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Dear Care and Feeding,
My brother’s new partner uses the pronouns they/them. I don’t care but my mom… geez. It’s a real sticking point with her. I wanted to understand why it bothered her so much—I mean, what’s it to her? (She’s never been a hater, and she’s usually interested in/curious about new ideas.) So I tried to talk to her about it. She was vehement in her response. She said she felt horribly uncomfortable saying “they/them” to refer to one person and that it made her feel like everything she’d been taught her whole life was wrong. She also complained about “young people” being “so needy” now and wanted to know why their self-worth is determined by what pronoun she uses. She said she knew now how her parents felt when they were so puzzled by her and her friends. She ended her tirade with, “But we never expected old people to change. How is it fair that now it seems like we’re supposed to?”
I’m starting to wonder whether resistance to change is maybe a normal part of aging. My mother definitely used to be more outgoing and open. I’d like to know how you might explain the importance of pronouns to an older generation (my mom is 63) in a way that doesn’t cause them to respond, “Can you believe young people today?!”
—Not OK, Boomer
Dear Not OK,
As a representative of that “older generation,” let me just say that resistance to change is a common problem, one that’s not limited to aging boomers. But it’s also true that the longer you live, the more years you have behind whatever ideas and beliefs you hold dear, and thus the harder it can be to dislodge them when new information arrives. (I also suspect that one thing that happens as people pass from middle age to old age is less concern about keeping up a front. In other words, your mom may not have been as open-minded as she seemed to be in years past: She just cared more about presenting herself that way.)
If you’re going to try to talk to her again about this, I think you might point out that recognizing that gender identity is not as simple and straightforward a matter as she’d been taught it was does not mean that “everything” she was taught “her whole life” is wrong. And that accepting that some of the things one was taught are not, in fact, true is a feature, not a bug, of living in the world for over six decades. Discoveries are made. Insight is gained. We move forward. The things your mom—and I (I’m older than she is!)—learned as children, or simply absorbed from the culture around us, weren’t (necessarily) wrong because the adults who imparted them to us were (necessarily) evil: In some cases, they were doing the best they could with the information they had available. Hanging on for dear life to what we thought was true is counterproductive. It tends to make us smaller, meaner, and stuck.
But even if your mom can’t unstick herself—even if she can’t open up to learning new things; even if she can’t understand what a nonbinary gender identity is; even if she remains baffled by the very idea of gender identity—that doesn’t mean she’s entitled to misgender your brother’s partner, whose sense of self-worth is not “determined by what pronoun she uses” no more than her self-worth is determined by the way others refer to her. It’s just good manners—respectful, appropriate, civilized—to address people the way they want to be addressed. In other words, she doesn’t have to understand it in order to interact respectfully with her son’s partner or other nonbinary folks (no more than she has to understand how a combustion engine works in order to drive a car).
And by the way, expecting old people to change is a good thing (indeed, a respectful thing!), not a bad one. We are not an inferior category of human beings, incapable of being educated, widening our horizons, or growth. That her (my) generation felt that way about their elders is a pity, not something to be nostalgic about.
https://slate.com/human-interest/2023/06/family-gift-wishlist-care-and-feeding-advice.html
My brother’s new partner uses the pronouns they/them. I don’t care but my mom… geez. It’s a real sticking point with her. I wanted to understand why it bothered her so much—I mean, what’s it to her? (She’s never been a hater, and she’s usually interested in/curious about new ideas.) So I tried to talk to her about it. She was vehement in her response. She said she felt horribly uncomfortable saying “they/them” to refer to one person and that it made her feel like everything she’d been taught her whole life was wrong. She also complained about “young people” being “so needy” now and wanted to know why their self-worth is determined by what pronoun she uses. She said she knew now how her parents felt when they were so puzzled by her and her friends. She ended her tirade with, “But we never expected old people to change. How is it fair that now it seems like we’re supposed to?”
I’m starting to wonder whether resistance to change is maybe a normal part of aging. My mother definitely used to be more outgoing and open. I’d like to know how you might explain the importance of pronouns to an older generation (my mom is 63) in a way that doesn’t cause them to respond, “Can you believe young people today?!”
—Not OK, Boomer
Dear Not OK,
As a representative of that “older generation,” let me just say that resistance to change is a common problem, one that’s not limited to aging boomers. But it’s also true that the longer you live, the more years you have behind whatever ideas and beliefs you hold dear, and thus the harder it can be to dislodge them when new information arrives. (I also suspect that one thing that happens as people pass from middle age to old age is less concern about keeping up a front. In other words, your mom may not have been as open-minded as she seemed to be in years past: She just cared more about presenting herself that way.)
If you’re going to try to talk to her again about this, I think you might point out that recognizing that gender identity is not as simple and straightforward a matter as she’d been taught it was does not mean that “everything” she was taught “her whole life” is wrong. And that accepting that some of the things one was taught are not, in fact, true is a feature, not a bug, of living in the world for over six decades. Discoveries are made. Insight is gained. We move forward. The things your mom—and I (I’m older than she is!)—learned as children, or simply absorbed from the culture around us, weren’t (necessarily) wrong because the adults who imparted them to us were (necessarily) evil: In some cases, they were doing the best they could with the information they had available. Hanging on for dear life to what we thought was true is counterproductive. It tends to make us smaller, meaner, and stuck.
But even if your mom can’t unstick herself—even if she can’t open up to learning new things; even if she can’t understand what a nonbinary gender identity is; even if she remains baffled by the very idea of gender identity—that doesn’t mean she’s entitled to misgender your brother’s partner, whose sense of self-worth is not “determined by what pronoun she uses” no more than her self-worth is determined by the way others refer to her. It’s just good manners—respectful, appropriate, civilized—to address people the way they want to be addressed. In other words, she doesn’t have to understand it in order to interact respectfully with her son’s partner or other nonbinary folks (no more than she has to understand how a combustion engine works in order to drive a car).
And by the way, expecting old people to change is a good thing (indeed, a respectful thing!), not a bad one. We are not an inferior category of human beings, incapable of being educated, widening our horizons, or growth. That her (my) generation felt that way about their elders is a pity, not something to be nostalgic about.
https://slate.com/human-interest/2023/06/family-gift-wishlist-care-and-feeding-advice.html
no subject