Power in Pronouns

Exploring the New Preferred Gender Pronoun Campaign at The New School.

 

Two months into the fall semester of Layne Gianakos’ junior year, a classmate pulled him aside. The student asked Gianakos, a Gay Lesbian Education Network (GLSEN) student activist and Psychology major with a focus in Queer Studies, about his preferred gender pronouns. Gianakos felt that this was invasive because the student singled him out. He proceeded to wonder if his gender was somehow not intelligible to them. Gianakos thought this situation could have been avoided if students were asked their preferred gender pronouns in class at the start of the semester. Numerous students and staff members have since worked to encourage discussion about preferred gender pronouns in the classroom.

At the start of the fall 2013 academic year, student health advocates Brittany Duck, Alia Sanfilippo and former New School alum Jade Faire launched a preferred gender pronoun campaign that encourages students and faculty to ask people their preferred gender pronouns.

The New School is not the first university to discuss gender identity and  preferred gender pronouns in classrooms. According to the Transgender Law and Policy Institute, 623 colleges and universities have nondiscrimination policies that include gender identity and expression. Seventy colleges have a process for name changes and 44 colleges have a process for gender changes.

  Although the campus now includes gender-neutral bathrooms, and students can mark X as a gender when registering, some students endorse stronger communication about their identities. Of the 1,631 students who filled out the New School’s Spring 2013 National College Health Assessment, 11 students identified as transgender and 22 students did not respond to the question. The only options for response were Male, Female and Transgender.

“Professors have been very accepting of my preferred name and pronoun but I haven’t really talked to many students about it,” said Ari Bloom, a freshman Lang who is a trans-man. Tamara Oyola-Santiago, New School Wellness and Health promoter, thinks that without a preferred pronoun policy, institutions inherently discriminate against some of their students.

“According to the National College Health Association, students who self identify as being part of that community have worse health indicators, meaning higher rates of drug and substance abuse, suicide and depression,” she said. “So we know within Student Health Services that we really need to be doing a better job on meeting the needs of students who identify across the gender and sexual identity spectrum.”

According to the Gay Straight Alliance for Safe Schools (GSafe), preferred gender pronouns are the set of pronouns an individual wishes to identify with. Some individuals prefer to identify with gender neutral or gender inclusive pronouns. Commonly used singular gender neutral pronouns include ze (the subject pronoun) and hir (the object and possessive pronoun).

“There is a need for faculty members, staff and students to learn what preferred gender pronouns are…if you never had to ask, how do you know to do that?” said Oyola-Santiago. “We wanted to design a campaign that promotes asking people what is your preferred gender pronoun to make it the norm, so it becomes part of the default culture across our university.”

Wellness promoters and student health advocates hope the campaign helps diversify gender identities beyond male and female. “It’s really about not making assumptions and not just asking when you are not sure because that is really stigmatizing to some people,” said Rachel Knopf, New School Wellness and Health promoter.

Freshman student Ari Bloom commented on the climate of discomfort. “I don’t want to be read as something I don’t identify with or just assumed to be something that I am not,” said Bloom.

Student health advocates believe that classroom talks on gender identity, however uncomfortable, are necessary.

“I don’t think the goal is to force categories upon people; it’s more to enable communication between people,” said Alia Sanfilippo, another student health advocate behind the campaign. “You are already producing that initial boundary where you are already posing oppression on someone. Even if it’s not intentional, that puts up a roadblock for good communication.”

Other students agree that asking about preferred gender pronouns can lead to better communication. “When people begin asking about preferred pronouns, it can open up discussions on understanding gender expression, identity and the fluidity of that,” said Bloom.

Techniques on how to open the discussion on preferred gender pronouns are taught in the New School Wellness Center’s Safe Zone Workshops. These workshops are open to students, faculty, staff and resident advisors. But these workshops are not mandatory, and therefore are not widely attended according to student health advocates. “Right now it is just the people that know about it that are doing it and are starting to reach out to every single student,” Sanfilippo said.

Some view Safe Zone workshops — or even first-year seminars — serve as vehicles to educate students about preferred gender pronouns. Gianakos explained that while health educators focused on issues like safe sex, they ignored issues of gender identity. “There was never a day we dedicated to pronoun usage,” he said.

Some professors have implemented their own preferred gender pronoun policies, even without attending Safe Zone workshops. Katayoun Chamany, Associate Professor in Natural Sciences, asks her students to complete what she calls an “Information About You” card. This form asks numerous questions ranging from where students grew up to their habits, and includes their preferred gender pronoun. “All that does is send a message saying I embrace diversity,” Chamany said. “The minute you send that message as the leader of the classroom, you now created an inclusive environment.”