The Politics of Misgendering Black Queer and Trans People

By: Maya Williams

As a nonbinary feminine person who uses ey/em, they/them, and she/her pronouns, I navigate misgendering—the act of being called by incorrect pronouns or phrases that do not align with a person’s gender identity—in complex ways.

Usually, when a white person calls me “girl,” I feel hypervigilance arise in my body. I feel a lack of comfort and a lack of safety. In those moments, I can’t help but think to myself, “With all of the privilege you have in navigating your own gender identity, cis and trans, and the amount of access to information you have compared to marginalized communities, what gives you the right to call me what I don’t want you to call me?” 

I only trust trans-affirming Black people to call me “girl,” “sis,” “mama,” , or other terms of endearment. I know they’re trans-affirming when they don’t use the terms in the cis-normative way of trying to align me with their gender-specific performance or when they use more of my pronouns, and not just my feminine ones. This is why the same words feel affirming in one dynamic and violent in another. 

When I’m spoken to by someone who sees me fully, there’s a calmness in my body; a euphoria in my body; a sense of belonging.  I feel especially happy on the receiving end of honey roasts or listening to tea being spilled as trans and nonbinary loved ones exclaim to me, “Ooooh, girl!” It’s like a hug through words. 

Often, I don’t trust Black folks who are ready to misgender me and/or only witness what they want to perceive of me being assigned female at birth. However, I will admit, I tend to be more lenient with Black folks who misgender me. 

RELATED: Learning to love my androgynous and masculine Black womanhood

I know there are many gender neutral options available in African American Vernacular English (AAVE). “Twin” and “fam” are a couple of examples. I’m especially fond of “homie.” When those words come out of a trans-affirming Black person’s mouth, they feel gender neutral to me. This way of communicating is an extension of my femininity as a nonbinary person beyond the usual spectrum of gender. It feels gender and racially affirming at the same time for my nonbinary femininity and my Blackness. 

When colonizers have refused to see the divinity of Black people’s genders, cis and trans, every name we choose to call ourselves for us feels right as a form of reclamation in our bodies and spirits. Especially after colonizers have caused injury to our bodies and spirits in chattel slavery, western medicine, prison-industrial systems, and more. Many of these injuries are still present today. 

When Black people misgender me, I feel disappointment arise in my body. A sense of defeatedness. But I also feel a readiness to give grace. Sometimes a sense of hopefulness if I can give the Black person the benefit of the doubt. 

I can’t speak for other racialized communities, but the queerphobia and transphobia present in Black communities stems from the colonialism of white Christian Europeans that placed those forms of bigotry within our communities through  violence. As a way of self-preservation, respectability politics, and conservative-leaning religiosity, cisgender heterosexual Black people have strong impulses to maintain that violence by erasing Black queer and trans people from conversation and existence. K.B. Brookins makes an excellent point in their memoir Pretty that our communities’ excuses won’t make us free. But, for me, it  does give me more patience. 

RELATED: I thought my transness would betray my Blackness. I was wrong.

Sometimes I try a gentle approach when correcting a Black person, especially a Black family member, on my multiple pronouns or how I don’t find it affirming to be called a “lady.” When this happens, the hypervigilance I was hoping to be rid of returns once again to my body. Sometimes, I don’t have the energy to correct a Black person at all. In those moments, I feel like I’m giving up on myself because of the people refusing to see me. 

Mostly, the labor of correcting people about my pronouns depends on my capacity on that day. My capacity could either feel light and something we can move on from as long as they know not to make the mistake again.  Or, it could feel heavy after a long day or week of being perceived as something that I’m not. As much as I want to believe Black people ought to know better when it comes to making sure all marginalized people feel affirmed, it doesn’t always happen that way. 

It sucks to have the compounded lack of affirmation for myself gender-wise and race-wise. At least Black people can see a part of me. White people often refuse to see any of me. There’s a point to my lack of patience there.   

Most of the time, people, regardless of racial background,  mean well when they make a mistake in how they refer to me. I want to believe these people intend to be much better than what they share in their first impressions or other future interactions with me and others like me. I want the feeling of disappointment and defeatedness to not come up in my body again. But, I am always ready for it anyway.

Bio: Maya Williams (ey/they/she) is a religious Black multiracial nonbinary suicide survivor who served as Portland, Maine’s seventh poet laureate for a 2021-2024 term. Maya has also contributed prose to venues such as Black Youth Project, LGBTQ Nation, The Rumpus, Black Girl Nerds, TalkDeath, MetroUK, and more. Follow more of eir work at mayawilliamspoet.com.