose I make a gender identity assumption about a student named "Mary" and use the pronoun "she" when referring to that student. Without asking about Mary's gender identity or Mary volunteering that information, I don't have good reasons for making assumptions and my language use could be seriously disrespectful to Mary. But if I do ask for gender identity information from Mary ("Please write your preferred pronouns on your name tag"), then I ask Mary to disclose or deceive. Dembroff and Wodak make the analogy to other types of social identities (sexuality, religion, race, etc.) explicit. In asking my students to tell me their gender identities, I am asking for pretty personal information. I have never asked my students to disclose their religious identities or their sexualities. That would strike me as inappropriate. Why do I ask about their gender identities? Is this information really relevant?

All this is to say, that I think I am sympathetic to Dembroff and Wodak's Radical Claim. There are two worries that the authors raise, which I do think require more careful consideration. One is that our most viable options for gender-neutral pronouns, "they" and "ze", aren't really gender-neutral in current usage. When we use "they" or "ze" today, we communicate that the person referred to is gender unusual in some way. Dembroff and Wodak's response is that at least some English speakers use "they" in such a way that does not presuppose information about the referent's gender identity, as in "My friend is picking me up but they're running late" (385). While this is probably true, I do still worry that in many contexts today, using "they" will implicitly signal that the referent is either trans or non-binary, even if this is not what the speaker intends to communicate. This could be both misleading, and counterproductive if our aim is to eliminate gender-specific pronouns.

Another worry is that on its face, the Radical Claim implies that we should refrain from using gender-specific pronouns for transgender women and transgender men. Especially when this would go against the referent's explicit wishes, this implication seems cruel. Dembroff and Wodak admit that "given how things stand now, there are many circumstances in which failing to use gender-specific pronouns for a transgender man or woman implicitly denies, rather than merely fails to affirm, the referent's gender identity" and that "[t]his generates exceptions to the defeasible moral duty not to use gender-specific pronouns for anyone" (387). The authors argue that since the use of "they" is not currently egalitarian, using gender-specific pronouns for transgender persons (e.g. "she" for a transgender woman) would be appropriate, at least for the time being. 

This seems right, if not uncomplicated. Forcing "they" on a transgender person would be disrespectful. However, I wonder if this discussion of exceptions points to a significant difficulty in reconciling trans identities, or traditional binary gender identities for that matter, with what Dembroff and Wodak call the "long-term goal" of abolishing gender-specific pronouns. The rationale for the long-term goal is a bit murky for me still. Dembroff and Wodak offer the following reason: "there is a plausible case for the view that linguistic markers of gender play a role in communicating harmful beliefs about the nature and social significance of gender identities, and that reducing the linguistic markers of gender would reduce the prevalence of such beliefs" (395). In particular, they argue that linguistic markers of gender are correlated with essentialist beliefs about gender, which are harmful (396). Dembroff and Wodak cash out gender essentialism as the broad view "that someone’s gender is an intrinsic part of who they are, which explains their other features, including their psychological traits and social roles" (395). My worry is that, for instance, there might be a transgender woman who strongly believes that her gender is an intrinsic part of who she is, which, once properly appreciated, explains other important aspects of her character and life. While I cannot speak from that perspective myself, I wonder if such a woman would want to embrace gender essentialism on some level. If so, then she may not support the goal of exorcising gender-specific language, even in the long term. 

Dembroff and Wodak could reply that if a transgender woman deserves an appropriate gender-specific pronoun, then insofar as we are to prioritize egalitarianism, so does everybody else, but that would leave us with an untenable proliferation of gender-specific pronouns and so in the long run, even transgender women will need to relinquish their gender-specific pronouns (390). Something about this doesn’t sit quite right, and I would like to think more about it. Perhaps Dembroff and Wodak are missing a middle way—e.g. a way to truncate the unwieldy proliferation of gender-specific pronouns without limiting them to just one, two, or three options, thereby allowing for linguistic expression of diverse gender identities without getting too confused? Perhaps this is an idea to explore another time.

Where does this leave me as an educator? I hope to foster learning communities in which students feel supported and respected enough to share personal information when it is relevant to our work together, or as a way of building the human relationships that make learning possible in the first place. In this course, the focus of which is philosophy and gender, volunteering personal information about our gender identities might be relevant, and might help us puzzle through some of the philosophical issues and arguments we will encounter in a way that will be meaningful for our own lives. Dembroff and Wodak suggest that while serious caution is needed to avoid causing harm to vulnerable gender minorities, we can start by using gender-neutral pronouns as well as gender-specific pronouns “for non-vulnerable persons that are known to identify within the gender binary (especially oneself, if applicable)” (388). Without knowing whether any of the students in this course identify within the gender binary, this leaves me simply with the question of my own gender identity, and how much personal information I want to share. I have identified as female for as long as I can remember, but not without hesitancy. The hesitancy comes in a few forms: 1) I do not personally feel that my gender identity forms an intrinsic part of who I am, 2) I like the freedom to bend, transgress, and ignore gender norms, and 3) I wonder if the world might be better off without gender categories. For what it is worth, for the time being, I am happy to have others use the pronouns "she" or "they" when referring to me, with the understanding that I don’t fall into the category of  a person who is "known to identify within the gender binary" in a totally uncomplicated way.