Welcome! Thank you for coming here today to help us launch the No Big Deal Campaign, at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, located on the territories of Anishinaabe and Onkwehonwe peoples.
My name is Dr. Lee Airton. I’m a sessional lecturer in the Master of Teaching Program here at OISE. I’m also a non-binary transgender person and the creator of the NBD Campaign. Since 2012, I’ve been using singular they as my personal gender pronoun.
The NBD Campaign happened because, in the recent controversy around gender-neutral pronouns, I didn’t recognize the everyday life of being a gender-neutral pronoun user. In the fog of a highly polarized debate, absent were the many people – my co-workers here at OISE, colleagues across Canada, the people at the climbing gym or the store or the barbershop or on my block – people who use my pronoun despite, perhaps, not knowing much about transgender politics. Despite not knowing much about my life story. They use it, it works for me, and we get by. This is something that I hear from other gender-neutral pronoun users both in conversation and on my blog: that it doesn’t always matter that someone shares my politics, as long as they’re willing to use my pronoun.
In dire warnings that a pronoun error would be a disaster or even a hate crime, I didn’t recognize the times when people I know have made a good-faith mistake with my pronoun, when I’ve reminded them, and when we’ve moved on together in the knowledge that our connection isn’t founded on a promise of perfection that can be really hard to live up to.
Because I’m not perfect either. When someone I know undergoes a change in how they move through the world – be it a name, nickname, married name, relationship status, health status, whathaveyou – sometimes I make a mistake. I get it wrong or I say the wrong thing. When someone I know changes their pronoun, it takes a little extra effort.
I’ll speak for a moment about what ‘NBD’ means to me, personally.
My pronoun is a very big deal, to me. It’s taken me a long time to find it. I was a kid when strangers first used a pronoun to tell me who I was, and what I was allowed to do. They thought they knew something about me just because they suddenly heard other people refer to me with a word. And that word would take away my freedom of choice: to decide how I’d spend my recess, how I got to play, with what and with whom. It took away my freedom to spend my time and energy on play rather than passing as the boy that I didn’t want to be either.
Today, when people use my pronoun – singular they – this makes an incredible, palpable difference to my well-being. I’ve noticed over time that it allows me to be a kinder, gentler person who isn’t always on guard against the gendered expectations buried in so much of our everyday language and practices. It saves me precious time and energy that I can spend on being a better listener, teacher, ally, co-worker; a better partner, sibling, kid, untie, friend, and even stranger.
My pronoun is a big deal to me. But as an educator, I know that it doesn’t have to be a big deal to others in order for them to just use it. You can do this little thing for me without fully understanding why I need it, or what it means, at least not yet. Maybe we’ll become friends and you’ll find out.
This is the spirit in which I created the NBD Campaign.
This is a Campaign about action, not just awareness. If NBD raises peoples’ awareness of gender-neutral pronouns, that’s a happy side effect. But for me, posting the badge is a sign that someone is willing to take action. Reading the infographics is a sign that someone is willing to put time and energy into learning how to advocate for my right to have my chosen pronoun respected.
The Campaign won’t convince people who are staunchly opposed to respecting gender-neutral pronoun users. It’s also not aimed primarly at people like me who are actively doing the political work of advocating and educating around transgender rights. Rather, its main audience is the majority who fall somewhere in-between: people who are willing to do this thing and do their best. To let you know that a space with them in it is one where people like me stand a chance of being, staying and staying well enough to come back some time.
In this climate, it’s a really big deal to me to see visible signs that people who aren’t caught up in the polarized debate are willing to do this thing. For example, I know willingness exists in spades right here at OISE, where I work. But this doesn’t mean that other gender-neutral pronoun users know. And now, hopefully, they will.
If the NBD Campaign is successful, it’ll be because people whose pronoun isn’t obvious to the eye, the ear or the brain get to walk around and see these real signs of peoples’ willingness to do this thing that’s a big deal to us, but not necessarily a big deal to them.
This is what NBD means to me. Please use our grafitti wall to show us what NBD means to you, and consider stepping into the photo booth to show your support on social media alongside a gynormous version of the badge.
Our beautiful badge, designed by Cai Sepulis, has been available and circulating online for the past couple of days. I made the badge because I’ve been receiving countless private expressions of support from friends and colleagues in the past few weeks, and I wanted to create a way for other people to feel that support, too, if they were not.
Today I’m proud to share with you the other component of the Campaign: the infographics.
Each infographic takes on one argument that has emerged as a seemingly legitimate reason for refusing to use someone’s gender-neutral pronoun. But each argument is actually illegitimate, and these show precisely why. If you display our badge, you might get some questions or some push back and the infographics are designed to help you out. Each segment offers an instant counter-argument and a longer explanation, informed by experts in linguistics, philosophy and law. You might find some more fitting or useful than others, which is why they are available separately on nbdcampaign.ca.
In fact, all of the NBD campaign materials are available for you, in many formats, to use however you like in support of everyone’s chosen pronoun. Make bags, make coasters, make posters, make postcards, make buttons, make T-shirts. Take this thing and run with it! Just please include the Campaign’s URL so people can find out more.
I’ll close by saying that the NBD Campaign is just one tool in a whole toolbox. It can’t do all the things, or meet all the needs, and it isn’t designed to do so. I’m really excited to see and support a variety of other responses to this climate.
They Is My Pronoun 