What are your pronouns?

You cannot be known without explaining your pronouns

Listening to this one will probably be more fun than reading it, but it may be more challenging to understand the obscure pronouns:

Not everyone is born interesting, and very few people do the work that it takes to become interesting. Fringe, extreme aesthetic trends – such as sagging pants, artificial body modifications (e.g. ear gauges), manbuns (or ladybuns) with shaved sides, and multiple tattoos that cover more than twenty percent of one’s body – provide a sort of band-aid of initial intrigue for these people, but many of them want a more permanent, disruptive way to compensate for their personality shortcomings. They long for a certain something that not only makes them seem superior but also sets a trap for everyone they interact with to seem uncool or even cancelable. For a chunk of Brooklyn, a whole lot of the Pacific Northwest, and a few people in Austin this certain something is performative pronouns. 

Performative, gender-neutral pronouns are used in place of the gender-based pronouns that just about everyone on the planet has used without complaint since the dawn of language. Gender-neutral pronouns have surfaced here and there in the past few hundred years, and they (pun!) were first used by a French poet (which tracks) in the 14th century, which also happened to be when the bubonic plague killed about a third of Europe. All kinds of creative gender-neutral pronouns were introduced in the 1850s when the US was on the brink of political and moral collapse, but xe, ze, phe and the like were swatted away after the country got its shit together. There was another alternative pronoun uprising in the late 1970s when the country was again in utter economic, geopolitical and cultural chaos, but it wasn’t until a few years ago when the United States and the rest of the world really started to become a unabated dumpster fire that gender-neutral pronouns started to stick. Not that I’m pointing out a correlation or anything. 

Just like when one person on a 400-person flight has a nut allergy and cannot tolerate the presence of nuts in the hands of anyone else on board, everyone (in Brooklyn, the Pacific Northwest and that one neighborhood in Austin) must now state their pronouns because a tiny fraction of the world has adopted gender neutral pronouns. This may seem completely ridiculous, but it’s actually a good thing. Instead of suffering from the uncertainty caused by serious, often intractable issues like the economy, wars, and climate change, people can instead burden themselves with doubt about the preferred pronouns of people they’ve known their entire lives. 

There is of course a tiny fraction of the population who use gender-neutral pronouns because they are transitioning from one gender to another or don’t feel comfortable binarily committing to a gender, but these are not the people who have done the hard, loud work of elevating the importance of alternative pronouns into a crucial national topic. The population who have truly furthered the cause of alternative pronouns are the people – who engage to be offended and listen to correct – using them to seem interesting and morally superior to those who are content with default pronouns. I decided to talk with some of these people at Principles GI Coffee House in the genderless heart of Gowanus, Brooklyn. 

“My pronouns are they / them,” declares Rory Millner, an exceptionally tall, very hairy resident of Bed-Stuy with a baritone voice and hands that could easily palm a basketball. “Inflation has made it really expensive to keep pace with Gen Z fashion trends, I’m kind of bored talking about my tattoos, and going vegan just seems really hard,” he says, pausing to sip his oat milk matcha, “but alternative pronouns don’t cost anything, and they give me something to throw at new people I meet.” Rory is wearing an AOC 2024 t-shirt, and he they have a manbun (theybun?) with shaved sides, a disorganized beard with what appears to be a few bits of tofu pastry in its soul patch, and an imposing septum ring. “It also feels good to know that when I’m not around and someone refers to me as, like, ‘he’ or whatever, I know someone will step up and clarify my pronouns for me.” 

I cock my head, confused. 

“I mean, it makes me seem unique even when I’m not there to, like, be unique in person, you know?” he they explain. “And it creates a teachable moment.”

“May I ask your gender identity?” I ask, cautiously. They smile with satisfaction, as if I had asked them if they have a TV or the meaning of the serpent in their neck tattoo.  

“I’m non-binary,” they announce, nodding. 

“What does that mean exactly?” I ask. HeThey look stumped for a moment, then regains their confidence. 

“Well, it means that I have a penis, and I’m cis-male, I’m into girls, but what do I know about gender really? How am I supposed to know if I’m actually male? It’s just so arbitrary, biological gender assignment.”

“What’s been the hardest part about being non-binary?” I ask. 

“Definitely peeing outside of east Brooklyn,” they say, wearily. “I end up having to pee on the street because there aren’t any genderless bathrooms, and obviously I don’t want to offend anyone by peeing in a gendered bathroom.”

“No, of course not,” I respond. “On that note, I’m going to use the unisex if you’ll excuse me,” I say, rising from the bench we’re sitting on. I walk through the coffee shop towards the bathroom, which has a line. I stand behind a diminutive person who my primitive, un-evolved brain suggests is female. She (?) glances at me. 

“I overheard part of your conversation,” she says, side-eying me. “Are you a reporter or something?” 

“Or something,” I say.    

“I’m Vanessa, but I go by Van, and my pronouns are xe / xem / xyr,” shexe tells me. “I think literally everyone should wear big buttons that state their pronouns,” asserts Van in a very high, shrill voice. “Otherwise how will we know how to communicate with one another? We’re going to come to a point where no one will interact because we just won’t know what gender someone is, and assumptions can be traumatizing for everyone involved in a misgendering incident.” Her pronoun button, which indeed reads xe / xem / xyr, is fastened to her upcycled jean jacket to the left of her extremely large breasts mammary glands. 

“So, just playing devil’s advocate, why is it such a bad thing to look at someone and let our brains associate their gender with how they naturally present, sort of like how we think of someone who’s 6’5 as tall and someone with dark hair as a brunette?” I ask. Her Xyr face darkens. 

“See, that is exactly the kind of thinking that we need to eradicate,” xe fumes, flipping back her long brown hair. “Assuming that someone is one thing or another just by how they look or talk is so fucking basic–”

“Well, yeah, it is basic, kind of like looking at a tree and going, oh cool, look at that tree,” I interject. Her Xyr eyes widen and her jaw drops.

“What gives you the right to assume that a tree is a tree unless it’s labeled, like, on a sign in front of it? How dare you just blithely call a tree a tree when it might want to identify as like, a bush or a shrub?” Her voice has risen to a level that draws attention from other guests in the coffee shop. 

“Preach,” says a nearby shirtless man wearing a large, silver chain with a pendant that reads ne-nem-nirs. 

“We live in a world where anything can be anyone and anyone can be anything, and we don’t know what someone or something is unless that person or thing very clearly defines who or what they are, otherwise we’re just walking through the world having our own thoughts and ideas, and that is dangerous,” she says as she pounds her tiny, feminine fist down on a very rickety table that was definitely sourced from a curb in Brooklyn Heights. 

“Excuse me, person,” says someone, who sure seems male to me, in very thick Russian accent. “It seems to me that you are causing distress to patrons, so I must now ask you to vacate premises.” 

“Thank you, Yuri,” says Van. “This guy is like a relic from 2019.” I look around the room as I stand up. Everyone has some bit of apparel that states their pronouns. One person glares at me, who’s wearing a faded red t-shirt featuring the likeness of Karl Marx and a purple bandana that reads they / them. They flip me the bird. I smile and wave. 

Just after I walk out into the chilly autumn air I hear Van yell behind me, “go back to Manhattan, and take your confining pronouns with you!” I look back at xe. 

“But I didn’t tell you my pronouns,” I say flatly. “You didn’t ask,” The scowl on xyr very pretty face softens into confusion, then embarrassment, and then returns to a stormy scowl. She Xe shouts into the Brooklyn air around her. 

“This guy hates AOC!” Heads snap in my direction all around me, and their murmurs turn into roars as they shuffle towards me in their pre-IPO Birkenstocks. I feel like I’m in a zombie movie. Fortunately a yellow cab is much closer than any of the performative pronoun people, and I flag it down and dive in just as the closest one slams their open palm on the half-open passenger window. 

“What are your pronouns?!?” they shout. The stench of kombucha on their breath is overwhelming. I raise the window.

“Manhattan!” I yell at the driver. “And let’s go Brooklyn Bridge to save the toll.” The driver, an swarthy male-presenting person who is probably in his late 60s, regards me in the rearview mirror. I look back at him. I smile politely and nod. 

“Sorry about all this,” he says in a very thick Russian accent.

“About what?” I ask. 

“You know, performative pronouns.” 

“Um, thanks, but why are you apologizing?” I ask, leaning towards the discolored and scratched plastic divider between us. 

“I am former KGB agent,” he says. “I lived in Soviet Union in 1980s.” I glance at the registration behind the drivers side headrest. The name next to his faded headshot reads, William P. Jones. “I worked on Mestoimeniye Proyekta – is project pronoun in English, part of American subversion initiative at KGB. Was supposed to divide country into far left and far right through pronouns. I defect to America because I am stuck in this project I not think is gonna work. Joke is on me now, eh?” He turns his head towards me and laughs. 

“Well, good job, I guess?” I say. “So, do you know what the next project is?” He frowns at me in the rearview mirror. 

“Is not obvious?” he says. “Make people question everything so that they believe nothing and are too afraid of being canceled to say anything, which will prevent anyone good from getting into politics and then POOF – no more American democracy.” 

“Seems like that project is right on track,” I say as the Brooklyn Bridge appears in the windshield.

“You didn’t tell me where you wanna go in Manhattan,” he says, expectantly. 

“Take me to Veselka,” I say. “I feel like a pierogi.”

Share this with someone who should probably order some pronoun buttons or Etsy, with a resident of Brooklyn, the PNW or that one neighborhood in Austin, or with a person who becomes apoplectic anytime AOC is mentioned.