Sometimes it's better to light a flamethrower than curse the darkness

I read a interesting piece this morning on language and gender. I don't agree with everything it says about language, but I like the distinction it makes between two things: gender-neutral language and non-binary exclusive language (that is, language that is exclusive to non-binary people, not language that is used to exclude non-binary people!).

Gender neutral language (shortened as GNL) has existed as long as language has existed. It’s for everyone and does not inherently mean or imply nonbinary-ness.

This is the kind of "singular they" that even bigots use constantly without even noticing it. When we say something like "someone left their jacket here," we're using gender-neutral language because by definition if we don't know who left their jacket, we don't know the gender of that person. This kind of "they" feels natural to English speakers; in linguistic terms, it is grammatical (which for linguists doesn't mean "is proper/correct" like you were probably taught grammar means when you were in school, it just means "is something a native speaker of that would say or understand").

Being nonbinary is something separate from generic gender-neutrality. [GNL] is a necessary tool for anyone who uses language but especially for anyone trying to ensure they refer to the nonbinary trans people in their lives and in the world properly. However, this is not the only sort of language that exists for this purpose.
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Nonbinary-exclusive language (shortened as NEL) is and new terms created intentionally for nonbinary trans people. There are many ways people do this — I myself tend to play with words by adding the letter “X” to them for this reason — and this is why sometimes you may come across words you’ve never seen before. It differs from GNL because instead of relying upon terms that could apply to anyone regardless of their gender, NEL refers specifically only to nonbinary trans people in the way that men and women already get to enjoy terms positively gendered for them. Not all nonbinary trans people have an interest in NEL, because not all trans people want to be capital O Out all the time. However, it is nice and good sometimes to know that you don’t have to grasp onto words that weren’t really made for you like a last minute addition, and that there are exclusive terms there if you want them.

Like the writer says, a comman way to indicate non-binariness in words is to put an x at the end of them; the x can't always be pronounced very easily in English words, but it acts like a wildcard. Some countries and U.S. states allow an X gender marker on things like driver's licenses and passports, as opposed to M or F. X is also the end of the honorific "Mx," which is widely understood as an equivalent of "Mr." or "Miss" or "Ms" (I think it is usually pronounced "mix" these days I think, but I first heard it as kinda "mux" and I think any sort of generic vowel sound will do there but people like "mix" as it's sorta like mixing the genders or something).

X can also be added to any number of other words. English is a language that hasn't had grammatical gender for a thousand years, but it has acquired lots of words from Latin, French and to an extent other Romance languages that have two genders and tend to end things with -o for masculine and -a for feminine (this is true of a lot of names; Antonio and Antonia for example but there are squillions more like that). So some words we English speakers use to refer to other people seem gendered even though the language isn't (with the exception of personal pronouns, and that's why they're a battleground for trans acceptance or bigotry).

And this happened yesterday to me! I finally fessed up to Facebook what a terrible time I'd been having mental-health-wise -- the missed exam, the endless extensions I needed on my essays, y'know -- to provide some context for the news that I'd gotten my grades for the whole semester. With the ghastly exception of the class I havne't even technically passed because I haven't done the exam yet, I got a 68 (i.e. About What I Expect, Perfectly Good) and for the most difficult essay I got 75, and a 74 in that class overall (i.e. Amazing, Unbelievable, Mind-Blowing).

So my friend Kat commented and she just said one word: "Bravx."

I hadn't seen it before, and when I later told her this she said "I’ve never seen it before, either. It was just the most obvious right word for the moment." It was because it contained all the kind acknowledgement of my achievement that "Bravo" or "Brava" would've done, but it also is this neat little nugget of affirmation.

I've always said, and it's still true, that any pronouns are fine for me but I do really love what this writer calls non-binary exclusive language (ironic maybe since I don't refer to myself as non-binary (though I don't mind if other people do; it's just a hair I like to split)): I'm changing my title to Mx. anywhere I can, and I wouldn't have minded or objected to Kat using an -a or -o ending at all, but that she didn't was a surprisingly meaningful gesture. Like this piece says, men and women get to have language that's just for them (like "bravo" or "brava"), so it feels good that I get to have this just for me.