Anthropology Parenting Pronouns Or Else

Look At My Shiny Identity

March 19, 2023 by David 84 Comments

Via Mr Muldoon, a tale of what sounds like mid-life contrivance:

I told my husband I now use they and them pronouns after 15 years together. We are both learning how not to misgender me.

Imagine the fun.

The contriver in question is Amanda Elend, a scrupulously progressive woman whose list of causes is extensive, if somewhat predictable. She tells us,

My partner and I got married over a decade ago, knowing we might end up hating each other.

Ah, the basis of any sound marriage.

We understood people grew and that sometimes meant growing apart. But still, we thought our chances were good. Fifteen years later, we’re still happily married, but boy, did we grow. I now identify as a bisexual, nonbinary person, and my family is learning to adapt. 

Coinciding, oddly enough, with the big four-oh:

At first, it was difficult to reconcile the fact that I’m bisexual and nonbinary at 40 years old. It felt like I was co-opting a label designated for younger generations. But it all felt right; they weren’t labels. They were my identity. 

The idea of having an identity – one with boutique status and complications that have to be danced around in an affirming manner – is terribly important to Ms Elend. And as we’ve seen, self-definition is very in right now, and quite competitive. Plus, there’s so much potential for chiding and rituals of atonement:

[My husband] is still working to understand the complexities of my identity, but I know that he is trying. For example, he recently apologised for not defaulting to “they” when he talked about me.

Ms Elend’s children, aged six and nine, were also informed of their mother’s elevation to the role of Fascinating Being:

I suddenly decided to tell my kids in the car one day. They were in their booster seats in the back, and my partner was driving.

The word husband is used intermittently. Sometimes it’s partner.

Looking awkwardly back at them, I told them I never wanted to stop growing or getting to know myself and I recently realised that I’m nonbinary. I also told them that if I weren’t with their dad, I now knew that I would be open to relationships with those like me and those who’re different.

“Can we still call you mom?” my 9-year-old asked.

You see, every small child wants a mom whose new pronouns have to be memorised, and who reveals that their family is suddenly conditional, one option among many. A mom who, in middle-age, is still on a journey of self-absorption – sorry, self-discovery – and who could at any moment become a radically different, and altogether more fashionable, kind of entity. Quite what a six-year-old is supposed to do with such information, beyond feeling confused or insecure, is unclear.

But children, being children, are at least easy to manipulate:

My 6-year-old is my resident fact-checker, promptly correcting anyone who refers to me as a woman.

It’s a niche pleasure, an acquired taste. And any project of self-preoccupation must have its little accomplices – in supporting roles, of course. Even if the star of the drama sometimes fluffs her lines:

I was giving a speech at a grad-school reunion. I nervously introduced myself as the former student known as “that girl who sings.” My horror set in quickly. How could I misgender myself after making sure everyone in my life referred to me properly? I worried that maybe I was not really nonbinary.

Hold that thought, madam.

But then I realised memory, time, and language could be tricky. I lived as “she” for 40 years, and society still sees me as “she.” 

And it’s so much easier to shift the focus of any interaction towards oneself if there are complications to mention and pronouns to stipulate.

It’s beautiful when someone refers to me as “them.”

Update, via the comments:

Nikw211 questions Ms Elend’s honesty, and adds,

I think what we’re actually reading here is basically autobiographical fan fiction.

Well, it’s hard to be sure exactly how much embellishment is in play. But as with other articles in much the same genre, these things are presumably intended to present the author or subject in a fairly flattering light – as sympathetic, resilient or long-suffering, even heroic. Stunning and brave, as they say. Which, again, suggests obliviousness and insufferable self-involvement. I mean, if this is the idealised, airbrushed version of the author…

It’s also worth bearing in mind the extent to which so many of these ‘progressive’ ladies seem to have ideals that are actually quite twisted and dysfunctional. Ms Honor Jones, for instance, our supposedly oppressed – and supposedly heroic – senior editor at The Atlantic:

Needless to say, Ms Jones has dozens of blue-tick Twitter followers, many of whom are her peers in ‘progressive’ institutions of one kind or another, merrily gushing about her “courage” and capacity for introspection, her glorious humanity, her “brilliant soul.” Her tale, we’re told, is “beautiful and moving.” And none of those applauding apparently raised an eyebrow at a self-involved woman shattering the lives of her three small children, and her husband, in order to concentrate on herself even more than before.

Whatever the author’s embellishment in any instance above, the ideal itself is worth noting. As is the weirdly unanimous approval from equally woke and statusful peers. Because apparently there’s a moral universe in which such behaviour is considered boastworthy, a basis for applause.




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