Today, international singing(?) sensation Sam Smith [EDIT: not sure who he is… did he win The X Factor?] announced that from now on they wish to be referred to by the pronouns ‘they/them’. They posted on their Twitter feed: ‘After a lifetime of being at war with my gender I’ve decided to change my pronouns to THEY/THEM.’ You could almost feel the entire planet heave a sigh of relief. ‘Hooray! Hooray!’, the Earth’s inhabitants seemed be unwittingly emitting a joyous chorus, ‘Sam Smith has changed their pronouns!’ Ever since Sam’s birth [I don’t know when that was, but I’ve just remembered seeing him on The Ellen DeGeneres Show and he definitely did a song], each and every one of us have sensed something wrong. A collective intuition that a part of the world was off-kilter. A disturbance in the force. Now finally, all has been put right. The [I’m fairly sure he’s a singer so let’s just go with that] courageous minstrel Sam Smith has at last become at ease with their non-binaryness, shouting their pronouns from the metaphorical rooftops of social media and the celebrations can begin. Sam Smith is a plural now!

This is of course the most amazingly positive news, and a fantastic leap forward for genderqueer progressiveness. Someone as famous as Sam [OK. Have to admit I’m still struggling here, was he on American Idol?] coming out as non-binary will inspire anyone else out there who may have heard of them and is battling under the weight of their own inflated ego, to embrace their narcissism as if it were a sexual orientation. After all if we are unable to love ourselves, how can we be expected to be able to tell everyone else what is right and what is wrong with any sense of sanctimonious certainty?





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I have added my pronouns (HE/HIM) to my Twitter bio in solidarity with those whose sense of self-importance must at times be so overwhelming they find it difficult to talk about the complexities of their gender for hours at a time…but by Cthulhu, they still manage it, because they are not going to let the callous ignorance of bigotry win. Very much like being vegan, being non-binary appears to require the person in question to inform anyone within earshot of their chosen pronouns and lecture them in great detail on the emotional turmoil they once endured when some bigoted guy at the McDonald’s Drive-thru window refused to address them as ‘Zir/Zem’, so they demanded to speak to their superior and eventually, after making a song and dance on social media, got him fired. It must be exhausting. Imagine having to sustain that level of self-absorption for any length of time.

Yes, there is no doubt that being non-binary takes an enormous amount of effort. You have to choose a set of pronouns after obsessing for hours over your identity, educate bigots, decide whether or not to change your pronouns after finding out one of your friends has adopted a set of pronouns that are more exotic sounding than yours, educate more bigots and so on. Emos once thought they had it bad, which is utterly laughable these days.

Thankfully Sam, whoever they is, has inadvertently set in motion the wheels of change. By announcing they’s acceptance of them‘s own non-binary status, their have given us them’s blessing to continue with our journey towards a new dawn. A dawn where vanity can shine, where narcissists everywhere will be free to make up whatever pronouns they wish in an attempt to outdo each other when it comes to being genderqueer and proud.