It’s not about pronouns.
Well, not exactly. Before we can ever hope to get that right, or even if you don’t care to, it would do us all good to realize what exactly we’re talking about. And any spin through the media will tell you all kinds of people are confused about sex and gender. And by that I mean: what they mean. And it goes beyond the media. If you’ve ever bubbled in your gender as “male or female” on a form, you’ve signed inaccurately, because male and female are not indicators of gender. They’re indicators of sex. (Don’t worry: it was the form’s mistake, not yours.)
You might say sex and gender are the same thing. And for most people, they do match up. But the same thing, they are not. Transgender and non-binary people know this better than anybody, but you absolutely do not have to be transgender or non-binary to realize the difference between sex and gender.
You just have to realize that if you lost some of the parts or abilities that make you male or female, or if you never had them to begin with, you would still be the person that you are, whether you’re a man, a woman, or someone who, for whatever reason, hasn’t found themselves in those terms. Your instinct might be to blow that off as politically correct or “woke” nonsense. But first, I challenge you to see if a cancer survivor, for example, or someone who’s struggled with infertility, might want to share their feelings about this with you. Odds are that you know at least one.
Or if you’d rather not get in that person’s business on such a personal issue, this article, published in 2020, points out what we do to ourselves and each other when we reduce people to parts and abilities. Inside it is another article that explains the science and sociology of sex and gender.
-Maude
January 21, 2025