carefulwhereabouts

[carefulwhereabouts]

'Legal' pronouns

Dear M,

You made an interesting point that I've since thought about a little more thoroughly. Of course as you mentioned, replacing 'gender' or 'sex' with pronouns on legal documents is an entirely different barrel of fish to adding them.

My main concern with the whole idea is the difficulty of changing legal information directly conflicts with the fluidity of gender identity and expressions of such (ie. pronouns). For instance, experimenting with new pronouns would likely either take on a formality that might discomfort those potentially curious, or more strictly reinforce a rigid and immutable gender binary. In my eyes at least, part of the beauty of pronouns is how 'unofficial' they are; you can decide to experiment with them, you can change them whenever you like with the only issue being the reception of those around you, and they are also a handy (if potentially risky in certain circumstances) way to weed out certain types of people in your life. Then again, in the same way people don't necessarily have to go by their legal first name, legal documents don't really affect daily interpersonal interactions enough for it to be a significant social problem. No one asks to see your drivers' licence to make sure they're using your legal first name.

I'm not sure how much benefit it would have beyond, I don't know, letting your medical consultants use your correct pronouns? Which wouldn't really be done too much anyway because they're talking directly to you. If they have to write a report of some kind (an official doctor's note excusing you from strenuous work because you got a boo-boo :( ) it might be useful, but they could just... ask? Or you could tell them? And If you didn't trust them enough to tell them, they would still have access to that information via legal documents. It could also put people using certain pronouns at greater risk for discrimination, or be used to invalidate self-expression or experimentation if used maliciously, or even simply accidentally misused... Your bigoted employer who may have otherwise assumed you were cisgender might stumble across this information and find an excuse to fire you, for example. It would be nice to not have to consider this and simply debate the merits and drawbacks in a vacuum, but alas.

Simply put, I suppose I see no substantial reason to include pronouns on a list of legal information that outweighs the negatives of such a system. I believe the entirely social form of pronouns is more befitting of their purpose and function.

I'd love to hear your thoughts on these points though, so don't hesitate to respond.

Much love, B

[carefulwhereabouts]

[carefulwhereabouts]