Why I Don’t Share My Pronouns: Confessions of an EDI
Trainer and Consultant
By Kimberly Harris, M.Ed., AMP
Distinctive Voice Consulting
Its pride month and I have
a confession to make. As an equity, diversity and inclusion trainer and
consultant, I don’t share my pronouns (though in my workshops I encourage people to do so if they choose to). I understand that this choice is one of
privilege because I am a cisgender woman (my gender identity and expression match
my assigned gender at birth). I first heard of sharing pronouns in the summer
of 2015. I was on the board of the Bellingham Racial Justice Coalition, a group
that I co-founded to fight racism and injustice after the Michael Brown killing
in 2014 by a white police officer in Ferguson, Missouri. I was at a meeting and
one of my colleagues started the meeting by telling people to introduce
themselves and share their pronouns. I didn’t understand the concept at that
time so I shied away from doing so until I could better understand the meaning
behind this practice. After the meeting I asked why this was necessary and was
told that sharing pronouns creates inclusivity for people from the LGBTQ+
community. And while I am an ally for the LGBTQ+ community and am definitely a
proponent of inclusivity, the practice didn’t sit well with me because I felt
it exclusionary to other marginalized groups by only focusing on inclusivity
for the LGBTQ+ community. I watched over the past few years as people
encouraged this practice in meetings and I observed people sharing their
pronouns in their emails.
As pronoun sharing grew
over the last few years, I couldn’t shake the feeling that this practice left
me unsettled. I attended several diversity trainings and asked among the
trainers and participants why they encouraged this practice and the responses
were very similar: it creates a space of inclusion for the LGBTQ+ community and
moves society away from gender as a binary concept. I wrestled with this
concept for seven years now, debating writing about this subject. My feelings
came full circle this past week as it occurred to me why I am unsettled with
this practice. For years I felt badly about not feeling peace with the
practice- was I, a Black woman from two marginalized groups jealous? I reasoned
not because the term “Black Lives Matter” became commonplace after the murder
of George Floyd in 2020, so I didn’t feel left behind. What came to me is the
irony in the rationale to share pronouns: that it creates an atmosphere of
respect and inclusion. But respect and inclusion for whom? Certainly not all
marginalized groups. The thought occurred to me that I’d like to see a society create
a practice of using an acronym that represents and demonstrates respect and
inclusion for people from all marginalized groups. I would like to see a
society where people introduce themselves and sign their emails with something
like, “AMP” as in, “Ally for Marginalized People.” We could also introduce
ourselves this way as in, “Hi, my name is Kim, AMP.”
By suggesting an acronym
that represents inclusion for all marginalized people, would I be taking away
from the LBGTQ+ community in the same way the phrase, “All Lives Matter”
minimizes the phrase, “Black Lives Matter”?
I don’t believe so. Saying “All Lives Matter” ignores the
marginalization and oppression of Black and Brown people by dilution, but by
saying you are an ally for all marginalized people, this expands the circle of human
concern for people from all oppressed groups. In the United States, the LGBTQ+
community made up 3.5% of the population based on a study released in 2011 by
the UCLA School of Law Williams Institute. Other groups relegated to the
margins of society such as women made up 58.4% of the U.S. population in 2020
according to the U.S. Census, obese people made up 41.9% of the U.S. population
in 2017 according the Centers for Disease Control, physically disabled people
made up 12.6% of the U.S. population in 2015 according to the U.S. Census, and undocumented
immigrants made up 3.2% of the U.S. population in 2017 according to the Pew
Research Center.
Though not an exhaustive list of marginalized people, we may find ourselves in meetings with people who are part of any of these groups. So while I don’t want to subtract from the LGBTQ+ community being seen and brought into the circle of society, I encourage people who like to use their pronouns to continue to do so. Also, in an effort to expand safety and inclusion, I believe that we as a society need to find an additional way to express that we are allies and safe people for anyone in the room who feels they may not be welcomed or included because of who they are or where they come from. I’d like to suggest an additional acronym option in an effort to increase the circle of inclusion for all marginalized people.
