People and pronouns: Getting it right

Laverne Cox’s outspokenness for the transgender community has drawn celebration and insight from people of all sexual orientations.

The Pitt News covered her talk with a story and photograph that filled the front page of Tuesday’s issue, and we had a video online of her visit. We hoped this coverage would make people more aware of her message.

In the article on Cox, The Pitt News referred to a student poet who spoke at the event with an inaccurate pronoun. 

The article incorrectly used the pronoun “her” to refer to Sarita Brady — a transmasculine, non-binary student — whose preferred pronoun is “they.” A transmasculine person is born as female, but identifies as male more than female, and non-binary refers to any gender that is not exclusively male or female. 

We learned of the error early in the morning when our Twitter account received a barrage of tweets from @ButtSlayer1234.

One tweet read, “today is a day where trans individuals proudly claim their identities yet you still can’t respect it #transdayofvisibility.”

Another read, “#TransDayOfVisibility is TODAY, maybe you should pay attention to the trans people around you #SaveALife.” 

The influx of tweets drew an audience, but was also disconcerting to a staff that wanted to be part of a solution and to educate people, not offend them.

Once The Pitt News became aware of the potential inaccuracy, our editors worked to fact-check it, ultimately speaking with Brady over the phone to identify their preferred pronoun. 

It is never the intention of The Pitt News to isolate or discriminate against anyone based on sex, gender, race or any community with which they may identify. 

During the conversation with Brady, they explained that people should ask, “What’s your name and preferred pronoun?”

In this case, we did not.

“To call a transmasculine person a ‘she’ or a transfeminine person a ‘he’ is kind of a violation of the thing he or she is rejecting, and so it feels incredibly strange,” Brady said. 

“Don’t assume — that’s the motto of the LGBTQ community. Never assume gender, never assume pronouns, never assume sexuality,” they added.

We’re in a transitional time when our generation is reaching new heights in social, economic and political equality for minority groups — though we have significant gaps to fill. 

Sometimes the depth of the issues, however, outpaces our learning curve. When this is the case, The Pitt News hopes students will engage in a discussion that we relay to the student body through letters to the editor and more news stories.

As a student newspaper, we recognize the role of the media in shaping attitudes towards minority communities. A recent series by the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette embodied the role of the media in sharing stories of the transgender community with the public. 

As student journalists, there are certain standards to which we adhere. If readers criticize us through our Twitter account, it’s standard to investigate the concerns and then to reply privately or in an editorial like this one.

At The Pitt News, we consult the Associated Press stylebook to standardize many elements of our writing. The stylebook has not yet adopted the pronoun “they” to refer to a single person. However, we have always reserved the right to break with the stylebook, and, in this case, we have decided to do so. 

We will adopt the singular “they” as our official in-house style from here on out, and we hope to make the term more common in our conversations. 

Behind the grayscale staff box at The Pitt News are feminists, sexual assault victims, students who are out and proud and human beings working to inform the masses and advocate for justice. We care, and we hear you. 

Whatever your pronoun, let us work together to address language that hasn’t yet caught up with a culture that’s growing and changing.