Journal of
Language andDiscrimination

jold (print) issn 2397–2637
jold (online) issn 2397–2645

ArticleTransgender language reform:
some challenges and strategies for promoting
trans-affirming, gender-inclusive language
Lal Zimman

Abstract
Transgender people’s recent increase in visibility in the contemporary UnitedStates has presented new linguistic challenges. This article investigates thosechallenges and presents strategies developed by trans speakers and promoted
by trans activists concerned with language reform. The first of these is the selection of gendered lexical items, including both gender identity terms (woman,man, etc.) and more implicitly gendered words (e.g. beautiful, handsome). The
second is the assignment of third person pronouns like she/her/hers and he/him/his as well as non-binary pronouns like singular they/them/theirs or ze/
hir/hirs. Both of these challenges tap into the importance trans people place
on individual self-identification, and they come with new interactional practices such as asking people directly what pronouns they would like others to
use when referring to them. The third challenge addressed here is avoiding gendering people when the referent’s gender isn’t relevant or known, which can beaddressed through the selection of gender-neutral or gender-inclusive language.
The final challenge is how to discuss gender when it is relevant – e.g. in discussions of gender identity, socialisation or sexual physiology – without delegitimising trans identities. Several strategies are presented to address this issue,
such as hedging all generalisations based on gender, even when doing so seems
unnecessary in the normative sex/gender framework or using more precise lanAffiliation
University of California, USA.
email: zimman@linguistics.ucsb.edu

jold vol 1.1 2017 84–105©2017, equinox publishingdoi: https://doi.org/10.1558/jld.33139

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guage regarding what aspect(s) of gender are relevant. Taken as a whole, translanguage reform reflects the importance of language, not just as an auxiliary to
identity, but as the primary grounds on which identity construction takes place.
keywords: language reform; transgender; discrimination

Introduction
The last several years have seen enormous changes in the place of transgender people in the public imaginary in the United States.1 This shift has been
fuelled in part by a growing number of publicly trans figures such as theactress Laverne Cox, athlete and media figure Caitlyn Jenner, and filmmakers Lana and Lilly Wachowski, among others. Of course, these individuals’
publicly trans identities did not come into being in a vacuum, but rather
were enabled by decades of activist work distributed across innumerable
trans communities. If the 1990s were a decade of transgender identity – inthe sense that the word transgender came into widespread use as an identity label at that time (Valentine 2007) – the 2010s have been the decade oftransgender publicity, when the well-honed theories of gender and identity
trans people had been developing in-community for decades finally began
to be recognised more broadly as a matter of social justice.
Language has played an enormously important role in the sea-change theUnited States is undergoing in terms of its understanding of and orientation toward transgender issues. One of the milestones in this process is thegrowing interest in trans-inclusive language within linguistic institutions
such as mainstream news organisations, medical providers and schools.
These issues have become hot topics on college campuses in particular as
some universities are investing in trans-inclusive language practices by, forinstance, making ‘pronoun pins’ available to students who want to signal
whether they should be referred to as she, he, they, or some other pronoun(Associated Press 2016). These changes have not gone unopposed, however,and trans-related language has become a popular topic of critique amongconservative commentators (including from inside academia, e.g. Craig
2016), who frame trans-inclusive language as a form of political correctness that imposes the leftist ideology that trans people’s identities shouldbe affirmed and respected. In either case, language is at the centre of publicdebates over the place of transgender people in the United States. Transpeople remain vulnerable to verbal harassment, physical and sexual violence, and discrimination in healthcare, employment and housing, among
other injustices, yet there is clearly a growing segment of the cisgender (i.e.
non-transgender) population who recognise the importance of language
for transgender liberation. Indeed, trans activism is often centred around86	Lal Zimman

linguistic reform. One recent success, for instance, is the introduction of
the word non-binary for reference to individuals who do not self-identify
as either female or male. Similarly, the word cisgender or cis, which has
been in wide use within trans communities for well over a decade, hasrecently entered the general lexicon of a broader (cis) population. With
the notion of cisgender identity comes the recognition that cissexism, or
cisnormativity – the notion that cisgender identities are ‘natural’, ‘normal’and ‘good’, while transgender identities are ‘unnatural’, ‘abnormal’ and ‘bad’– is an organising principle of normative gender systems in the UnitedStates (and elsewhere). Because one of the most important ways cissexism
is constructed is through language, the identification and dismantling ofcissexist language is a central part of trans activism and part of the workthat cisgender allies are expected to perform.
Beyond the use of overtly hostile language, such as transphobic epithets,
there are many subtle ways language enforces cissexism. Among these is
the practice of using words like woman and man to refer interchangeably
to a person’s physiology (e.g. ‘women’s bodies’), childhood socialisation(e.g. ‘how women are raised’), perceived gender (e.g. ‘women often experience street harassment’) and gender identity (e.g. ‘women may be inclined
to have other women as friends’). The difficulty of divesting oneself fully of
cisnormative language is a common subject of anxiety for aspiring allies,
but linguistic analysis offers tools for understanding the linguistic strategies trans people themselves have developed for subverting cisnormativity
and the gender binary. After all, trans people, too, have needed to develop
ways of thinking and talking about gender in ways that affirm their own
and one another’s identities. This article addresses a series of challenges –and potential solutions – faced by those who want to support or promotetrans-inclusive language. These challenges include questions about how tochoose gendered labels and pronouns, when to select gender-neutral language, and how to talk about gender when it is highly relevant, such as indiscussions of identity, human physiology or socialisation. The discussion
below draws on materials I have developed for trans-inclusive language
training workshops, which are themselves based on over ten years of ethnographic and sociolinguistic research in transgender communities in the
United States and in English-medium online spaces. This ethnographic
perspective allows for a focus on trans people’s own tactics for inclusive
and affirming language use, revealing not only the practices in which transpeople engaged but also the cultural logic that makes such practices possible. In the next section of this paper, some background about gender- andsexuality-based linguistic reform is presented. The third section features
an overview of sociocultural principles that guide transgender language

Transgender language reform87

reform in the United States, which is followed by a discussion of several
specific strategies for more trans-inclusive and trans-affirming language.

Language reform, past and present
Linguistic reform in language, gender and sexuality research

Discussions of linguistic reform have been a central part of the field of language, gender and sexuality studies since its foundation in the early 1970s(see Cameron 1998). Indeed, the field came of age in the context of second
wave feminist activism, which was deeply concerned about the naturalisation of androcentric language and norms of usage (e.g. Bodine 1975;
Penelope 1990; Spender 1980). Several scholars from this era (perhaps
most explicitly Bodine 1975) questioned the logic of grammarians and linguists who had argued that the use of the pronoun he to refer to a genericperson or man to refer to humanity was an accident of history rather thanthe product of a misogynistic culture. Linguists like Lakoff (1973) and
McConnell-Ginet (1978) called attention to the low social value accorded
to women’s linguistic practices, many of which are – at least ideologically– associated with uncertainty or lack of confidence. Others focused on
the greater interactional work expected of women in comparison to men(Fishman 1978; Sattel 1983), while others still addressed the semantic pejoration of words used to refer to women (Schultz 1975). The power to determine linguistic meaning has long been another major thread of research on
language and gender (see Ehrlich and King 1992 for an overview), whichis the body of linguistic research most relevant for the discussion below.
For example, Ehrlich and King’s discussion of feminist language reform
identifies several realms in which the negotiation of meaning has been
especially critical. One of these is in discussions of sexual assault, in which
the word no and other forms of refusal has been treated variably as always
meaning ‘no’ or as sometimes meaning ‘yes,’ ‘maybe’ or ‘try harder’ (p. 164).
Another is in the terminology used to discuss sexual interactions, such as
the choice of the word penetration, which frames the penis as performing
an active role in vaginal intercourse, as opposed to options like enclosure,surrounding or engulfing that suggest greater agency on the part of vaginas(p. 165). A final concerns the meaning of new terminology introduced in
the process of language reform such as Ms as a title for women that does
not invoke marital status or chairperson as an alternative to chair(wo)man.
In all of these cases, a central question is who has the power to determine
the meaning of politically charged lexical items.
From the start, then, feminist scholars set the stage for an unapologetically political field of language and gender. With the rise of queer

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linguistics in the 1990s (Livia and Hall 1997a), an expanded set of practices
was brought into focus as the reflexes not (only) of misogyny, but also of
the perpetration of heterosexism, homophobia and gender normativity.
Queer linguistics, like queer theory, was founded on the reclamation of thestigmatising word queer, so it is unsurprising that the lexical resignification
became a central subject of analysis. A variety of authors, such as Chen
(1998), Brontsema (2004) and McConnell-Ginet (2001), have focused on
the semantic and socio-indexical meanings of queer and evaluated its
potential to be fully resignified.
Although researchers situated within queer linguistics largely agree
that resignification is in some sense possible, they also resist the simplistic notion that language reform will directly transform social attitudes
and undo structural oppression. It is clearly not enough to introduce newwords, such as cisgender, with the expectation that a new lexical item will
eliminate cissexism. Wong (2005), for instance, discusses resignification in
Hong Kong where the word tongzhi (meaning ‘comrade’) was adopted as an
in-group term for lesbians and gay men. However, Wong shows how heteronormative news outlets’ reappropriation of tongzhi served to challenge
the positive resignification lesbians and gays had been engaged in andinstead worked to reinforce negative stereotypes while mocking the queer
appropriation of the term. As Ehrlich and King (1992) point out, language
reform is most successful when it takes place in a community that supports the change in question and its social implications, and that holds its
members accountable for whether they adopt the new form(s). The practices outlined in this article, then, should be seen as just one tool among
many for addressing the cultural permeation of transphobia and cissexism.
Language is a useful first step, however, because shared linguistic groundfacilitates collaborative work addressing other forms of oppression.
Although there is a body of literature on lesbian and gay activists’ challenges to heteronormative language (e.g. Armstrong 1997; Kitzinger 2005;
Livia 2000; Murphy 1997; Pastre 1997; Queen 1997), the linguistic interventions pursued by transgender communities have received little attention from scholars of language, gender and sexuality. This fact is all themore striking given that scholars of language, gender and sexuality havelong recognised the challenges trans people pose to normative uses ofgender in language (e.g. Bing and Bergvall 1996; Livia and Hall 1997b).
What follows is not an exhaustive list of trans language reform efforts, butrather a discussion of some core principles underlying that work and theircurrent manifestations in US-based communities where I have worked,
taught and lived.

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89

Transgender language reform

As one of the primary means of constructing gendered identities, language
is a matter of central concern to transgender people. The importance of
language in the articulation of trans identities reflects the deeply gendered
nature of language itself. Gender can be indexed in more or less direct ways,
to use Ochs’ (1992) language. Ochs emphasises that there are only a few
forms in English that index gender directly – i.e. as referring exclusively tomembers of one gender – all of which become salient for those undergoinga shift in gender role or presentation. Third person singular pronouns she
and he, for instance, are normatively taken to be used exclusively in reference to women and men, respectively.2 Overtly gendered nouns, such as
woman, female, girl and lady or man, male, guy and dude, function in largepart to index the gender of the referent, along with other social characteristics. Though relatively small in number, these words are high in frequency;
it is unusual for a person not to be gendered if they are to play any kind ofsignificant role in a speaker’s discourse. Where marking gender is the norm,
words that can be used to refer to a person of any gender, such as person,
human or individual, arguably carry their own gendered implications
specifically because they refuse to specify their referent’s gender. Less frequently, one also finds direct gendering in the form of titles like ma’am, sir,Ms, Mr or the relatively new gender neutral option, Mx, which is designed
as a gender-non-specific blend of Mr and Ms (Peters 2017). However, most
linguistic forms that carry gendered meanings do so indirectly, such as the
choice to describe a person as beautiful or handsome, the use of genderedintensifiers like fabulous or fuckin’ awesome, a speaker’s implementationof grammatically standard or non-standard forms, or the production ofcertain kinds of phonetic features.
Often, when gender is indexed directly, it is not asserted but rather presupposed (Eckert and McConnell-Ginet 2013). In the case of an assertion,a speaker might claim, ‘She is a woman’; in that case, a response like ‘No,
she’s not’ will probably be interpreted as negating this assertion about thereferent’s gender (Eckert and McConnell-Ginet 2013:169–70). By contrast,
an utterance like ‘That woman is a professor’ presupposes the referent isfemale, and a response of ‘No, she’s not’ will be taken to be a rejection of
the idea that the referent is a professor, not a negation of her status as awoman. Correcting presupposed information therefore requires additional
interactive work. If utterances that presuppose someone’s gender are both
frequent and potentially difficult to correct, then much of the negotiationof gender attribution must be done implicitly, presenting particular challenges to those who are often misgendered (i.e. referred to as a gender they
do not identify with).

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One thing transgender people share with scholars of language, then, isthe recognition that language is one of the primary fronts on which genderis negotiated (see also Bershtling 2014; Edelman 2014; Gratton 2016;
Hazenberg 2016; Kulick 1999; Valentine 2003; Zimman 2009, 2014, forthcoming). As Ochs (1992) emphasises, a central feature of indexicality isthat it constitutes, rather than reflects, social meaning. That is, people donot select linguistic forms that index femininity because they are women;rather, they are women because they repeatedly engage in practices thatindex femininity. Furthermore, because we know that identity is a dialogic
construction (Bucholtz and Hall 2004, 2005), being constituted as a woman
linguistically also depends on how other people use language, such as their
attribution of a gendered third person pronoun (see also Borba 2015 ontrans people’s interactions with institutional gatekeepers). The affirmationof trans identities is thus accomplished – or withheld – through everyday
discourse (Speer 2005). In this sense, being trans is not only about expressing one’s gender sartorially or through other forms of material and visualself-presentation, but also about linguistic performativity. Although mosttransgender people would resist the notion that one is only a woman or
man if one is recognised as such by others, it is clear that the lives transpeople are able to lead, their safety and their overall wellbeing (Pflum et al.
2015) are all heavily influenced by the recognition, or misrecognition, theyexperience through others’ language.
There a few over-arching principles that drive transgender language
reform, which have been discussed in greater detail in other contexts(Zimman, forthcoming). One of the most basic principles motivating
the strategies I describe below is the strict separation trans people draw
between gender identity and the sexed body. In a cissexist cultural context,
bodily characteristics like physical size, hair patterns, facial features andbody shape are prioritised in the gender attribution process. Yet asserting a self-identified gender that does not correspond to one’s assigned sex
requires an overt rejection of this logic. Rather than the body determining
gender identity, trans communities generally see an individual’s internalsense of self as a truth that transcends the material self (see also Edelman
and Zimman 2014; Zimman 2014; Zimman and Hall 2009). Rather thanequating gender with externally defined characteristics – biological or otherwise – self-identification is promoted as the ideal way to determine anindividual’s gender identity (see Stanley 2014 on gender self-determination).
In the next section, I identify four specific challenges for trans-inclusive
and trans-affirming language, and the ever-evolving tactics for negotiating
them, based on observations made over a decade of research and nearly
two decades of activism and engagement in transgender communities inTransgender language reform91

the United States, primarily in metropolitan areas on the West coast. As
Zimman (forthcoming) demonstrates, these principles can be subject tocritical examination in ways that illuminate the development of contemporary discourses about trans identities. However, the purpose of this article
is to focus on describing the types of linguistic reform which many transpeople are advocating and how those practices might be realised in everyday language use.

Challenges and strategies
This section is organised around four major challenges for trans-affirming
language. Each of these will correspond to a broader principle of language
and gender as it is understood in English-dominant transgender communities. Though my fieldwork is based in Western US cities, many of theseprinciples are primarily negotiated in virtual spaces where trans activists
exchange ideas, strategies and support. The first challenge I discuss concerns the selection of gendered labels, which offers prime territory for theassertion of gender self-determination. The second concerns the assignment of third person pronouns, which reflects a desire for more overt
intersubjective engagement over gendered language norms. A third challenge is how to use gendered language in cases where gender is not particularly relevant, which call for gender neutrality and inclusion. This third
point also addresses the use of binary language that erases the experienceof trans people whose identities fall outside the female/male divide. A final
point of concern is discourses in which gender is highly relevant, as in discussions of reproduction, healthcare or gender identity itself; here we seea principle of greater specificity and willingness to talk openly about the
aspects of gender and sex that are often euphemised.
Challenge 1: gender labels

The simplest level of trans-inclusive language reform deals with the use ofovertly gendered language in the form of gender identity labels (woman,man, trans, non-binary, etc.), kinship terminology (mother/father/parent,
sister/brother/sibling, etc.), less frequent direct indexes of gender such asprofessional roles (waiter/waitress/server, masseuse/masseur/massage
therapist, etc.) and pronouns (to be discussed below).
Gender self-determination is realised on a linguistic level most directly
through the practice of self-identification with or against direct indexesof gender like these. This emphasis on the individual’s internally felt senseof self, rather than adherence to external criteria, undermines any suggestion that trans identification is rooted in gender stereotypes regarding

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what it means to be a woman or man (e.g. Hausman 1995; Lorber 1994;
Shapiro 1992). Instead, self-determination rejects both clinical and social
expectations that trans women be normatively feminine and trans men
normatively masculine. The notion that the only requirement for membership in a gender category is one’s self-identification with that category
deeply destabilises the gender essentialism that has often been attributed
to trans people (even as it presents other issues, as Zimman, forthcoming,
discusses).
The core linguistic question, when it comes to gendered lexical items
like these, is how assignment to these categories is determined. As part ofthe standard language ideology (Lippi-Green 1997) that frames virtually
all discourses about language in the United States, certain definitions ofwords related to gender are seen as more correct, true, official, natural orscientific than others. Genital and reproductive anatomy is usually naturalised as the ultimate authority in sex/gender assignments, but of course
this is not the only way to understand gender. One potential alternative tothis cissexist state of affairs would be to develop an alternative set of criteria – for instance, prioritising a person’s style of dressing and presentation
as defining characteristics of their gender. To an extent, this does describe
norms of interaction in many trans communities, wherein someone
wearing a dress is likely to be referred to with feminine language regardlessof their physical characteristics. However, members of the trans communities where I have worked in recent years almost universally cite gender as
determined solely by self-identification. A person who describes herself asa woman is a woman, whether or not she has any of the physical or social
characteristics normatively associated with women. While the dominantsystem for gender attribution enables – even requires – that people makeassumptions about one another’s gender identities in the process of assigning gendered language, trans people treat each individual as the ultimate
source of authority on their own gender and thus the determiner of what
language others should use. On one hand, this model of identity is highly
individualistic, but it also recognises that agency over the linguistic construction of identity is distributed across speakers rather than strictly thepurview of each individual’s self-determination. From this perspective,
when I speak about you I am not just representing my own point of view;I also bear some form of responsibility towards you when it comes to theway I represent you linguistically.
There are two primary tactics to address the question of genderedlabel attributions, which I will mention here only in brief because they
are expounded on at greater length in the sections that follow. The first
involves openly talking to people about how they identify and what kind

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of language they want others to use when talking about them. The second
is the avoidance of gendered terminology (e.g. selecting person rather than
woman or man) when a person’s self-identified gender is not known andcannot be practically determined by asking them directly. Both of theseapproaches are common within trans communities and both demonstrate
deference to the autonomy and authority of individuals to self-identify
their genders. Crucially, these practices are not meant to be applied only topeople who are known to be trans, but to everyone, regardless of embodiment or gender presentation. One of the most problematic aspects of cissexism is the belief that trans people can always be identified based on theirappearance, embodiment or voice. To avoid the assumption that anyone
who doesn’t ‘look trans’ must be cis, the practice of asking people how theywant to be referred to must be practised consistently. The next section on
pronouns addresses this idea in greater depth.
Challenge 2: pronouns

Perhaps because of their frequency and automaticity in discourse, thethird person singular pronouns (she, he, singular they, and alternative third
person singular pronouns like ze or ey) may qualify as the single greatest
source of concern among English-speaking cisgender people who want toadopt trans-inclusive language. The most common solution trans people
advocate for this challenge is asking people which pronouns they would
like others to use – yet this solution brings its own anxieties for those who
were acculturated to the belief that it is deeply offensive to ask someone
whether they want to be referred to as she or he. Beyond the potential for
awkwardness, the prospect of asking someone which pronouns they use
may feel intrusive or like it involves singling out and calling attention to
those with ambiguous gender or sex. These concerns, however, are basedon a particular model of gender attribution that must be challenged fortrans-affirming language to take hold.
My students are now too young to recognise this example, but readers
may recall Pat, a gender-ambiguous person who was a recurring characteron Saturday Night Live in the 1990s. Pat’s gender presentation created deep
unease in the other characters they3 interacted with, who would always try
desperately to determine how Pat should be gendered without revealing thisconfusion. The underlying cultural knowledge that makes these sketches
funny says that the gender normative characters must never directly reveal
to Pat that they are uncertain about how to refer to them because it would
cause such deep offence (and because Pat is apparently assumed to have noawareness of their own gender ambiguity). Furthermore, it is notable that

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these interlocutors are usually focused on determining’s Pat’s sex rather
than Pat’s gender identity. No one in the world of these sketches would
think to directly ask Pat which pronouns should be used in reference tothem, since knowing Pat’s biological characteristics is seen as enough todetermine whether Pat should be called she or he.
The idea that it is offensive to ask people how they should be genderedis grounded in a model of gender that says a person’s status as a woman or
man must always be easily identifiable. To suggest that a person’s gender is
not obvious is to suggest that they have failed to enact that gender correctly.
By contrast, all trans people have, by definition, experienced a disconnect
between how they see themselves and how they are seen by others. Because
trans people tend to see gender as a matter of inner self-identification that
may or may not be evident to others, it is essentially unremarkable for atrans individual to encounter someone whose gender identification is notevident from their body or style of presentation.
Aside from the concern of causing offence, to which I will return
momentarily, two other primary worries fuel cis people’s reluctance to asktrans people about their pronouns. The first concern is that asking people
for their pronouns is on a par with asking about private aspects of theiridentities; this comes up especially often in relatively public contexts likethe classroom, where asking about a student’s gender identity would beinvasive and inappropriate. Yet asking for someone’s pronouns is fundamentally different from asking about their identity, primarily because pronouns are already used publicly and on-record. Unless a speaker goes tolengths to avoid using a pronoun in reference to someone, they will eventually be faced with a choice about which pronouns to use. The question thenbecomes whether the speaker selects pronouns based on their own perceptions of the referent’s gender or whether the speaker allows the referent
to indicate which pronouns they want the speaker to use. Furthermore,knowing a person’s pronouns does not, in fact, tell you how they identify,
since pronouns do not always map one-to-one with identity and because aperson’s preferred pronouns can change based on the context. For example,
in the context of a college classroom where students are asked to introduce
themselves and provide their names and gender pronouns, a student who
recently started coming out as a trans woman and uses she/her with friends
may take any number of approaches. If she wants to be referred to as she
and her in the class, she can assert that and feel more confident that she
won’t be misgendered by classmates or professors. On the other hand, if
she has just begun coming out or isn’t presenting her gender in a feminine
way, it’s possible she would feel more comfortable allowing classmates andprofessors to perceive her as male for the time being, in which case sheTransgender language reform95

could give the he and him pronouns without having to describe herself as
male.4 If she’s questioning her pronouns or isn’t sure she wants to fully
assert her desire for she/her pronouns in that space, she might want tostake out gender-neutral ground by selecting pronouns like they and them.
Alternatively, if she feels uncomfortable with all of these options, she could
opt to say she doesn’t care what pronouns people use and let them maketheir own choices. Whatever decision she makes, by being asked she has
been given a greater degree of agency over how she will be understood inthat space.
A second area of worry is whether asking trans people about their pronouns singles them out or calls attention to their gender ambiguity or thevisibility of their trans status. And this certainly can happen if pronounchecks are not practised consistently. In the classroom example just discussed, a professor who only asks certain students to give their pronouns
because they believe those students might be trans has failed to understandthat anyone could be trans or have pronouns that are not easily deduced
from the outside. This is why trans communities that advocate pronounchecks emphasise the importance of normalising pronoun checks foreveryone. Universal pronoun checks make it clear that trans people are notbeing asked simply because they are (perceived as) trans, and they recognisethat some people’s gender identities are not visible while giving them space
to express those identities. In addition to asking, another way to routinise
pronoun checks is to offer one’s own pronouns when introducing oneself.
One might successfully integrate a pronoun check into an introduction bysaying something like, ‘It’s nice to meet you Alex. What pronouns do youuse (or: what pronouns should I use for you)?’ but one could just as easily
say, ‘I’m Lal and I use he/him/his pronouns’, either followed with a question
like ‘What about you?’ or left open-ended for an interlocutor to choose
whether to offer their own pronouns. Treating pronouns more like names– terms of reference that must be asked for rather than assumed – allows
us to tap into pre-existing sociocultural linguistic norms in which we regularly tell people how they should refer to us.
How one handles pronoun checks, of course, depends on the audience. Asking someone who is completely unfamiliar with the practice,‘What pronouns do you use?’ is certain to be confusing. And, of course,
there is always the possibility of causing offence when asking someone
who operates under the assumption that it is rude to express uncertainty
about someone’s gender. This means that pronoun checks often require a
bit of metalinguistic negotiation regarding why the speaker has asked foror offered their own gendered pronouns. Trans people tend to be prolificmetalinguistic commentators (Edelman 2014; Hazenberg 2016; Zimman

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2016), and trans-affirming language reform asks cisgender people tobecome more conscious of the ways they use language and why, and to
be able to discuss such matters with others. This aspect of trans language
reform requires that people fundamentally change how we think about pronouns. Pronoun attribution is usually rapid and automatic, occurring withlittle or no conscious intervention on the part of the speaker. Trans people’s
own linguistic practices, however, increasingly involve bringing pronoun
attributions above the level of awareness (Silverstein 1981), putting themin a realm more commonly associated with names than pronouns.
Challenge 3: when gender isn’t relevant

The use of language to gender people is so pervasive that it is often doneeven when a person’s gender is arguably irrelevant to the discourse. For
instance, speakers often refer to brief encounters with strangers by saying
things like, ‘The guy who made my coffee today did a terrible job’, or ‘A
woman who was just hired at the corporate office is holding a seminaron statistics’. Of course, such details do the work of setting the scene, andat times may be relevant for the interpretation of what is said. However,gender attributions like these also reinforce the idea that a person’s gendercan be deduced visually and/or aurally. Furthermore, identifying an
unknown café barista as a man or a new employee teaching statistics as awoman may be relevant only because they either adhere to or deviate fromgender stereotypes – perhaps the idea that men are not well suited to foodpreparation or that a woman teaching statistics is remarkable in some way.
Gender neutrality is thus a useful tool for avoiding the assumption that aperson’s gender identity can be deduced and interpreted based on stereotypes and offers an alternative way of talking about people when it is not arealistic possibility to ask them how they want to be described.
The primary tactic for gender-neutral language is to seek out epicene versions of words that are usually gendered. Some examples of this approach
have already been given: parent rather than mother or father; person rather
than woman or man; child rather than girl or boy; and of course they rather
than she or he. At times, the gender neutral option may feel clunky or
unnatural, but of course the same argument can be (and has been) madefor the choice some feminists make to place female referents first (‘womenand men’ rather than ‘men and women’); it was also offered to support
the contention that he or she could never take the place of generic he. Of
course, the perception of speech as sounding natural, articulate or aesthetically pleasing derives from a long history of socially informed norms of use.
In other words, referring to a group of people’s spouses rather than their

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97

husbands and wives may sound less elegant precisely because it challenges
the history of language use that produces notions like linguistic elegance.
Gender neutrality is especially important as a resource for affirming
non-binary gender identities, since non-consensual gender attributions
usually rely on the gender binary. For instance, groups of people are often
addressed as ladies and gentlemen when one might use the phrase honoured
guests (or simply everyone), while children may be called boys and girls
when they might just as well be called children. These phrasings presume
that everyone referred to is either female or male, but never both or neither.
Closely related to the concept of gender neutrality is gender inclusivity.
While gender neutrality avoids marking gender at all, gender-inclusive language recognises that there are more than two genders. Most conventional
attempts at gender inclusivity reinforce the binary as well, as references to‘both’ genders are common. For example, an utterance like ‘Both womenand men should have access to college-sponsored athletic teams’ could be
rephrased more inclusively as, ‘All students should have access to collegesponsored athletic teams.’ Similarly, ‘Whether you have a girl or a boy, besure to show your child lots of love’ could become ‘Regardless of gender,
be sure to show your child lots of love.’ This strategy also problematises
second-wave language like the other sex – initially developed as an alternative to the opposite sex – and offers in its place phrasing such as another sex.
Of course, gender-neutral and gender-inclusive language of this sort
only work when the intended meaning is in fact gender-neutral. For
instance, someone who believes only cisgender women and men shouldbe allowed to compete in collegiate sports may feel that ‘all students’ does
not reflect their point of view. This brings us to the final challenge, which is
how to negotiate talking about gender when one’s intended meaning is notgender-neutral or gender-inclusive.
Challenge 4: when gender is relevant

The final challenge discussed in this article is how to talk about genderwhen it is decidedly relevant to the discourse. The problem that needs tobe addressed here, too, is a product of cissexism, and specifically of theassumption that someone’s physiology, gender socialisation experiences,
perceived gender and self-identified gender will always align in the expected
ways. Words like woman and man or female and male are often used torefer to different aspects of sex and gender, which for trans people may
or may not align. Some examples will be useful to illustrate this problem
and how it might be addressed. Each of the following sentences, which are98	Lal Zimmanslightly modified versions of real utterances observed by the author, uses
the word women to refer to different aspects of gender and sex:
12
3

 omen grow up being taught to accommodate others’ needs.
WWomen face negative assumptions about their professional
capabilities.
All women need access to cervical cancer screenings.

In example 1, the word women is used in reference to people who wereraised in a female gender role. In addition to being an essentialising statement that erases the intersections of gender with race, class, sexuality,
age, cultural context and so on, this example also equates the categoryof woman with the set of people who were assigned to a female genderrole at birth. Such an equation implies that trans women are not truly
women because they were not raised as girls and that trans men and others
assigned female at birth are women because they were socialised as such.
Example 2, by contrast, uses the word women to refer primarily to people
who are perceived as women. The cultural logic of misogyny does not careor bother to find out whether the target identifies as a woman, so a transman or non-binary person who is perceived as female by others may besubjected to the same treatment as cisgender and transgender women who
are perceived as female. To equate this category with ‘women’ is, at best, toerase the fact that some self-identified women do not experience this formof misogyny because they are not perceived as women, and that some men
and non-binary individuals do experience it because they are perceived
as such. The third example also uses the word women, but in this case isdiscussing people with a particular body part. These types of examples canbe the most difficult for people to deal with because of the tight ideologicallink between physiology and gender, such that a woman and a person witha cervix are seen as co-extensive categories, save the case of women who
once had a cervix but no longer do. To refer to cervical cancer screening as
something that all women need is to define womanhood by the presence orabsence of certain reproductive organs.5 Here again, trans men who havecervixes are cast as female, while trans women’s lack of a cervix is used todeny them access to their self-identified gender. Social euphemisms are
particularly common in talk about the body, especially where women areconcerned (e.g. women’s health in reference to sexual/reproductive healthor feminine hygiene in reference to menstruation products). As example 9will highlight below, trans people tend to take a much more direct approachto talking about somewhat taboo parts of the body.

Transgender language reform

99

There are two primary strategies for addressing the conflation of different aspects of gender and sex, one of them quite simple and the other a bit
more complex. The simpler strategy is to hedge all generalisations about
gender. This would allow us to turn examples 1–3 above into utterancessuch as in examples 4–6:
4
5
6

Women often grow up being taught to accommodate others’ needs.
Most women face negative assumptions about their professional
capabilities.
Women typically need access to cervical cancer screenings.

In addition to being more trans-inclusive, these changes also recognise
the variability in cisgender people’s bodies and experiences. After all, not
all cisgender women are raised to be accommodating, not all cisgenderwomen are assumed to be professionally incompetent, and not all cis­
gender women have cervixes. Hedging generalisations about gender andsex is one of the easiest ways for a speaker to make their language use moretrans-affirming.
The other strategy for making utterances like examples 1–3 trans-inclusive involves being more specific about which aspect(s) of gender or sex are
relevant. This approach requires some deeper thought than simply hedging
a generalisation would, but it is in wide usage in many trans communities
and offers its own set of benefits. Because the normative gender systemdoes not provide the vocabulary to make these distinctions, trans people
have developed an expanded lexicon for gender that in many ways aligns
with the discourses of academic researchers. The most basic distinction
is one already introduced above, between the characteristics of the bodyand the categories a person actively claims for themselves. However, there
is a further distinction made by many trans people between sex, gender
identity, assigned sex/gender and perceived gender. While sex refers to aperson’s embodiment, which is not a fixed, unidimensional state but rather
a set of multidimensional characteristics that can change over time and be
understood in a variety of ways, a person’s assigned sex/gender is the category they were placed in at birth, which generally does not change. These
categories can be further distinguished from how a person is perceived,or read, by others. This vocabulary would transform examples 1–3 to theutterances in examples 7–9:
7

 eople assigned female at birth (often) grow up being taught toPaccommodate others’ needs.

100	Lal Zimman

8
9(Most) people who are perceived as women face negative assumptions about their professional capabilities.
Everyone with a cervix (typically) needs access to cervical cancer
screenings.

To the uninitiated, these phrases can seem wordy, complex or evenamusing (particularly in the case of example 9). Yet each of these statements manages to express normative expectations about gender without
delegitimising or erasing trans individuals. They also have the added bonusof being more technically accurate than the sweeping generalisations delivered in examples 1–3. They allow for specific recognition that, for instance,cisgender women who do not have cervixes do not need access to cervical cancer screenings. This approach requires a rehauling not only of thelexicon, but of the way people think and talk about gender. It requires morereflection about which aspects of gender really are relevant when we talkabout the experiences of women and men. It requires that we become more
comfortable talking about body parts rather than using identity-based
euphemisms. It requires that we learn to identify when trans people areincluded in our ideas and when they are not. It requires us to say what wemean, and mean what we say.

Conclusion
The linguistic practices described in this article are at times complex, often
challenging and always open to change as trans activists refine their perspectives on cissexism and language. However difficult some of these strategies may seem, they are all possible: a fact made plain by trans people’s
own success at reformulating the way they talk about gender. As Ehrlichand King (1992) emphasise, social justice-focused language reforms
will always be facilitated – or inhibited – by the political commitmentsof speakers. Although transphobia and cissexism may not be eliminatedthrough changes to language alone, identifying cissexist language patterns
is a critical step towards dismantling the oppression trans people experience. Furthermore, careful analysis of cissexist language reveals some ofthe sociocultural barriers trans people face when it comes to gender recognition and validation. And for those who are motivated to reshape their
linguistic usage to enhance trans people’s sense of dignity and affirmation,trans-inclusive language reform may require practice, but it requires no
special cognitive or linguistic aptitudes. To the extent that cis people havetrouble with trans-inclusive language, this trouble should be understood
not as a natural limitation, but as a product of a culture in which the ability

Transgender language reform

101

to talk about trans people respectfully is not seen as an important linguistic
skill.
The ideas presented in this article are not only of relevance to sociocultural linguists and others interested in the relationship between language
and oppression. Trans-affirming language is realised first and foremostin the everyday activism of trans communities, and as such can be easilytransported to contexts beyond an academic journal article. The principles
presented here have been culled in part from material I have developed fortrans-inclusive language trainings at the institutions where I have taught
and occasionally for organisations and companies in the private sector.
They have also been put in focus by a variety of social media producedby trans people, such as podcasts, blogs and other kinds of digital spaces
where trans people seek out and offer support, camaraderie or politicalaction. Thanks to these efforts, discussions of language and trans inclusion
are increasingly found in more mainstream news outlets, radio programs
and fictional genres. For instance, the popular Showtime series, Billions(Koppelman, Levien and Sorkin 2017), is a drama focused on legal andmoral battles between a federal prosecutor and a hedge-fund director; it
has also been lauded as the first television show to feature a non-binary
character (Hibbard 2017), played by non-binary actor Asia Kate Dillon(both of whom use they/them/theirs pronouns). Taylor, the character, demonstrates how non-binary pronouns can be shared during introductions
and how cissexist assumptions about pronouns can be corrected. Notably,
Dillon reports that they were regularly consulted, as a non-binary person,
about whether they felt Taylor was being represented with accuracy andsensitivity (ibid.). In this way, the linguistic transformations promoted bytrans people come to public attention, gradually, each time trans people are
given space to speak about their own experiences and an audience to takeheed of those insights.
Transgender experience is fundamentally grounded in language, and noaccount of contemporary trans politics would be complete without attention to the ways gender is constructed through language. As social scientists have long recognised (e.g. Garfinkel 1967), trans people’s lives often
reveal the contingent, performative, discursive basis of gender in ways thatcan be invisible as practised by normatively gendered subjects. But thisobservation is not simply a theoretical insight; the instability of trans people’s gender identities has a political context, which is the regular and overt
delegitimation and stigmatisation of trans identities. Though the threat ofphysical violence looms large, it is language that serves as the most pervasive ground on which trans identities are delegitimised and transphobic

102	Lal Zimman

violence is perpetuated. By the same token, it is also the ground on whichtrans identities can be affirmed, reclaimed and celebrated.

About the author
Lal Zimman is assistant professor in the Department of Linguistics at the University ofCalifornia, Santa Barbara, USA.

Notes
1

2
3
4
5

Providing a comprehensive definition of transgender – or any gender category –is always a challenge in that it inevitably fails to capture the full range of transexperience. Many trans people define the term with respect to self-identification,i.e. a transperson is a person who self-identifies as trans. However, this is neither
particularly useful for unfamiliar readers nor in alignment with how the term is
actually used in many trans communities in the United States. I use the words
transgender and trans interchangeably to refer to individuals who do not identify
with the sex assigned to them at birth. This includes individuals who identify as
non-binary (neither exclusively female nor exclusively male), those who identify
as trans women or trans men, and those who identify simply as women or men (orwomen/men of trans experience), but who were not assigned to that category atbirth.
Of course, this pattern is not without exception, as when gay men call each other‘she’ as a sign of identity and solidarity or when sports coaches denigrate their players by referring to them as ‘girls’ and ‘she’.
I follow the practice of using singular they in reference to someone whose gender
identity or pronouns are unknown.
This is part of why trans people often avoid referring to ‘(fe)male pronouns’ or‘feminine/masculine pronouns’ and instead often refer to them as ‘he/him/his pronouns’, ‘she/her/hers pronouns’, ‘they/them/theirs pronouns’, etc.
Of course, the equation of womanhood with reproductive capacity is a much older
discourse that has long affected cisgender women, particularly in intersection withage and disability.

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