A reader writes: “I’m reasonably clued about trans etiquette, but I’ve never really known what to do with this one. What pronoun do you use for a person when talking about them in their pre-transition past? What feels right to me is to use whatever gender they were presenting as at the time, but I’m not certain that’s right.
“Obviously, it’s important not to out someone or create social awkwardness, so I suspect that the answer is nuanced rather than black-and-white. I truly have no idea how to fill in this blank, though: ‘I ran into a former coworker on the street today. The last time I saw him, (___) was named Jane.’
“What about when I’m talking to someone who knew the person before transition, but doesn’t know that the person transitioned? What about when the person had a very strong identification prior to transition (such as someone with a strong lesbian identification), and that person did important things under his/her previous name?”
This is a really good question that I don’t remember being asked before, and I would like reader input, because I have a pretty strong opinion about it that not everyone will probably agree with.
I would always use the person’s current pronoun, even when referring to something that person did in the past. So I would fill in the blank with “he” – “I ran into a former coworker on the street today. The last time I saw him, (he) was named Jane.”
It bothers me, for example, when I read an article about a trans person, and the writer goes back and forth with pronouns – “He was Special Forces in the Gulf War, but now she’s a puppeteer.” Huh? I get so confused, and if I’m confused, imagine what a non-trans person thinks when reading this. It certainly doesn’t help our image, in my opinion.
I think journalists and other writers love to play with this stuff in order to spice up their story – “When John Smith was a quarterback for the Denver Broncos, he held the record for passes completed. After she transitioned, Jane Smith became a newscaster for FOX.” (As if FOX News would hire her!)
I would reword the entire thing – “As a quarterback for the Denver Broncos, John Smith held the record for passes completed. After transition, Jane Smith became a newscaster for FOX.” But I would use the female pronoun for the entire story and write it so that the female pronoun made sense all the time.
Even if the person had a very strong identification with his or her birth sex prior to transition, I would still use current pronouns unless I knew that the person wanted me to do otherwise. A lesbian activist might have had a powerful identification as a lesbian and with the lesbian community, but if this person transitioned, he had an even more powerful identification with himself as a man.
And if the person did important public things in a previous name, I might refer to the person’s name, but not to his or her previous pronoun – “As Daphne, Dylan Scholinski wrote The Last Time I Wore a Dress” or “Daphne, now Dylan, Scholinski is the author of The Last Time I Wore a Dress, a book about his experiences as an adolescent female who was hospitalized because of gender nonconformity.”
The only exceptions to this are, as I said above, if I knew the person wanted me to do otherwise or if I was talking to someone who didn’t know that the person had transitioned, such as a mutual friend who hadn’t seen the person in a while. Then I would use the person’s previous name and pronoun, because I don’t think it’s my place to out the person, as you have already noted.
Again, this is my feeling about the matter, and I’m sure there are others. I can’t wait to see what readers think, so readers, take it away …
This post originally appeared on Matt Kailey's award-winning website Tranifesto.com. Republished with permission.
