Last year I joined several of my Vancity colleagues in a gender identity workshop delivered by Adrienne Smith, a transgender human rights activist and drug policy lawyer. Adrienne shared simple tips for fostering inclusive communities, especially for folks who identify as transgender, by getting more comfortable with gender-neutral pronouns (they/them). One of their recommendations was to give an inanimate object, like a bicycle, a gender-neutral name and use they/them/their pronouns when describing it. Two weeks after the workshop I bought a new bike (a Raleigh Clubman) and named them Waves. Here’s what I’m learning from using gender-neutral pronouns for my bike.

Meet Waves

The bikes in our family all have names. My oldest son named his bike Flames. My wife’s bike is called Mountain. The youngest boy named his bike Two Minutes because he “will get there in two minutes”. After getting some input from my kids – “the bike is blue and it rolls like a wave” – I took Adrienne’s advice and committed to using they/them pronouns to describe Waves. Here are a few examples of what that sounds like:

• “Be gentle with their chain when you clean it, please.”
• “Waves is very wet from this ride. Time to dry them off. And Daddy, too!”
• “They are faster than your fixed gear bike, Stewart.”
• “Waves had a tough month; their rear derailleur had to get rebuilt.”

Here are some inanimate objects that you can describe with gender-neutral pronouns:

• Favourite hat
• Phone
• Car
• Laptop
• Camp stove

Enjoy your practice! It’s simple and easy to apply in your work and life.

Get comfortable with being uncomfortable

As a straight, white, able-bodied man of privilege who strives to be an ally of folks who are marginalized, I think all the time about how important it is for me to be uncomfortable. One of the things that makes me uncomfortable is imagining myself misnaming/misidentifying a trans person. At the root of this is probably some uncertainty about whether I care more about offending someone or making me feel weird, which is totally normal and totally human.

You’ll know that your comfort with discomfort – and your improvement as an ally – is getting better when you correct a naming or identity mistake without making a big deal about it. For example, when I referred to a trans colleague (she/her pronouns) as “sir” I didn’t draw even more attention to the situation by shining an even brighter spotlight on her identity. Instead, I simply said “whoops, I’m very sorry about that and apologize for the impact that my words had on you” and then we moved on with the work.

My ability to authentically and caringly correct such a mistake is directly linked to what I’m learning from using gender-neutral pronouns for my bike. I’ve used the phrases “actually, Waves’s pronouns are they/them” or “Waves is a non-binary bicycle, so use gender-neutral pronouns to describe them, please” with my kids and friends many times. This is a simple and effective practice that helps to normalize how we speak about and with folks across the LGTBQ2S+ community.