jold (print) issn 2397–2637

Journal of
jold (online) issn 2397–2645
Language and
Discrimination Article

Transgender 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 United

States has presented new linguistic challenges. This article investigates those
challenges and presents strategies developed by trans speakers and promoted
by trans activists concerned with language reform. The first of these is the selec-
tion 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 prac-
tices such as asking people directly what pronouns they would like others to
use when referring to them. The third challenge addressed here is avoiding gen-
dering people when the referent’s gender isn’t relevant or known, which can be
addressed 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 dis-
cussions of gender identity, socialisation or sexual physiology – without dele-
gitimising 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 lan-

Affiliation
University of California, USA.
email: [email protected]

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

©2017, equinox publishing
 Transgender language reform 85

guage regarding what aspect(s) of gender are relevant. Taken as a whole, trans
language 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 transgen-
der 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 the
actress Laverne Cox, athlete and media figure Caitlyn Jenner, and filmmak-
ers 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 – in
the sense that the word transgender came into widespread use as an iden-
tity label at that time (Valentine 2007) – the 2010s have been the decade of
transgender 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 the
United States is undergoing in terms of its understanding of and orienta-
tion toward transgender issues. One of the milestones in this process is the
growing 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, for
instance, 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 among
conservative commentators (including from inside academia, e.g. Craig
2016), who frame trans-inclusive language as a form of political correct-
ness that imposes the leftist ideology that trans people’s identities should
be affirmed and respected. In either case, language is at the centre of public
debates over the place of transgender people in the United States. Trans
people remain vulnerable to verbal harassment, physical and sexual vio-
lence, 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, has
recently 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 United
States (and elsewhere). Because one of the most important ways cissexism
is constructed is through language, the identification and dismantling of
cissexist language is a central part of trans activism and part of the work
that 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 experi-
ence 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 strate-
gies 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 promote
trans-inclusive language. These challenges include questions about how to
choose gendered labels and pronouns, when to select gender-neutral lan-
guage, and how to talk about gender when it is highly relevant, such as in
discussions 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 eth-
nographic 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 trans
people engaged but also the cultural logic that makes such practices pos-
sible. In the next section of this paper, some background about gender- and
sexuality-based linguistic reform is presented. The third section features
an overview of sociocultural principles that guide transgender language
 Transgender language reform 87

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 lan-
guage, 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 naturali-
sation 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 lin-
guists who had argued that the use of the pronoun he to refer to a generic
person or man to refer to humanity was an accident of history rather than
the 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 pejo-
ration of words used to refer to women (Schultz 1975). The power to deter-
mine linguistic meaning has long been another major thread of research on
language and gender (see Ehrlich and King 1992 for an overview), which
is 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 unapolo-
getically political field of language and gender. With the rise of queer
88 Lal Zimman

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 the
stigmatising 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 simplis-
tic notion that language reform will directly transform social attitudes
and undo structural oppression. It is clearly not enough to introduce new
words, 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 het-
eronormative news outlets’ reappropriation of tongzhi served to challenge
the positive resignification lesbians and gays had been engaged in and
instead 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 sup-
ports the change in question and its social implications, and that holds its
members accountable for whether they adopt the new form(s). The prac-
tices 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 ground
facilitates collaborative work addressing other forms of oppression.
Although there is a body of literature on lesbian and gay activists’ chal-
lenges to heteronormative language (e.g. Armstrong 1997; Kitzinger 2005;
Livia 2000; Murphy 1997; Pastre 1997; Queen 1997), the linguistic inter-
ventions pursued by transgender communities have received little atten-
tion from scholars of language, gender and sexuality. This fact is all the
more striking given that scholars of language, gender and sexuality have
long recognised the challenges trans people pose to normative uses of
gender in language (e.g. Bing and Bergvall 1996; Livia and Hall 1997b).
What follows is not an exhaustive list of trans language reform efforts, but
rather a discussion of some core principles underlying that work and their
current manifestations in US-based communities where I have worked,
taught and lived.
 Transgender language reform 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 to
members of one gender – all of which become salient for those undergoing
a shift in gender role or presentation. Third person singular pronouns she
and he, for instance, are normatively taken to be used exclusively in refer-
ence to women and men, respectively.2 Overtly gendered nouns, such as
woman, female, girl and lady or man, male, guy and dude, function in large
part to index the gender of the referent, along with other social characteris-
tics. 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 of
significant 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 fre-
quently, 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 gendered
intensifiers like fabulous or fuckin’ awesome, a speaker’s implementation
of grammatically standard or non-standard forms, or the production of
certain kinds of phonetic features.
Often, when gender is indexed directly, it is not asserted but rather pre-
supposed (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 the
referent’s gender (Eckert and McConnell-Ginet 2013:169–70). By contrast,
an utterance like ‘That woman is a professor’ presupposes the referent is
female, 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 a
woman. 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 negotiation
of gender attribution must be done implicitly, presenting particular chal-
lenges to those who are often misgendered (i.e. referred to as a gender they
do not identify with).
90 Lal Zimman

One thing transgender people share with scholars of language, then, is

the recognition that language is one of the primary fronts on which gender
is negotiated (see also Bershtling 2014; Edelman 2014; Gratton 2016;
Hazenberg 2016; Kulick 1999; Valentine 2003; Zimman 2009, 2014, forth-
coming). As Ochs (1992) emphasises, a central feature of indexicality is
that it constitutes, rather than reflects, social meaning. That is, people do
not select linguistic forms that index femininity because they are women;
rather, they are women because they repeatedly engage in practices that
index 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 on
trans people’s interactions with institutional gatekeepers). The affirmation
of trans identities is thus accomplished – or withheld – through everyday
discourse (Speer 2005). In this sense, being trans is not only about express-
ing one’s gender sartorially or through other forms of material and visual
self-presentation, but also about linguistic performativity. Although most
transgender 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 trans
people are able to lead, their safety and their overall wellbeing (Pflum et al.
2015) are all heavily influenced by the recognition, or misrecognition, they
experience 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 and
body shape are prioritised in the gender attribution process. Yet assert-
ing 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 internal
sense of self as a truth that transcends the material self (see also Edelman
and Zimman 2014; Zimman 2014; Zimman and Hall 2009). Rather than
equating gender with externally defined characteristics – biological or oth-
erwise – self-identification is promoted as the ideal way to determine an
individual’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 reform 91

the United States, primarily in metropolitan areas on the West coast. As

Zimman (forthcoming) demonstrates, these principles can be subject to
critical examination in ways that illuminate the development of contempo-
rary discourses about trans identities. However, the purpose of this article
is to focus on describing the types of linguistic reform which many trans
people are advocating and how those practices might be realised in every-
day 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 commu-
nities. Though my fieldwork is based in Western US cities, many of these
principles are primarily negotiated in virtual spaces where trans activists
exchange ideas, strategies and support. The first challenge I discuss con-
cerns the selection of gendered labels, which offers prime territory for the
assertion of gender self-determination. The second concerns the assign-
ment of third person pronouns, which reflects a desire for more overt
intersubjective engagement over gendered language norms. A third chal-
lenge is how to use gendered language in cases where gender is not par-
ticularly relevant, which call for gender neutrality and inclusion. This third
point also addresses the use of binary language that erases the experience
of 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 dis-
cussions of reproduction, healthcare or gender identity itself; here we see
a 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 of
overtly 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 as
professional 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 indexes
of gender like these. This emphasis on the individual’s internally felt sense
of self, rather than adherence to external criteria, undermines any sug-
gestion that trans identification is rooted in gender stereotypes regarding
92 Lal Zimman

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 mem-
bership 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 of
the standard language ideology (Lippi-Green 1997) that frames virtually
all discourses about language in the United States, certain definitions of
words related to gender are seen as more correct, true, official, natural or
scientific than others. Genital and reproductive anatomy is usually natu-
ralised as the ultimate authority in sex/gender assignments, but of course
this is not the only way to understand gender. One potential alternative to
this cissexist state of affairs would be to develop an alternative set of crite-
ria – 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 regardless
of their physical characteristics. However, members of the trans communi-
ties where I have worked in recent years almost universally cite gender as
determined solely by self-identification. A person who describes herself as
a woman is a woman, whether or not she has any of the physical or social
characteristics normatively associated with women. While the dominant
system for gender attribution enables – even requires – that people make
assumptions about one another’s gender identities in the process of assign-
ing 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 con-
struction of identity is distributed across speakers rather than strictly the
purview 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 the
way I represent you linguistically.
There are two primary tactics to address the question of gendered
label 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
 Transgender language reform 93

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 and
cannot be practically determined by asking them directly. Both of these
approaches 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 to
people who are known to be trans, but to everyone, regardless of embodi-
ment or gender presentation. One of the most problematic aspects of cis-
sexism is the belief that trans people can always be identified based on their
appearance, embodiment or voice. To avoid the assumption that anyone
who doesn’t ‘look trans’ must be cis, the practice of asking people how they
want 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, the
third 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 to
adopt 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 based
on a particular model of gender attribution that must be challenged for
trans-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 character
on 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 this
confusion. 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 no
awareness of their own gender ambiguity). Furthermore, it is notable that
94 Lal Zimman

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 to
them, since knowing Pat’s biological characteristics is seen as enough to
determine whether Pat should be called she or he.
The idea that it is offensive to ask people how they should be gendered
is 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 a
trans individual to encounter someone whose gender identification is not
evident 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 ask
trans people about their pronouns. The first concern is that asking people
for their pronouns is on a par with asking about private aspects of their
identities; this comes up especially often in relatively public contexts like
the classroom, where asking about a student’s gender identity would be
invasive and inappropriate. Yet asking for someone’s pronouns is funda-
mentally different from asking about their identity, primarily because pro-
nouns are already used publicly and on-record. Unless a speaker goes to
lengths to avoid using a pronoun in reference to someone, they will eventu-
ally be faced with a choice about which pronouns to use. The question then
becomes whether the speaker selects pronouns based on their own percep-
tions 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 a
person’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 and
professors to perceive her as male for the time being, in which case she
 Transgender language reform 95

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 to
stake 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 make
their own choices. Whatever decision she makes, by being asked she has
been given a greater degree of agency over how she will be understood in
that space.
A second area of worry is whether asking trans people about their pro-
nouns singles them out or calls attention to their gender ambiguity or the
visibility of their trans status. And this certainly can happen if pronoun
checks are not practised consistently. In the classroom example just dis-
cussed, a professor who only asks certain students to give their pronouns
because they believe those students might be trans has failed to understand
that anyone could be trans or have pronouns that are not easily deduced
from the outside. This is why trans communities that advocate pronoun
checks emphasise the importance of normalising pronoun checks for
everyone. Universal pronoun checks make it clear that trans people are not
being asked simply because they are (perceived as) trans, and they recognise
that 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 by
saying something like, ‘It’s nice to meet you Alex. What pronouns do you
use (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 regu-
larly tell people how they should refer to us.
How one handles pronoun checks, of course, depends on the audi-
ence. 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 for
or offered their own gendered pronouns. Trans people tend to be prolific
metalinguistic commentators (Edelman 2014; Hazenberg 2016; Zimman
96 Lal Zimman

2016), and trans-affirming language reform asks cisgender people to

become 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 pro-
nouns. Pronoun attribution is usually rapid and automatic, occurring with
little 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 them
in 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 done
even 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 seminar
on statistics’. Of course, such details do the work of setting the scene, and
at times may be relevant for the interpretation of what is said. However,
gender attributions like these also reinforce the idea that a person’s gender
can be deduced visually and/or aurally. Furthermore, identifying an
unknown café barista as a man or a new employee teaching statistics as a
woman may be relevant only because they either adhere to or deviate from
gender stereotypes – perhaps the idea that men are not well suited to food
preparation or that a woman teaching statistics is remarkable in some way.
Gender neutrality is thus a useful tool for avoiding the assumption that a
person’s gender identity can be deduced and interpreted based on stereo-
types and offers an alternative way of talking about people when it is not a
realistic possibility to ask them how they want to be described.
The primary tactic for gender-neutral language is to seek out epicene ver-
sions 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) made
for the choice some feminists make to place female referents first (‘women
and 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 aestheti-
cally 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
 Transgender language reform 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 lan-
guage 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 women
and men should have access to college-sponsored athletic teams’ could be
rephrased more inclusively as, ‘All students should have access to college-
sponsored athletic teams.’ Similarly, ‘Whether you have a girl or a boy, be
sure 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 alterna-
tive 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 should
be 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 not
gender-neutral or gender-inclusive.

Challenge 4: when gender is relevant

The final challenge discussed in this article is how to talk about gender
when it is decidedly relevant to the discourse. The problem that needs to
be addressed here, too, is a product of cissexism, and specifically of the
assumption 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 to
refer 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 Zimman

slightly modified versions of real utterances observed by the author, uses

the word women to refer to different aspects of gender and sex:

1  omen grow up being taught to accommodate others’ needs.

W
2 Women face negative assumptions about their professional
capabilities.
3 All women need access to cervical cancer screenings.

In example 1, the word women is used in reference to people who were

raised in a female gender role. In addition to being an essentialising state-
ment that erases the intersections of gender with race, class, sexuality,
age, cultural context and so on, this example also equates the category
of woman with the set of people who were assigned to a female gender
role 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 care
or bother to find out whether the target identifies as a woman, so a trans
man or non-binary person who is perceived as female by others may be
subjected to the same treatment as cisgender and transgender women who
are perceived as female. To equate this category with ‘women’ is, at best, to
erase the fact that some self-identified women do not experience this form
of 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 is
discussing people with a particular body part. These types of examples can
be the most difficult for people to deal with because of the tight ideological
link between physiology and gender, such that a woman and a person with
a 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 or
absence of certain reproductive organs.5 Here again, trans men who have
cervixes are cast as female, while trans women’s lack of a cervix is used to
deny them access to their self-identified gender. Social euphemisms are
particularly common in talk about the body, especially where women are
concerned (e.g. women’s health in reference to sexual/reproductive health
or feminine hygiene in reference to menstruation products). As example 9
will highlight below, trans people tend to take a much more direct approach
to talking about somewhat taboo parts of the body.
 Transgender language reform 99

There are two primary strategies for addressing the conflation of differ-
ent 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 utterances
such as in examples 4–6:

4 Women often grow up being taught to accommodate others’ needs.

5 Most women face negative assumptions about their professional
capabilities.
6 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 cisgender
women are assumed to be professionally incompetent, and not all cis­
gender women have cervixes. Hedging generalisations about gender and
sex is one of the easiest ways for a speaker to make their language use more
trans-affirming.
The other strategy for making utterances like examples 1–3 trans-inclu-
sive 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 system
does 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 body
and 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 a
person’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 cat-
egory 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 the
utterances in examples 7–9:

7  eople assigned female at birth (often) grow up being taught to

P
accommodate others’ needs.
100 Lal Zimman

8 (Most) people who are perceived as women face negative assump-

tions about their professional capabilities.
9 Everyone with a cervix (typically) needs access to cervical cancer
screenings.

To the uninitiated, these phrases can seem wordy, complex or even

amusing (particularly in the case of example 9). Yet each of these state-
ments manages to express normative expectations about gender without
delegitimising or erasing trans individuals. They also have the added bonus
of being more technically accurate than the sweeping generalisations deliv-
ered in examples 1–3. They allow for specific recognition that, for instance,
cisgender women who do not have cervixes do not need access to cervi-
cal cancer screenings. This approach requires a rehauling not only of the
lexicon, but of the way people think and talk about gender. It requires more
reflection about which aspects of gender really are relevant when we talk
about 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 are
included in our ideas and when they are not. It requires us to say what we
mean, 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 per-
spectives on cissexism and language. However difficult some of these strat-
egies 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 Ehrlich
and King (1992) emphasise, social justice-focused language reforms
will always be facilitated – or inhibited – by the political commitments
of speakers. Although transphobia and cissexism may not be eliminated
through changes to language alone, identifying cissexist language patterns
is a critical step towards dismantling the oppression trans people experi-
ence. Furthermore, careful analysis of cissexist language reveals some of
the sociocultural barriers trans people face when it comes to gender rec-
ognition 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 have
trouble 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 sociocul-
tural linguists and others interested in the relationship between language
and oppression. Trans-affirming language is realised first and foremost
in the everyday activism of trans communities, and as such can be easily
transported to contexts beyond an academic journal article. The principles
presented here have been culled in part from material I have developed for
trans-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 produced
by trans people, such as podcasts, blogs and other kinds of digital spaces
where trans people seek out and offer support, camaraderie or political
action. 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 and
moral 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, dem-
onstrates 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 and
sensitivity (ibid.). In this way, the linguistic transformations promoted by
trans people come to public attention, gradually, each time trans people are
given space to speak about their own experiences and an audience to take
heed of those insights.
Transgender experience is fundamentally grounded in language, and no
account of contemporary trans politics would be complete without atten-
tion to the ways gender is constructed through language. As social scien-
tists have long recognised (e.g. Garfinkel 1967), trans people’s lives often
reveal the contingent, performative, discursive basis of gender in ways that
can be invisible as practised by normatively gendered subjects. But this
observation is not simply a theoretical insight; the instability of trans peo-
ple’s gender identities has a political context, which is the regular and overt
delegitimation and stigmatisation of trans identities. Though the threat of
physical violence looms large, it is language that serves as the most perva-
sive 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 which

trans identities can be affirmed, reclaimed and celebrated.

About the author

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

Notes
1 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 trans
experience. 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 (or
women/men of trans experience), but who were not assigned to that category at
birth.
2 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 play-
ers by referring to them as ‘girls’ and ‘she’.
3 I follow the practice of using singular they in reference to someone whose gender
identity or pronouns are unknown.
4 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 pro-
nouns’, ‘she/her/hers pronouns’, ‘they/them/theirs pronouns’, etc.
5 Of course, the equation of womanhood with reproductive capacity is a much older
discourse that has long affected cisgender women, particularly in intersection with
age and disability.

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