It is really easy to assume when you first meet someone that the person’s gender is either a man or woman, boy or girl, because that is all we’ve ever been taught. It has always been embedded into our brains that biological sex is synonymous with gender. In some cases, like with people who are cisgender, identifying as their biological sex, this is true. However, because gender is an ideology rather than a fact, this is not always the case.
The most obvious example that comes to mind is people that identify as transgender or are in the process of transitioning. Transitioning is a confusing yet beautiful time for a person who feels as if he or she has been essentially “trapped” in the wrong body throughout his or her life. It is an extremely difficult process with the questioning of surgeries, wrapping, hormone injections and, last but not least, pronoun identification.
Imagine enduring multiple surgeries and changing your entire lifestyle only to be labeled as something that you no longer identify with, or, even worse, being called “it.” Sadly, that is what the majority of transgender people go through on a daily basis. The University of Wisconsin’s LGBT Resource Center website says that “when someone is referred to with the wrong pronoun, it can make them feel disrespected, invalidated, dismissed, alienated or dysphoric.” The website goes on to say that “it is a privilege to not have to worry about which pronoun someone is going to use for you based on how they perceive your gender. If you have this privilege, yet fail to respect someone else’s gender identity, it is not only disrespectful and hurtful, but also oppressive.”
It almost seems unbelievable, at first, to acknowledge and understand that if a person is cisgender, then he or she immediately has a privilege that others do not. In fact, the term “cisgender” itself has been viewed as being an oppressive label. Cisgender is a relatively new term that was created to express the difference between being transgender and those identifying with the gender assigned at birth. The reason it is viewed as “oppressive” is because it makes those that identify as transgender feel even more excluded.
Of course, not everyone purposely uses incorrect pronouns for someone else. Often, one can accidently assume the wrong pronoun. When this happens, it will mean a great deal to the person if you ask what he or she prefers to be called rather than continuing to make the same mistake. This can apply to anyone, not just those who identify as transgender. There are several different genders such as gender fluid, gender neutral, genderqueer and more.
It can seem difficult to accept that other genders exist, and it can be difficult to understand what makes up the different gender types. I, myself, identify as cisgender, and it took me a long time to realize that there are other genders that differ from my own. I grew up in a small town where there wasn’t a great deal of diversity regarding genders. I had been exposed to other genders through the internet, but it wasn’t until I got to college that I really understood that it’s super common not to identify with the binary genders. That is when I decided to look more into the matter and was even able to take a LGBT+ course. It can be extremely eye opening to research and find information about things that have never shown up on one’s radar before. If anything, it can make someone’s day a little better just by using the correct pronoun.
