The Pronoun Problem

As a writing parent, my kids tend to end up in my writing somehow or another. Both my kids are aware that they are in my book, Parenting Pauses: Life as a Deaf Parent. My youngest has been featured and talked about on my blog their whole life. And, of course, I talk about my kids on social media. It’s just something that comes naturally as a writer writing about life.

 

However, I am also the parent of children who are members of the LGBTQ community. My oldest is transgender and my youngest is gay. (I have both kids’ permission to talk about this publicly.) This means that, in some cases, pronouns are not always going to be the same.

 

Case in point: In the book, Totally Scared: The Complete Book on Haunted Houses, which I co-wrote with Martha Jette, I talk about my “daughter” and note the gender as “she/hers.” At this time in my oldest’s life, he did not come out as transgender. As far as I knew, my first child was a girl and referred to in the feminine. The book was published and life moved on.

 

Recently, however, I was putting together another paranormal book. This one is a short book of true ghost stories. In this ebook, I included an excerpt from Totally Scared, quoting some parts of it verbatim. This included excerpts containing my “daughter” – except, nowadays, “she” is a “he” and identified as much in other parts of the ebook. I tried to tiptoe around the pronoun issue in those later parts of the book, except that didn’t work in some cases. “He” was definitely there to stay.

 

When I gave the ebook a final read before sending it out for edits, I did notice this issue. I realized that it may cause some confusion. First my oldest is my “daughter” then my oldest is my “son.” To anyone unaware of why, this would make them wonder whatever happened to my little girl.

 

And before anybody says anything, I completely accept my oldest as transgender. I identify my oldest as “he/him” and refer to him by his new name.

 

Still, I wasn’t sure what the rule for this was, as far as editing and revising goes. So I asked my editor. I explained that I had discussed this with my oldest and got his permission to publicly share that he is transgender. My editor suggested that, after I get the manuscript back, just include a note about the pronoun change in the ebook.

 

Even so, this has made me realize that it’s quite an interesting situation for writers and editors. I mean, what are we supposed to do with past content that has identified someone by a gender that they no longer identify with? What about their dead names? What about them being portrayed in photos as a gender they no longer identify as? What are we supposed to do about all that?

 

I have run into this confusion with people on Facebook, when I share old pictures of my “daughter” who is now my “son.” I have had to explain it many times. It got to where I started to debate whether or not to share those pictures anymore because my oldest is on Facebook and I didn’t want to hurt him by sharing posts containing his dead name. I am still trying to figure that out. Meanwhile, I have been sharing the pictures and explaining when somebody asks.

 

My oldest is also on my personal blog. There are pictures there as well. What am I supposed to do about those? I don’t want to delete them. That’s my past! Those are my stories! I often use the blog to look up information we can no longer remember (like when we adopted our cat).

 

As far as books and writing go, I need to explore this issue further. However, for this particular ebook, I will follow my editor’s suggestions and just include a note. Hopefully that will be enough to avoid confusion for readers.