Last week, after months of weary anticipation, I had to remind my colleagues of my pronouns. Despite being clear from the jump that I’m nonbinary and use both she and they pronouns, “they” has never quite taken hold. What began as a minor observation has, over time, come to feel more like a sign of syntactical laziness and a challenging adjustment to having the sole (publicly) nonbinary person in the organization.
I’ve tried to center empathy and remain curious about the dysphoria that bubbles when I’m referred to as she or her, noticing how my shoulders tighten and my insides feel like waves crashing whenever those syllables are directed toward me. I’ve come to realize that using she/they pronouns ropes me into a double bind: I chose these pronouns to avoid the constant disappointment of having my identity overlooked, to grant permission for others to gloss over the nonbinary parts of me. However, if I were truly honest with myself, I would prefer to be called they/them all the time.
The internal calculations over my pronouns hit a fever pitch recently, when I found myself entangled in a familial debate about they/them pronouns—an argument oddly fixated on grammar and syntax, often prioritizing verb tense over dignity. It’s a futile exercise that feels deeply familiar and has never, ever ended well. In most of my workplace and familial experiences, asking for respect for your pronouns is like holding up a mirror and pleading for understanding. It often feels like an exercise in perpetual disappointment.
When it comes to being nonbinary, mirrors can be a double-edged sword, but they do provide a language for the nonbinary. The earliest mirrors were not the pristine glass we know today, but polished obsidian—black volcanic glass that revealed only the rough contours of a face. These primordial mirrors cast the world through a latticework of shadows, where the self emerged as an outline, a mere suggestion. This reflected world was steeped in ambiguity—a resistance to certainty, a defiance of precision. My experience of gender feels deeply entwined with this murk: existing in the liminal, where opposites dissolve and definitions forsake their grip on the self.
As time progressed, mirrors grew sharper, more precise—tools for clarity or traps that confine the self within a singular frame. We hold ourselves against this crafted clarity. Some find fascination in their reflections, while others remain aloof. Yayoi Kusama’s “Infinity Rooms” capture the limitless potential of a mirrored universe. Within these spaces, one is multiplied into infinity—a metaphor for the nonbinary experience. Here, identity melts into endless reflection, forging a realm of continuous expansiveness, a world that mirrors its creators’ boundless imagination.
To be nonbinary is to defy the rigid confines of a binary mirror, to reject a singular, immutable frame. Ancient mirrors—those rippled obsidian shards—eschewed clarity. They embraced the blur of the body, the shifting face with every glance. Nonbinary existence is more akin to greyness (or, dare I say, gayness???): a spectrum, a continuous unfolding.
"They/them" pronouns serve as a linguistic mirror reflecting the shifting, the multiple, the uncontainable. These pronouns transcend mere words—they are spaces, pauses, openings. Much like grey, they don’t rush toward finality but dwell in the liminal, welcoming possibility. Using they/them pronouns is to inhabit this grey mirror—a reflection that erases boundaries between self and other, past and present, reflection and reality. Here, you’re not restricted to either/or but embraced in both/and. The mirror, like language, becomes porous. The self remains fluid, mutable.
Mark Rothko’s color field paintings, though perhaps unwittingly, capture the murkiness of gender. Rothko’s vast, cloudy expanses of color defy rigid boundaries, reveling in emotional depth and ambiguity. His canvases beckon viewers to lose themselves in a landscape of subtleties, evoking a sense of immersion in a space where definitions dissolve and emotions flow freely. Rothko’s colors bleed into one another, conjuring a purgatorical space where identity is fluid and ever-changing, much like the nonbinary (as I experience it).
Ana Mendieta’s “Untitled: Silueta” series adds another dimension to the conversation. Her ephemeral, site-specific works merge the self with the environment in profound ways, using the body both as a weapon and a reflection of nature. Her art speaks of transformation and presence—how the body can blend into and stand apart from nature. Mendieta’s use of natural elements creates a dialogue between form and formlessness, visibility and invisibility, echoing the grey space where definitions blur and the self becomes both integrated and expanded.
"They/them" pronouns function as a grey mirror, a reflection that is softer, less defined, and less final. They name the self in flux, in motion—like light passing over water or clouds parting in a grey sky. This linguistic space allows for ambiguity and multiplicity. Just as Rothko’s colors resist rigid boundaries and Mendieta’s ephemeral works blend with nature, these pronouns resist fixed labels, offering a reflection of the self that is ever-changing and expansive.
Being nonbinary means living in the grey, a realm where we’re called to embrace the uncertainty that art and mirrors have always hinted at. We don't ask the world for precision—because we know it’s a trap that narrows our existence. Instead, we look into ancient mirrors, those obsidian shards, which show us not in sharp detail but as something obscured and undefined, and somehow, more authentic. Or, like Kusama’s Infinity Rooms, we see ourselves multiplied—fragmented, yet infinite. Identity is less a fixed point and more a spectrum, a field of feeling that refuses to be pinned down.
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