I am a supporter of trans rights and refer to trans or nonbinary persons by their preferred pronouns. Recently, however, a family member stated that everyone must use the pronoun ‘‘they’’ with her even though she does not identify as trans or nonbinary. When I asked her why, she said she chooses to use ‘‘they’’ in solidarity with trans and nonbinary persons.
I am having trouble with this because it seems to require that I, and everyone else, join her in her particular form of activism, rather than a request that I respect her identity. If I hung a poster saying ‘‘Black Lives Matter’’ in my window, I would not be within my rights to demand that everyone else do so as well. But I am torn, because I have a general policy of calling people what they ask to be called, whether that is using particular pronouns, nicknames or titles. — Name Withheld
From the Ethicist:
When we respect the pronouns used by trans or nonbinary people, we’re doing something they reasonably ask us to do as an acknowledgment of their gender identity. Using pronouns properly is a matter of not misgendering people. It isn’t part of a general policy of calling people whatever they want to be called; someone’s wish to be referred to as ‘‘your holiness’’ does not require others to comply.
In fact, I worry that your family member’s idea of solidarity could prove self-undermining. In the account you’ve given, your relative is not trying to critique or withdraw from the sex-gender system or challenge the practice of having gendered designations, all intelligible reasons for rejecting female pronouns. Rather, your relative evidently identifies as cisgender and is motivated simply by allyship, which means treating these pronouns as a choice, detached from identity. This kind of stance could be taken as disrespectful of those who have fought to have their gender identities acknowledged and accommodated. By deploying nonbinary pronouns merely as a political badge, your relative, however well intentioned, seems misaligned with the very people she is in solidarity with — those who have asked to be recognized for who they are. As the N.A.A.C.P. activist Rachel Dolezal notoriously failed to grasp, solidarity with a group does not grant you membership within it. Many will find the notion that you support people by appropriating their markers of identity to be passing strange.
Readers Respond
The previous week’s question was from a reader who faced a record-keeping quandary. He wrote: “I have taken over keeping my family tree. … During the course of this work, I found to my surprise that some of my relatives have adopted children. … But because a family tree was once a record of the male bloodline, should I note that the child is adopted? Second, a woman married to a family member has asked me to include her offspring from her first marriage. Her kids have no biological or adoptive connection to my relative, so I have turned down this request. I am torn between two impulses: On the one hand, I feel that this decision is overly harsh. On the other, I believe that I am honoring the purpose of recording a family lineage. Third, some of my ancestors had what are sometimes called ‘‘outside children,’’ arising from extramarital interracial relationships toward the end of the 19th century. … I am contemplating including them, which I would like to do without causing pain or offense. … If we are honest about the family lineage, they are as much a part of the family as I am. But I’m realizing that once this line is breached, there will be no going back.”
In his response, the Ethicist noted: “A family tree is as much a cultural artifact as a biological one. Ideas about the configuration of a family vary across societies and over time. … As ideas about family change, forms of recognition that would have been denied in the past have become natural. … Your questions would have clear answers only if there were just one thing family trees were for, and there isn’t. If I were on that tree, I’d be interested to know about my Black relatives, but I might also be interested in knowing about my in-law’s children, even if they were born before she married my nephew. If the shape of family trees is a matter of convention, so is your status as keeper of the family tree. Nothing stops other ancestry-minded people from keeping different trees that acknowledge different kinds of family relationships.” (Reread the full question and answer here.)
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There’s far too much gatekeeping in families, I think, and this letter is a particularly glaring example. Who cares whether a child becomes a member of a family via adoption, “blending” or biological means? If we argue that only those with some sort of genetic connection to other family members should be included, then what do we do when an adult joins the family through marriage but no children result from that union? Take correction fluid to grammie’s Bible? — Andrea
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My great-grandfather and his siblings escaped Nazi Germany, settled in various continents and built lives and families. A few years ago, over 100 of their descendants from across the world reconnected, first over Zoom and then in the German town where our family originated. One of the overarching themes was inclusion: a woman who had divorced out of the family but was interested in our ancestry was welcomed, and adopted relatives were treated as they should be, as family members. The young woman who was related through sperm-bank donation and wanted to learn about her own bloodline? Welcomed. We are better for it. — Lauren
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I have been the caregiver of my Chinese family’s tree. My grandfather had several wives (i.e., a wife and several concubines), all of whom were recognized and accepted. Therefore, their offspring were also recognized and accepted. But there were also out-of-wedlock offspring, some of whom were embraced, while others were either not recognized or even known. Two of my ingenious uncles developed a numbering system for our family tree which includes references to generation, gender and offspring status. For example, as the first daughter of the first son of my grandfather and his first wife, I would be tagged as 1M.1-1M-1F, whereas the first daughter of the first son of my grandfather and his second wife would be tagged as 1M.2-1M-1F. We focus on bloodlines, but also make reference, when possible, to children from first marriages in name only but without a hierarchical designation. The complexities of our family tree are mind-boggling. Good luck! — Grace
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I feel like there is something being left unsaid here, but perhaps it is contained within the letter writer’s last few words — “once this line is breached” — as if entrance requires the seal of approval from the tree keeper. His power lies in acquiring knowledge and sharing that knowledge with generations to come, not gatekeeping according to how much he feels a person deserves to be associated with the tree. The letter writer has a moral requirement to document the past — not judge what happened. As a mixed-race descendant of colonized Indigenous people, uncomfortable truths are not so far in my family’s past. There is such power in the knowledge of this truth and acknowledging and accepting how we came to be. — Peti
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Family therapist here. If the letter writer wishes to include everyone, he might want to take a look at Monica McGoldrick, Randy Gerson and Sueli Petry’s book, “Genograms.” A genogram has templates for accounting for stepchildren, adoptions, extramarital affairs and more, and makes more sense than the standard “tree” format. — Chris
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I’m in my 60s and have kept a family tree since I was 16, extending back a dozen generations on my formerly polygamous Mormon maternal branch. I regularly update the tree and include everybody: children from other marriages, same-sex families and those born outside of wedlock (I don’t recognize the legitimacy of that designation). My tree is more like a family bush or a family forest, and contemporary generations reflect love and affinity rather than (unverifiable, often equivocal) paternal lineage. It’s a work of love rather than an attempt to squeeze human relations into a pseudoscientific patrilineal straitjacket. — Tony
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