My Pronouns Are They/Them. What Are Yours?

An interview with Lily Zheng by Paige Cohen

Two years ago, I attended a Christmas party at my parents’ house in California. Picture a dimly lit room filled with candles, wine, cheery tunes, and garlands twinkling in the background. I was standing in the kitchen, picking cheese from a platter, when a relative resembling a Disney villain pronounced that I looked more masculine than she remembered. She sipped her drink and cocked her head to the side, taking in my buzzed hair, green vest, and slacks.

“You were a very feminine child,” she said. “You wore little bows and dresses.” She reached her manicured claw toward my plate and snatched a chunk of cheddar.

It had been a long time since I lacked the language to explain my own identity, but there I was, at a loss. The room spiraled in on itself and once again I was a budding teen, standing in front of a mirror, trying and failing to verbalize what was happening in my mind and to my body. The difference was that, in my actual teen years, words like genderqueer and nonbinary were unknown to me. My experience was hard to articulate—to myself and to others—because I didn’t have the vocabulary to name it. The gender norms I observed as a kid, which were reiterated in my home and in the media throughout my adolescence and young adulthood, made it difficult to imagine any other way of being.

But now, I was educated. I had created a life for myself in Boston. I wore a suit one day and slathered my eyes in compostable glitter the next. My friends never asked questions. They cheered in celebration.

So why did I stare blankly at my relative and say nothing?

While her words were rude and probably transphobic, they forced me to turn inward in a way I hadn’t in years. When I did, I came to a realization: Even with the privileges and safety my queer community provides me, this interaction was difficult because it hit on something deeply tied to who I am. Clothes and haircuts may not mean everything to everyone, but for me, they are tools that allow me to share myself authentically with other people. My presentation signals how I feel inside—not entirely like a “she,” not entirely like a “he,” but somewhere in between. Nonbinary.

To have another person recognize that part of me, and then openly ridicule it, was very painful.

It would be nice to live in a world where people like me, or any member of the LGBTQIA+ community, never have to justify our existence. Some people actually do live in that world. But for those of us who fall outside the fine lines of what is considered mainstream, lacking the language to name and explain our experiences is still dangerous.

I use the pronouns they/them/theirs. Like the clothing we all use to express our genders, pronouns are labels that make us more visible and indicate we are not alone. I think about what it would have meant to my younger self had I discovered this sooner. It’s the kind of progress that can save lives.

Even so, I’m navigating the implications of my decision: How do I share my pronouns with other people? How do I ask other people what their pronouns are? How do I figure all of this out, especially in professional environments?

I talked to Lily Zheng, coauthor of Gender Ambiguity in the Workplace, to get a little guidance.

Paige Cohen: What’s the best way to share your pronouns, both in life and at work?

Lily Zheng: Be clear, straightforward, and casual—the same way you’d share what region or city you live in. In person, share them with your basic intro: “Hey! My name is Lily Zheng. I use they/them pronouns, and I’m a diversity, equity, and inclusion strategist living on Muwekma Ohlone land in the San Francisco Bay Area.”

If you don’t have the chance for a formal introduction, you can shorten it. “Hey! I’m Lily, they/them pronouns. You?”

Online and in email signatures, you can include your pronouns, typically in the format of X/X or X/X/X (e.g., she/her or she/her/hers), somewhere easy to see.

Is the process different when you’re first meeting people versus when your pronouns change after having known someone for a while? For example, if your colleagues are used to using she/her or he/him pronouns for you, and you now identify with they/them pronouns, how do you let them know? Do you owe them an explanation?

I had this experience myself. After using she/her pronouns for my entire young adulthood and professional career, I started using both they/them and she/her pronouns mid-2020, and moved fully to they/them pronouns by the end of the year.

Beyond changing the pronouns on my social media and online bios, I was casual but firm with folks about the changes as I was making them. First, I told people, “I’m using both they/them and she/her these days! No worries about using they/them all the time, but I’d very much appreciate the effort.”

Later I said, “I’m using just they/them now. Thanks for understanding and respecting that.”

You owe them as much explanation as if you were describing your move to a new city—that is, only as much as you feel enthusiastic about sharing.

I’m a little scared that when I tell someone my pronouns they are going to want to have big conversations around them. I don’t always have the energy for that, and other times it feels too personal. How do you navigate that kind of situation when it comes up?

Remember that you have a huge amount of leeway over how to talk about your pronouns—your discursive framing, if you want to be fancy about it.

If you speak about your pronouns in a hushed, apologetic voice, you are positioning them as a topic that you don’t expect people to understand. If you speak about them in a defiant voice, you are positioning the topic as one you expect to receive resistance and conflict on. If you speak about them as casually as you’re talking about what you had for lunch, you’re positioning them as a nonstarter when it comes to discussion. You have the agency to decide which framing to use in any conversation, given your relationship with the person, the context of the situation, and your own capacity and energy levels.

If you’ve done that and somebody still pushes your boundaries with their inquiry, you can gently but decisively enforce your boundary with a statement and/or humor that indicates the question was inappropriate.

Let’s say a colleague asks you this: “But why they/them? Isn’t that controversial? Does that mean you do drag?”

You might just redirect them: “We’re in the middle of a meeting about this product, and I’d like to stay on topic—email me later this week and I’ll be happy to chat then.”

Or you could add some humor in your response: “Ha, you want my social security number while we’re at it? I’ll send you a resource to learn more if you’re curious.”

What should you do if someone calls you by the wrong pronoun?

Give a simple but clear correction, without apology.

Colleague: “This is Paige. She works on the editorial team.”

You: “Oh—I use they/them pronouns. Thanks!”

What should you do if you call someone the wrong pronoun?

Give a simple apology and immediately make the correction by restating the sentence where you misgendered the individual.

Colleague: “Oh—I use they/them pronouns. Thanks!”

You: “My mistake, sorry. They work on the editorial team.”

Don’t over-apologize, attempt to explain or make an excuse for why you may have made the error, or passive-aggressively make the correction. Apologize, make the correction, and move on. Importantly, update your mental understanding of the individual so that the correct pronoun comes to mind the next time you interact.

On the other end of this, are there best practices for how to ask someone what their pronouns are?

Asking about pronouns can be complicated. On the one hand, not asking can lead to potentially incorrect assumptions and misgendering. However, in practice most people don’t ask everyone their pronouns—they tend to ask only visibly transgender or gender-nonconforming people. In my experience, that can be marginalizing and insulting, especially when someone singles me out in a crowd to ask my pronouns.

My advice is to focus instead on always introducing yourself with your pronouns. If the person you meet feels comfortable doing so, they may share their pronouns with you. For all people who have not shared their pronouns with you, commit to using singular “they” until you learn their pronouns.

Should cisgender people share their pronouns?

That’s an easy yes: All cisgender people should share their pronouns. In the same way that men in the workplace making use of flexible time or parental leave normalizes when women and people of other genders do so as well, cisgender people who share their pronouns (not with a “savior” mindset but simply as a matter of course) normalize the behavior when trans and gender-nonconforming people do the same.

Where allies can go wrong is when they make an overly big deal or show out of sharing their pronouns. That has the opposite effect of casting the action as strange or unusual, and makes it more difficult for trans and gender-nonconforming people to do the same without repercussions.

If someone tells you that they take more than one pronoun, like she/her and they/them, how do you navigate which you should use?

If people share that they use multiple sets of pronouns, make your best effort to use the different sets they’ve shared. If you feel comfortable, you can ask them whether they prefer people to switch between the different pronouns within the same conversation (e.g., “I was talking to her the other day. They told me …”) or alternate pronoun sets in different conversations (e.g., In one conversation, “I was talking to her the other day. She told me …” and then in another, “They mentioned that to me before! They were saying …”).

Resist the urge to only address them by the pronoun set that feels most comfortable for you, even if it’s a set that they have indicated they are OK with.