Many of us either have been the primary agents or otherwise close witnesses of instances of misgendering. That is, of instances in which one uses a pronoun for a person who does not want that pronoun to be used when referring to that person. Misgendering is becoming more and more common now that trans or non-binary individuals are both coming out more publicly and also asserting more deliberately their claimed gender identity, part of which is, of course, stating their preferred pronouns. The latter is no doubt a welcome phenomenon, to the extent that it constitutes a closer step to a more fulfilling life for the relevant individuals.
However, misgendering occurs, and along with it occurs harm. At the very least harm inflicted on the person being misgendered. And it is not unreasonable to think that said harm, however minute or infinitesimal, has some moral relevance, in that it is physically avoidable and it contributes, perhaps in a cumulative manner, to a worsening of the life of the relevant individual. And if such acts of harm do have moral relevance, then attached to that are facts about the relative blameworthiness of the acts of misgendering. This is just a roundabout way of saying that since misgendering causes some degree of pain and so someone needs to be blamed for it.
There is, as far as I can see, full consensus that those who deserve the blame are fully those who perpetrate the misgendering. If A refers to B as a “he” even though B wants to be referred to as a “she” or a “they”, then it is A’s fault — fully. A is to blame. I want to challenge this consensus and the assumptions that it rests on. I want to suggests that part of the blame actually is due to B herself (or themself). This may be difficult to read and accept, but I believe that there are powerful reasons to suggest so.
To see why, consider a detour: the Stroop effect in cognitive psychology. If you’ve never heard about it, this is a phenomenon characterized by a “delay in reaction time between congruent and incongruent stimuli”. This was prototypically demonstrated by asking subjects to say out loud the color of the ink in which the color-names were written (thus disregarding the color-names themselves). Times were significantly higher when the color-names matched the color of the ink than when there was no match. See figure above. The superficial explanation is that the differential effect has something to do with the congruence of the two kinds of stimuli, one verbal, the other visual. This phenomenon generalizes to all sorts of stimuli, and the literature shows that it is hardwired in the way the brain processes stimuli.
I want to suggest that a similar Stroop-like effect occurs in many cases of misgendering. Before I do so, an obvious distinction: many acts of misgendering are deliberate, in that the person who misgender does so in a calculated, intentional manner, often to offend or to make a political statement or who knows why. Yet there are many instances of misgendering where the misgendering happens unintentionally. Now, the extent to which such acts are unintentional is debatable and has rightly come under scrutiny. I want to set that debate aside for now.
If we do believe that some instances of misgendering are broadly unintentional acts by otherwise supportive and well-meaning individuals who might be great LGBTQI allies, as many trans or non-binary people do, then we can come to notice that the analogy I want to draw already has some initial traction: both are unintentional mistakes and both are errors that occur during speech-production. I want to suggest another similarity which might be more contentions: both are due to a disparity partially attributed to the visual input of the speech producer. In the Stroop effect case, this is obvious. In the gender case, perhaps less so. But it is hard to deny that people base their pronoun assumption on the visual, and to a lesser extent auditory, signals they receive from their addressees. Everyone will agree that a cis male who has not stated his preferred will be referred to as a “he” solely based on his physical appearance. Similarly, for a cis female. Pronouns are not option in language. And so, absent explicit discussion on pronouns, people will default to visual cues.
This means that visual stimuli inform who we conceptualize the gender of an addressee. Clearly, that conceptualization is malleable and under the direct control of less automated, more rational cognitive mechanisms. But the two inputs — visual and rational — are not only independent, but can interfere with each other in the ways just outlined for the Stroop effect. In the case of gender, not only can the two interfere, but as a matter of fact they do. If one claims that the “innocent” acts of misgendering we are talking about here are not due to incongruence of stimuli, then the burden of proof is on them to give a theory why those acts occur. It is really hard to imagine what else, other than a mis-match between an addressee’s gender presentation and preferred pronouns, could possibly explain the phenomenon.
And if this observation is on the right track, then the issue of blame starts to make sense. The relevant acts of misgendering occur, partly, due to the physical appearance of the addressee. The physical appearance of the addressee is not — thankfully! — under the control of the misgenderer. Therefore, to the extent that these acts are blameworthy, part of the blame lies with the cause of the misgendering, i.e. the person who has the incongruence-generating physical appearance. One could perhaps go so far as to say that the misgenderer is committing a cognitive error that is deeply ingrained in her brain and, therefore, cannot help making the relevant errors from time to time. Just like the subjects in the Stroop phenomenon.
The solution is clear: if trans or non-binary people do not want to be misgendered, they should make sure that they present according to the gender that they want to be perceived as. It is well-known that there are limitations to this process. The extent of the blame they carry coincides with the extent of these limitations. A misgenderee is only to blame to the extent that he/she/they could have feasibly improved their gender presentation.
