I’ve been using they/them pronouns for seven years now. My presentation over those years has changed drastically in every direction, but the feeling of my ever-expansive gender hasn’t: The one constant is its ability to really surprise me. To me, my gender means fecundity, abundance. It isn’t a gravel path with high breeze-block walls on either side, but a forest in late summer filled with ripe berries and wild animals (no wasps, though) that is mine to roll about in. It isn’t updating the pronouns in my email bio. It isn’t being grateful that there’s an “other” box when I’m booking an EasyJet flight. And it certainly isn’t reminding someone every time that “I…err…actually use they/them pronouns…sorry…thanks…” with an awkward shuffle of the feet.
But every now and then, I need reminding of that. Because at some point—I don’t remember when exactly—being trans in public became more violent than ever, and consequently more boring than ever.
Behind a closed door, in a WhatsApp group, or at dinner with the girls, that forest comes to life, in full bloom, and we frolic in it, we eat its blackberries—and when we’re done gossiping about cis people, we rarely talk about gender. But at some point, perhaps due to fear of us, or jealousy of us, or something I am frankly disinterested in diagnosing in others, everything became so serious. People who aren’t us started taking a vested interest in attacking us, and long articles were written about 10-year-old boys in dresses in home insurance ads being the ultimate display of male privilege. When did everyone lose their ability to imagine freedom? When did everyone become so mind-numbingly dull?
As trans visibility has exploded over the past decade, and our way of imagining freedom has been put on wider display, right-wing (and some who were once radically feminist) detractors have looked for even the smallest stick to beat us back onto the gravel path with. And so the stakes for naming ourselves became higher, to the point that making a mistake—or even a change when it came to my gender, my pronouns, or my presentation—became something that I overthought to the point of inaction, ultimately repressing my changing truth. But what was all of this for—all the years searching for the forest planted by people before us—if not to experience the hot bliss of freedom, of escape, of abundance?
Earlier this week, Demi Lovato was interviewed on a podcast and mentioned that, while she had previously identified with they/them pronouns, she’d recently been feeling more feminine, and has taken to using she/her pronouns again alongside her they/them pronouns. “Good for Demi!” I thought as I strode through South London, before shrugging it off, rushing on my way to dinner with a bunch of queer friends in some clippy-cloppy boots that make that deeply satisfying clippy-cloppy sound, a sound so chic and chaotic that I forget my gender and remember that I’m the main character in a movie about a fashion intern who makes it to the top!
Of course, when I got to dinner, none of the girls even mentioned Demi. Sure, they would have all read the articles, but like I said, when we get together we want to talk about clothes, dates, socialism. Just girlie things. Our solidarity with Demi is unspoken in private, because it seems so obvious. But as dinner drew to a close, we were going through our final points on the agenda, and I found myself talking about how I was feeling about my they/them pronouns. That they still fit, in many ways, but have become a limit in many ways too. Not because of the pronouns themselves—or anything to do with non-binariness, which is still where I firmly live—but precisely because of email bios and genderless fashion (no!) and society’s lack of imagination. Now, they/them just means “in-between.” Now, I am just a they/them-who-looks-like-a-bloke. The forest has got less bright, and I find it harder to locate on my internal map.
“Well, what do you want?” one of my friends said. As if it were that easy.
“I don’t know,” I replied, realizing in that moment that maybe it was that easy.
And that was it. All I needed to say was “I don’t know,” and I felt momentarily freed from the shackles of always having to know. It often feels like everyone requires an answer; everyone must be in stasis because flux is too scary. My friend Travis Alabanza talks a lot about the idea of our non-binary identities becoming simply a “third legible gender.” But Demi’s coming out served as a reminder that to change your pronouns as you please should be a nothing, should be simple, should create no waves or ripples if all these pronouns in our email bios mean anything at all.
On the way home, I messaged Travis about these feelings. It was the day that they had published their first book, None of the Above, but of course—as with any friend in gender revelation mode—it doesn’t matter what day it is when you need advice. Travis responded instantly with words that made me feel like not knowing was the best answer. “What’s beautiful about being trans is that we literally resemble change,” they wrote. “And in a world that is requiring us to be so polarized in our positions, and so fixated on never changing our mind or never admitting that we might contradict our past self. And I think that when we embrace a state of flux, we are embracing a natural element of the world. I think it’s a human condition to change your mind.”
And so here I am. Changing my mind in Vogue, partly thanks to Demi Lovato. Not from something to something else, but perhaps from static to fluctuating again. Perhaps from static to a place of exploration again. Perhaps from static to reminding myself that I don’t have to stop changing, expanding, contracting. Maybe I’ll change my pronouns—or maybe I won’t tell a soul about it.