Fluid World in Mispronounced Deflections
By: Jagriti Modi
Tags: Gender Pronouns, Gender Identity, Genderfluidity, Pride, Homophobia

“Hey! What’s its name?” she asked him, pointing at his dog.

“His name is Whiskey, and he is a he, not ‘it’!” He said, quite frustrated as to why people address pets as ‘it’, when animals too have a clear gender identity.

He went on with his day, feeding his pet Whiskey, attending online classes while scrolling his Instagram feed. Interestingly today, he saw on the explore page, the post of a transgender woman acknowledging pronouns for self as ‘they/them’. He immediately shrugged it off, half-angry, reporting their account as “inappropriate”. He wondered why people just don’t stick with ‘normal’ pronouns of he/him and she/her.

“What is all this propaganda of people using weird pronouns? So much for attention! If you call yourself a transwoman, then you should be referred to as ‘her’, if not then you aren’t really a woman!”

It is said, quite often, in popular circles, “Knowledge is Power!” It seems it perhaps doesn't matter as much when it comes to educating self and others about the grayscales in matters of gender and sexuality! The binary cis-world keeps questioning and invalidating the non-binary queers, though at times, when some make the ‘coming-out-of-closet’ more conducive, the queers cheer along, and the world seems so great again, however, in minority those allies might be, who understand, enquire, support, and embrace, in such positivity, and not just paradoxically shrugging in a half-yes support, while remaining pathetically uninformed and indifferent, even. The world immediately needs more such informed and educated allies, who understand genders and sexualities are in a scale, and identities regarding the same is only up for question for that particular being, whether they want a particular label, and/or, pronoun, or not, or if it is still undecided, and under exploration!

Nobody goes through self-exploration journeys like the queer community! While the binary cis world has a hard time in introspection when growing up, add to the roller-coaster the questions of gender and sexual identities, while the societies hurl abuses at you for being “different”. Even more so, when conversion therapies are looked as a cure, or worse, your folks are LGBTQIA+ Supporters in public, but only till this ‘unnatural disease’ is out of their own homes! Until then, they are happy supporters of the queer quirkiness!

Even today, ask yourself and ask the people around you, people who you consider highly educated, question them on their knowledge about the queer community! The sheer misconceptions and delusions birth more biases, with the world looking down upon the queer, reducing the whole conversation down to what lies between the legs!

“ What do you mean you don’t feel like a woman? If you have a vagina, then God intended you be a woman! What do you mean, you feel like a man? If you have been born as a woman, you’re a woman. What is all this drama?”

The apparent physical traits don’t often match how you feel inside! This is with a great deal of confusion, self-acceptance and self-love, and not the ones done with scented candles and sheet-masks. Cherry on top the homophobic society that thinks it is okay to suggest “remedies” without any knowledge and expertise!

In India, the non-binary gender queers have been reduced to the community of ‘begging eunuchs’ who only come to your home when there’s a marriage or birth, in order to shell out a few bucks, sometimes often referred to as ‘modern robbers’. If only the organisation posting the rainbow flags on Instagram during pride month would also actually hire them, the ‘robbery’ might even stop, but how could a job be given to someone who is even unsure of their gender, or worse, behaves like a woman despite having male parts! The marketing department, however, earned a lot of positive engagement on social media for posting a graphic of their products in a rainbow-like avatar. After all, they are helping start a conversation! Yay!

Perhaps, yes, it is a start when great adverts support the flag showing all spectrums of colour, representing genders and sexualities. It definitely gives more representation to the direly underrepresented, and sometimes, misrepresented queer community, but it doesn’t help if the change is not made from within, i.e., the organisation culture, hiring, diversity. Though not overnight, we can only be hopeful that “change is the only constant”.

This social media versus company culture debacle would hopefully take you into my next post, and until then, #stayquirky and #staykind