depending on my age, i’m still a she/her

on pronouns & how they change in the future and the past

untitled by Jiayue Li

pronouns are a tricky business. they shouldn’t be, but they are.

and i’m not talking about how politicized pronouns have become (that’s another piece altogether that i’m not really sure i’m interested in writing).

what i’m talking about is how simultaneously complex and simple pronouns are—how they reinforce the fluidity of our language and our lives, and make us challenge our ever-evolving sense of self.

much as we like to cling to rigidity for the comfort it provides, everything is constantly changing within and around us.

and that goes for our pronouns and relationships to gender, too.

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my pronouns have changed twice over the course of my twenty-eight years. i was assigned female at birth and raised as a girl, which made my pronouns (by default) she/her.

then during lockdown in 2020, i began to question my gender identity for the first time, tentatively adopting the use of the pronouns she/they.

by 2022, i had grown a deeper connection to my nonbinary identity and realized that while my pronouns were she/they, i only ever felt truly seen on the rare occasions when “they” was thrown in my direction.

so i decided to take the leap—scary as it was—and adopt they/them pronouns exclusively, no longer offering she/her as a charitable option for others’ comfortability.

we know that pronouns can change over time with our continuing development (as has been my experience as well as the varied experience of others). but in writing a recent piece addressed to my younger self, i was surprised to notice that, without hesitation, i began writing about that person with she/her pronouns.

i had always thought of changing pronouns as a forward-looking venture. but then i began to wonder, how might our pronouns shift as we talk about our younger selves in the past?

it’s not uncommon for trans, nonbinary, and gender non-conforming folk to refer to their past selves with the same pronouns they’ve adopted in their present day—after all, who we grow into is often who we’ve always been.

but i found that in tracing back my own history, the pronouns i ascribe to my younger selves seem to change with age and lived experience—sometimes, even physical space too.

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from ages zero to six, i feel most connected to my truest self, referring to that person as they/them. but by age seven, things begin to shift, and i’m not entirely sure that person has any pronouns they feel a kinship to.

at age twelve, my younger self feels like it leans more towards the she/her side of the spectrum. and by thirteen, that becomes all the more solidified as i begin to feel pressured to fulfill that girlhood box (and did fulfill rather seamlessly).

fifteen marked a different side to my she/her hero’s journey—one that was darker and more commanding of feminine rage. and that seems to last until i reach eighteen, and am finally able to separate myself from an environment that stifled me in place, suppressing any semblance of self-exploration or identity.

only then do i start to come back to they/them as i rediscover who i’ve always been, shedding the layers of expectations, traumas, and hurts that kept me from exploring the full breadth of who i was, am, and am still becoming.

in laying it all out, it becomes clear that certain periods of my life feel suffocatingly attached to gender, while others periods… not so much.

and while i can diagnose this as a symptom of my attending an all-girl school for nine years of my early life, or upon my foray into puberty, i think there’s something to be said for the space i held for gender in those moments, too—what behaviors i felt i should be clinging onto, and what displays i realized helped me better blend in.

but that’s not to say that i’m completely detached from my experience of girlhood. the ways in which i was socialized, treated, and condemned during that time of my life feel extremely attached to that gender.

and so, in addressing my younger self, i recognize this desire to claim ownership to this she/her sense of self, in that it was a transitional phase of my life; a liminal experience of not only how i was viewed by the world, but also how i thought i had to view myself in kind.

had i been exposed to the idea and lived experience of nonbinary identities at that time, i’m not sure i would have given up my girlhood based on who i was then.

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and so, i’m here to declare—i am nonbinary. and i still identify with having been a girl at one point in my life.

she lives within me, even as my pronouns and gender identity have changed over time. and allowing her to exist only reinforces my nonbinary existence and sense of self.

as messy as it sounds, i share this in hopes of challenging all of us to think about how we might identify ourselves throughout the course of our lives.

even if you’ve continued to use the same pronouns assigned to you at birth, can you look back at your younger selves and identify an instance where a different set of pronouns might better represent who you were at the time?

if not, that’s totally okay—there’s no science to this (at least that i’m aware of).

but if we all gave ourselves the chance to expand our own selfhood, even if only retroactively, there might be more of ourselves to honor than we once previously understood.

and that feels like a beautiful thing.

— misao

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