Advocating for pronoun usage on campus

Words, Photo & Design | Olivia Giorgio

In the spring of 2021, I had a huge final project for my Art Therapy class, Creative Community Development, that involved coming up with something to do with a community, whether at Mount Mary or a group outside of Mount Mary. Normally, group projects are an absolute chore for me, but this one was different. For once, I didn’t do all the work while my group members did nothing. The two other girls, who eventually became my friends, and I all put equal effort into this project.

We came up with two ideas for our community project. One project focused on accommodations for Mount Mary students. The other idea was about pronouns and how we can normalize asking pronouns on campus. The pronoun idea made me realize that only one of my professors in the last two years asked what the students’ pronouns were.

I started to experiment with my pronouns at the time going by she/they pronouns instead of she/her pronouns. Yet, no one knew that I was changing my pronouns because professors never asked. It made me wonder if anyone else on campus noticed this.

We ended up going with the pronoun idea for our project since we all agreed that asking people’s pronouns should be normalized on campus. And the way we were going to help normalize asking pronouns was by making pins.

We were originally going to make pins with different pronouns like she/her, he/him, they/them, she/they, he/they, etc., but we thought there wouldn’t be enough pins for all of those combinations. So what we settled on were pins that said, “Ask my pronouns,” hoping that seeing the pin would encourage people to ask.

Each of our pins ended up being based on different pride flags. I made one based on the transgender flag colors, another group member did one on the non-binary pride flag colors and the third group member did their pin on the rainbow flag for the LGBTQ+ community.

We worked on making the pins in the evening while we talked and listened to music. The whole thing felt a lot less stressful since this was all going on near finals week, so we were all feeling stressed. I’m glad I got randomly paired with these group members and formed a friendship with them. We also created a survey for students to fill out asking questions like, “If you are a student, have any professors asked your pronouns?” The survey revealed that many professors were not asking students their pronouns. As a result, students thought it would be beneficial for Mount Mary to raise awareness around pronouns, suggesting students add their pronouns to their email signatures and professors ask students their pronouns in introductions. However, some students felt it was not the campus’s responsibility, rather an individual’s responsibility to advocate for their own pronouns. Another student expressed concern about remembering people’s pronouns, and worries that people would get upset about others asking pronouns.

All together, I wasn’t too surprised by some of the results, like not many people being asked what their pronouns are by their professors. I do hope our community project continues to push the normalization of asking pronouns. Whether it be in syllabi, introductions or stating your pronouns in your email signature, I think doing small things like that can really make a difference. By asking what people’s pronouns are, we will create a more comfortable space for everyone at Mount Mary, especially trans women or non-binary students. Transgender flag Transgender is someone whose gender idnetity is different from the sex they were born as. Non-binary flag Non-binary is someone who identfies as neither male nor female.

AD

My group members and I created these pins for the class Creative Community Development.