God's pronouns?

As far as I can recall I have only been misgendered once. I was in a pub with Jane, her sisters and mum—back in the days of my long hair. As the server approached they breezily looked around the table and announced, "What can I get you ladies?" Jane and her sisters all looked at me. The server realized his mistake, but did not correct it. He bravely and red-facedly carried on. Outwardly, I was faintly amused, but something inside protested, "Do I look like a girl?" I wanted to do something masculine to prove my point. I ordered a beer. I really wanted a red wine. For a few seconds we all felt uncomfortable, but the moment passed and we enjoyed the evening.

Gender identity matters. It's only when that identity is challenged, misunderstood, or threatened that it comes into sharp focus. Increasingly, as a society, we are becoming aware that not everyone fits neatly in the gender binary of male and female, he and she. For those who are gender nonconforming, or gender queer, being misgendered can be quite painful, dismissive and sometimes cruel—far more so than the moment of discomfort for a cis-gendered guy with long hair. One non-binary person in a recent article said, "my skin crawls when I am misgendered." Why would you want to do that to someone?

Because gender identity matters, so do pronouns. To become aware of pronouns is an act of lovingkindness, and so far as I can I try to address folk with the pronouns they prefer. It's not always easy, so socialized have we been to the binary of he/she and the assumptions we make based on how a person presents. I've made my mistakes and when I realize it, I try to correct them. 

If anyone wants a philosophical basis for treating people with this small kindness, look no further than Immanuel Kant's categorical imperative to treat all persons as ends in themselves and not as means to an end. If you tell me your preferred pronoun is she/he/they, if I respect you as an end and not as a means—as an infinitely valuable person in your own right—then why would I not use your chosen pronoun? Sensitivity, receptivity and responsiveness to gender nonconforming people are acts of love.

Some twenty-plus years ago, Jane and I had become sensitized to the way God-language was almost totally masculine. God's pronouns were he/him, and more unfortunately He/Him—the capitalization somehow lending strength to the masculinity. Along with the gendered pronouns came the gendered descriptors: all powerful, dominant, sovereign, Lord, judge, potentate, ruler, king. God was ineluctably male, and God's virtues were the virtues of the warrior king, the masculine ruler. The feminine was excluded. Such exclusively male language and images for God reflected patriarchal culture where women were non-persons, the mere property of men.

Through the good graces of feminist theologians many of the feminine images of God in the Bible were re-discovered: God giving birth, re-birth, from the womb of Godself, Spirit as feminine, God nurturing her children at the breast, a mother bird tenderly gathering her children under her wings. When we compiled the liturgy for our community in the early 2000s we removed almost all gendered language for God. The few times we used gendered pronouns we used "she" as the imagery of God lent itself to the feminine. She gives birth in a way that he cannot. To use "she" for God also disrupts Sunday school and stained glass images of the white-bearded male. It is only when with facility you can refer to God as "she" that you escape the tyranny of the masculine God, with all its associations of the great all-seeing, all-knowing, all-powerful  male in the sky. At the time, when we wrote our liturgy, "they" was not really available to us, though likely today we might use "they" for God. We changed the language of "Father" to "Father-Mother," to suggest that God is both mother and father to God's children. In other words, God is non-binary, though again that language was not available to us then. "God Almighty" became for us "God All-loving."

I have wondered if we asked God for God's preferred pronouns what God would say. God's answer to Moses was "I am that I am," or something to that effect. I might add, "But I'm definitely not He!"

Sensitivity and kindness to all today,

+Ab. Andy (he/him)