Language is the ultimate form of self expression. It has the miraculous power to make people visible. Because of this, it makes sense that queer identity is so invisible when it comes to language. Pronouns are the simplest example: he, she, they, it, among others. Everywhere, and even at the queer-tolerant Claremont Colleges, we are all linguistically culpable in queer erasure. Our pronoun use particularly demonstrates y/our own anti-queer culpability.
How are we culpable? What is the threshold for erasure? Good question — the threshold of culpability is very low. The moment you assign someone with the incorrect pronouns, either in your head or spoken aloud, is the moment you make someone invisible. I am constantly guilty — so are you.
As a result, the opinions of strangers matter. These opinions can be life or death for queer expression. Queer people must have a sixth sense for this language. Queerness is hard-fought and often repressed. Our bodies and behaviors can, and sometimes must, switch in response to linguistic restrictions. Misapplied pronouns are the forefront case. You don’t need to be said aloud to be culpable.
Often, y/our language refuses to let queerness exist. See Scripps, which self-describes as a historically women’s college. They/them pronouns are still far too modern — their users are routinely discussed and seen as men. I am treated as an outsider in Seal Court, on Elm Tree Lawn, inside Mallot and even in classes that first began with stating our pronouns. Even in conversation, I am physically conjoined with a constructed “him” foreign to me.
Often, y/our language can make physical space outright dangerous for queer people. A grotesque example is restrooms. It not only depends on what pronouns the restroom claims (in crude pictures, no less) but how people interpret y/our relationship to those gender caricatures. An imagined “he” could easily make you a predator, or a groomer or mentally warped. Through someone else’s language, your body has lost its voice.
At the Claremont Colleges, y/our language is far harder to articulate. Our queer erasure can be much less direct. It is less like a knife, and more like a lengthy private interrogation of oneself, designed to leave minimal visible injuries. Misuse of pronouns functions this way. It is a slow and effective hurt, with very little vocabulary involved – he, she, (rarely) they.
I have been robbed of the words or anecdotes to encapsulate both my fury and begrudging resignation at being unseen. I tried to estrange a friend over this once, but was unable to tell him. When I tried, he could not hear it. I might have been a fly buzzing by, the way he later remarked, “he needs to control his anger?” Hence I have always heard and deafly forgiven, resigned to silence by my loved ones.
Acquaintances are trickier. They have no responsibility to know. Sometimes, the sly ones are able to catch on. On what might as well have been a boy’s trip in San Jacinto, all of a sudden people noticed an incongruity in their midst. In a scattered conversation, some progress was made on knowing what I had just said: “he-THEY said …” What had alerted them? The incongruous nature of someone applying “they” to me!
Another option is never correcting anyone on your pronouns. This is good policy when you have established a satisfactory relationship with some person who can harm you very much, or not harm you at all. Being visible might scare them. They might react queerly. All the more tragic when they think and speak of you wrongly.
As it affects the Claremont Colleges, we must understand that any language — thought, spoken, physical — involving queer identity has enormous effects. I have been alone in many gender-neutral bathrooms, because my gender-neutral body has been thought of, heard or seen (somewhere) as the opposite sex. That is just one, of many, daily experiences involving y/our language dictating my body.
I acknowledge that Claremont is far more tolerant than other places for queerness. This tolerance, though, cannot be used to excuses y/our language injustices. We have to go further. You may respect queer identity, but room is rarely made for queer voices. My supportive friends often misgender me — inexcusable. My classmates and professors do it far more — inexcusable. The rate is excruciatingly close to 100 percent among people I do not know — yes, inexcusable. There are others. You and I can’t hear them.
This failure is y/ours. It is the way you think. It is the way I think. The only way forward is with painstaking attention. Listen: y/our tragic absurdity will come out. Somewhere, everywhere, people are always defining others through y/our invented language. We say that some genitalia is he, some is she, and some are they. We rarely sit down and justify this. Do it. Explain their androgyny. Explain her body. Explain his voice. Continue in the mirror until we fall apart.
Luke Brown PO ’26 is from Bluefield, West Virginia. They are a straight man to most people, and often nonbinary to their friends.
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