feature: activist/artist amandla stenberg on gender identity: “they/them makes me feel comfortable”

There isn’t one way to be, well, anything. And in the face of the growing conversation around gender identity, more people are learning about the many ways in which people can relate the illusion of gender with who they are as people. One of those ways is through pronoun preferences. He/him, she/her, they/their, and sometimes ze/hirs, ze/zirs ey/eir, xe/xyr. These are all examples of gender binary-specific and gender neutral pronouns used to reference a single person.

And, it must be stressed that, pronoun preference is not always related to gender. A person can still identify as a womxn and chose neutral pronouns to be addressed as. Pronoun preference is just as divorced from sexual orientation, meaning you cannot know a person’s orientation just be knowing their pronouns or be which gender they’re performing as, if any at all. Salute to Stenberg for bravely and openly discussing their preferences.

By Erin White*, AFROPUNK contributor