Ze: PGPs at Harvard

This year has seen a continuation and expansion of efforts by Harvard groups to recognize, accommodate, and spread awareness about preferred gender pronouns through workshops, discussions, and the use of PGPs at club meetings.

Van Bailey, director of the office of BGLTQ student life, stresses the importance of respecting pronoun preferences in creating gender inclusivity. “I absolutely support a community-driven and centered model that creates safer spaces for all genders, including using pronouns that people request and align with their identities,”

Bailey wrote in an emailed statement. “It’s critical to use them in all spaces and to assume a person’s gender based upon their presentation or expression.”

One such effort is the Undergraduate Council’s “Side by Side” program, launched in March, which aims to “normalize” the conversation around gender diversity and reach out to groups who are traditionally less involved in gender inclusivity movements, according to Side by Side founder and UC representative Michelle S. Lee ’16.

“I wanted to emphasize, ‘How can we make Harvard a more safe and inclusive place for all genders?’” says Lee, an inactive Crimson news editor, who was inspired in part by gender imbalances that she observed in the UC.

The campaign, which kicked off with panel events with a number of speakers including Bailey, also features an ongoing outreach effort to student groups on campus. In these meetings, “Side by Side” representatives work with club and group leaders to create a set of pledges and goals to make those groups more gender inclusive.

Some of those pledges, Lee says, include starting meetings and introductions with discussion of preferred gender pronouns and attending the Women’s Center’s Gender 101 workshop and iLab’s gender inclusivity campaign.

“We’ve been able to hear a lot of voices who aren’t normally involved, and I think that’s in the spirit of allyship,” Lee says of the campaign, which has so far expanded to include more than 40 student groups.

Lee also emphasizes the importance of introducing the concept and practices of preferred gender pronouns to freshmen at the start of the year, a philosophy which has been embraced by the Peer Advising Fellow program. According to Ellie N. Bridge ’17, after going through gender inclusivity workshops and lectures themselves, PAFs are “strongly encouraged” to incorporate PGPs into entryway meetings with freshmen, especially early on.

“I think the efforts that we’re making are really, really important in being all-inclusive,” Bridge says. PAFs are encouraged to include their own pronouns at the start of entryway meetings, “just sort of making it part of your introduction.”

Even if freshmen find introductions with notes on pronoun use a little awkward or unusual, the impact can be more than worth it, Bridge says. Introducing freshmen to PGPs creates a “comfortable environment,” she says, for students who prefer nonbinary pronouns. It also gives students who haven’t previously been exposed to the concepts of nonbinary gender and preferred pronouns the opportunity to see those things in action.

“It’s not just about the people who are using unconventional forms of gender pronouns,” Bridges says. “It’s important to them, but it’s more important to normalize that for people [who] live their lives assuming the world exists in male/female. It’s about normalizing that spectrum.”

Jarrod R. Wetzel-Brown ’17, a PAF, also points to the program’s mid-year and endof- the-year surveys, which include a diversity of gender options for participants and ask if freshmen feel that their PAFs have respected their preferred pronouns.

“We think it’s important to make sure everyone feels included, and the very limited barriers of gender don’t impose themselves on students and make the students feel oppressed in an academic environment,” says Wetzel-Brown.

But full incorporation of preferred pronoun use still has a long way to go. Bridge says that the efforts of the PAF program, while positive, generally don’t extend beyond the first weeks of the school year.

For Wetzel-Brown, repetition of the PGP introduction at every study break, and, ideally, in the classroom, would be key steps in “streamlining the process the whole year through.”

And, says Lee, fully normalizing a spectrum of gender pronouns will take time.

“Understanding that some people may not want to be identified as ‘he’ or ‘she,’ and they should definitely still be respected and not have to feel like they’re uncomfortable, is something that’s not going to happen overnight,” she says. “It’s sometimes difficult to bring up, but I think if there are individuals who are empowered to step up it will eventually become more comfortable to more and more people.”