Him, her, them, or none: misgendering and degendering of transgender individuals

ABSTRACT

Across three studies people miscategorised transgender individuals through degendering (abstention of pronouns) and misgendering (using gender inconsistent pronouns). Participants described and evaluated an individual who either disclosed a transgender identity or did not in an interpersonal context. In Study 1 (N = 203), men were more likely to misgender a woman who identified as transgender (vs. did not) and were less likely to explicitly categorise her as a woman. In Studies 2 (N = 600) and 3 (N = 593), participants were more likely to misgender and degender transgender women and men (vs. controls). In Study 3, participants who learned a person’s pronoun were less likely to degender transgender women. However, providing pronouns did not result in significantly less misgendering overall, nor did it mitigate the degendering of transgender men. Misgendering was a stronger predictor of social connectedness and social categorisation (Study 1) than explicit gender inconsistent categorisations. Misgendering is an insidious indirect form of miscategorisation, more strongly predicting negative social consequences than direct explicit categorisation. While listing one’s pronouns mitigates some pronoun disparities, it is not a cure-all for degendering and misgendering.

KEYWORDS:

• Transgender
• pronouns
• social categorisation
• language

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Data availability statement

The data described in this article are openly available in the Open Science Framework at https://osf.io/yqfhj/?view_only=1da5c19a15554349b0547d77880cd69b.

Open scholarship

This article has earned the Center for Open Science badges for Open Data, Open Materials and Preregistered. The data and materials are openly accessible at https://osf.io/yqfhj/?view_only=1da5c19a15554349b0547d77880cd69b.

Correction Statement

This article has been corrected with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Notes

1. We use the word ‘consistent’ here and throughout to refer to the pronouns and category labels typically associated with a gender (e.g. ‘she’ when referring to someone who identifies as a woman and ‘he’ when referring to someone who identifies as a man). We acknowledge that this language choice is imperfect, as not everyone with the same gender identity uses the same pronouns.

2. Duration of categorisation results can be found for all studies on OSF. Participants also completed a second categorisation task in which they categorised the target as a man or woman. This second item was beyond the scope of the manuscript, was not analysed further, and was not included in subsequent studies.

3. We conducted an additional study replicating these findings in a workplace context. Summary of this replication can be found on OSF.

4. We again examined whether indirect categorisation uniquely predicted social connectedness when controlling for direct categorisation. The results replicated the findings from Study 1 and can be found on OSF.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Kristina Howansky

Kristina Howansky, PhD, is an Assistant Professor of Psychology at St. Mary’s College of Maryland. Her research broadly investigates the malleability of how people think about and perceive others and themselves. Moreover, she examines the downstream consequences of cognitive and perceptual biases for large-scale social issues. Her research seeks to impact both psychological theory and social justice.

Natalie Wittlin

Natalie Wittlin, PhD, is a recent social psychology PhD candidate at Yale University. Her research explores beliefs about gender and sexual orientation, as well as how those beliefs relate to physical and mental health outcomes. Through this work, she seeks to offer novel insights into the psychological processes that impact those who are marginalized, discriminated against, or restricted on the basis of their gender and/or sexual orientation.

Darla Bonagura

Darla Bonagura, BA, is a PhD student at the University of Tennessee-Knoxville. Her research investigates how stereotypes and cognitive biases influence prejudice and discrimination towards individuals based on their gender, race, and sexual orientation. She’s also interested in interpersonal, legal, and health outcomes of prejudice towards LGBTQ+ people. 

Shana Cole

Shana Cole, PhD, is an Assistant Professor of Psychology at Rutgers University and director of the Regulation, Action, and Motivated Perception Lab. Her research examinees the underlying cognitive, perceptual, and affective processes that enable successful goal pursuit. Her research spans many goal domains to provide insight into the tools that enable people to mitigate threats, attain rewards, and resist temptations.