JAMES LILLIN
Staff Writer
On Nov. 7 at 2 p.m. in Williams Center S204ABC, a panel including Chief Diversity Officer Bill Boerner, English professors KimMarie Cole, Natalie Gerber, Jeffry Iovannone, Heather McEntarfer, and senior English and women’s and gender studies major Dean Bavisotto gathered to discuss innovations in pronouns while drawing from their particular expertise and personal experience.
Moderating the panel was Lee Airton, a teacher in the Master of Teaching program at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education in the University of Toronto, as well as the author of the popular blog “They Is My Pronoun.”
Iovannone opened the event with a brief primer detailing the history of the taskforce who pushed for Fredonia’s recently adopted “Chosen Name Policy,” which allowed a student to change their listed name on various Fredonia documentation without having to go through the lengthy process of legally changing it.
“Even those of us who considered ourselves allies hadn’t fully realized the number of documents on which [one’s name] appeared,” said Iovannone. “It’s because of things like this that individuals from marginalized populations often need to get creative in circumventing the oppression they face.”
Iovannone then introduced Airton, who delivered a presentation titled “The making of an effort: What singular they teaches us about the everyday life of social difference,” which began by settling the validity of using “they” as a singular pronoun.
“It’s grammatically correct, and its use as a singular pronoun predates Shakespeare,” said Airton. “It has commonly been used for when a stranger’s gender is unknown, but its more modern, innovative use is as a person’s preferred gender pronoun.”
One of Airton’s main topics was highlighting the way that “extra” work that people do to accomodate, like re-learning a coworkers’ last name after a marriage, can slowly be viewed as “excessive,” like if that same coworker is married eight separate times in five years. Airton then compared this to learning and respecting someone’s chosen pronouns, which is often viewed as an excessive demand.
“The sensation of newness that blankets any innovation fades over time, and eventually it is no longer viewed as ‘excessive,’ but it takes extra effort to begin understanding that innovation,” said Airton.
Airton went on to argue for activism that shies away from a false narrative that learning and using innovative pronouns requires no extra work. Airton instead acknowledged that it does require work, but not very much, and certainly not an “excessive” amount.
“Lee’s portion of the presentation was really great because it articulated a bunch of things that I had been trying to relay to people in my life that I just didn’t have words for before,” said Bavisotto.
Particularly impactful was Airton’s insistence that it wasn’t helpful to reinforce the idea that all trans people share the same consistent “trapped in the wrong body” feeling since birth, as well as their belief that even if correct pronoun usage is not a life or death situation, they still needed to be used and respected.
“I really liked the idea of the urgency and consistency arguments being the wrong ways to go,” said sophomore English adolescent education and political science major Victor Morales, “because for so long I felt annoyed going to my parents or other people I know being like ‘Oh, trans people are gonna be in the ground if you don’t accept them.’ I hate the idea that I’m a weak person or that if other people don’t validate me then I am going to, like, kill myself. I really don’t enjoy that characterization.”
Airton ended their talk by dealing with the “slippery slope” argument being used by professionals who argue that mandating correct pronoun usage infringes on their free speech.
“What’s troubling is this slippery slope argument where people act like they’re going to have to memorize an infinite list of unique, personal pronouns when that isn’t even remotely the demand,” said Airton.
The talk was followed by a conversation between panel members that consisted of a question and answer session, as well as a presentation by Gerber on the evolution and history of personal pronouns since the days of Old English.
“I never saw the history of pronouns being spelled out like that,” said Bavisotto, “and it’s helpful to have [it] in my toolkit when people start trying to tell me that using a singular ‘they’ isn’t grammatically correct.”
The event took over two and a half hours in total but managed to keep the audience rapt and engaged throughout its entirety, successfully continuing the ongoing conversation about the role of chosen pronouns at Fredonia.
“Ever since we started the chosen name policy, pronouns have repeatedly come up and there’s been this really intense reluctance by both members of the administration, and even members of the taskforce, to talk about pronouns at all,” said Bavisotto. “I think [our] goal was to have a better conversation than what’s been had, because before it was just like ‘let’s not talk about this,’ and now we’re engaging with it and making plans for the future.”