Is It Lying to Use Someone’s Preferred Pronouns?
Imagine you meet a person and they tell you that they use the pronouns they/them or you encounter someone you know was born as a male but now identify as female and request that you use she/her as pronouns.
What do you do?
For those who want to be respectful but worry that using their preferred pronouns might be lying, how do we wrestle with this?
I understand that there are some who feel that transgender and non-binary rights are something to be fought at all costs because of the culture war. I am not speaking of that situation, as there is no changing of minds.
I just want to ask of whether using preferred pronouns is wrong because it is a lie.
A major part of this conversation is the distinguishing between sex and gender. Sex is about biology and gender is about identity. While some would say you cannot distinguish them but language changes. If the current meaning of gender is about identity, then it is possible to change the gender even if the biological sex is the same.
I can understand that it is difficult to see language change but this is something that happens all the time. This is the same with plural pronouns being used for individuals. If you study language, you will see that many aspects of speech including pronouns change over time.
Still there will be people claiming that calling someone born a female who now wants to be referred to as a man is lying. Are we obligated to use the pronouns assigned at birth?
Let me put it this way. It is well known that C.S. Lewis was called Jack by his friends. They did not call him Clive even thought was the name on his birth certificate. They called him Jack because that was his preference. Did those who called C.S. Lewis Jack lie? After all, technically that was not his name.
You may not want to use preferred pronouns. You may not want to call a transgender person by their new name. But those who are willing to use preferred pronouns and names are not lying. Accusations of lying are misrepresenting how language works.
