A He/him
lesbian is a
lesbian who uses he/him pronouns despite the two concepts conflicting with each other. Many will claim this is because he/him lesbians feel a sense of disconnect from womanhood/femininity, or more commonly, "pronouns don'
t equal
gender." However, this statement is incorrect due to the fact that pronoun variety exists for the sole reason of indicating gender identity in the context of a conversation. If pronouns were only meant for specifying a person completely outside of
gender, then this variety (he/him, she/her, they/them, etc) simply wouldn'
t exist, and there would only be one universal set of pronouns.
Another way
people attempt to justify he/him lesbians is by using examples of he/him lesbians from the past, in which the historical context has been adapted and altered, for their convenience. Historical he/him lesbians did not use he/him pronouns because they preferred it that way, but rather they did this as a safety mechanism. This is because, in more
homophobic times, lesbians would commonly have one partner present as male in order to appear as a heterosexual couple, as to not get hate crimed out in public. This wasn't a form of self-expression, this was a safety method.
In
short, he/him lesbians are harmful to lesbians as they suggest that lesbians can be attracted to men if they are attracted to he/him lesbians (who literally call themselves "he", a male pronoun).
Person A: "I'm a he/him
lesbian."
Person B: "So you're a
woman......who goes by he/him?"
Person A: "Yes."
Person B: "But he/him suggests the user is male, that's why it's a set of pronouns. It's for male-identifying people."
Person A: "Pronouns don'
t equal gender."
Person B: "So then why have different pronouns at all? There are different pronouns because they were made to represent different genders. If pronouns don'
t include gender than why isn'
t there just one universal set of pronouns? It doesn't make sense."
