Challenging Traditional Gender Labels

In September 2011, Australia changed its passport policy to allow three gender options on travel documents instead of two: male, female, and indeterminate.⁴ The goal was to remove discrimination against transgendered persons. As Australian Senator Louise Pratt described, “It’s an important recognition of people’s human rights.” The same month, Pomona College in California revised its student constitution to remove gendered pronouns. “A lot of students do not identify as ‘male’ or ‘female’ and aren’t using the pronouns ‘he’ or ‘she,’ so we are trying to better represent the student body,” said Student Commissioner Sarah Applebaum. “Ideally, this will help promote a more supportive campus for gender-nonconforming, queer, and transgender students.”

These changes are part of a larger cultural trend toward challenging traditional language labels for gender and replacing them with “preferred gender pronouns” or PGPs—gender names of a person’s own choosing. As Eliza Byard, executive director of the Gay, Lesbian, and

Straight Education Network, describes, “More students today than ever are thinking about what gender means and are using language to get away from masculine and feminine gender assumptions.” Some of the more creative PGPs currently in use include “ze,” “hir,” and “hirs.”

Although the use of PGPs is global, the motivation for embracing them is deeply personal. PGPs are a way of using language to authentically capture one’s true gender identity. “This has nothing to do with your sexuality and everything to do with who you feel like inside,” notes Ann Arbor teen Katy Butler. “My PGPs are ‘she,’ ‘her’ and ‘hers’ and sometimes ‘they,’ ‘them’ and ‘theirs.’”

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