128. THE QUEEN IS DEAD - Long Live The King
As Britain comes to terms with the loss of its longest reigning monarch, Queen Elizabeth II, who died on Thursday, I was struck by the immediacy of transition from Queen to King. In an instance the previous settled gender of certain phrases - our national anthem, ‘God save the Queen’, prayers within the Church of England asking to ‘replenish her with the grace of thy Holy Spirit, that she may always incline to thy will’, the pledges taken by members of parliament to ‘be faithful and bear true allegiance to Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth, her heirs and successors’ - had to update and adapt. God save the King. Replenish him with the grace of thy Holy Spirit , that he may always incline to thy will. Be faithful and bear true allegiance to His Majesty King Charles, his heirs and successors.
It was a little jarring at first, watching the news, to hear the phrase ‘King Charles’ and them talking about ‘his majesty’ after a lifetime of Queen Elizabeth. I watched as I cooked my dinner, processing the news of the Queen’s death as I smashed up some avocados and fried up some eggs. By the time my meal was made, however - a matter of a few minutes - the strangeness of the language change no longer felt strange. His majesty it was. King not Queen. Transition complete.
The new Prime Minister, Liz Truss, came on the screen to give her condolences to His Majesty, and, were the Queen’s death to have taken place just a week before, the sentence I have just written would have said ‘the Prime Minister, Boris Johnson, came on the screen to give his condolences’. Another gender swap, this time from him to her. Boris to Liz. Elizabeth to Charles.
As I continued watching the news, I noted how none of the presenters seemed too trouble by the new pronouns they were using to refer to either the monarch or the Prime Minister. None of the commentators on Twitter or the talking heads being interviewed stumbled or found it tricky. The few people who did catch themselves falling into old habits of language throughout the night caught themselves quickly, corrected themselves for their mistake, and got it right on a second attempt. We forgave them because we understood the change was something new, as we will continue to forgive those over the next few days who might continue to struggle to break old habits. We understood the difficulty and we appreciated their effort for trying. Together, we transitioned through the language change and got used to the new way of speaking. By Friday morning the new pronouns were our new normal. The nation had learned to adapt. As I write this, English football have cancelled all scheduled matches for the weekend, but I’m sure next time the Lionesses, or the Lions, represent their country we shall all be effortlessly singing along to ‘God save our gracious King’ without missing a beat, just as the commentators - so used to talking previously only about men’s football - learnt swiftly to speak about how she passed the ball to the player on her left instead of how he did it.
We learn to change pronouns and genders all the time, with little effort. We adapt to what is newly correct in the face of fluid and evolving circumstances. She brought football home and he is now the monarch. A King and not a Queen. A Lioness and not a Lion. So as I watched the news and ate my dinner on Thursday I wondered why so many of those now bowing and scraping to shout ‘long live the King’ and ‘long may he reign’ were those very same people who routinely scoff at the request to respect new gender pronouns when used by transgender people?
If you can pivot effortless from Queen to King, Lion to Lioness, your hesitation at calling someone you once knew as him ‘her’, or someone you once knew as her, ‘him’ (or your discomfort at learning how to call either of them ‘they’) can be down to one thing only: prejudice. An unwillingness to bother because you just don’t want to.
It isn’t difficult. It isn’t even strange. You do it all the time. Your football team, your prime minister, even your monarch have all been fluid in their gender throughout this year and you have all done very well at adapting to whatever the correct term is each week. Is it really too much to ask that you adapt similarly to those in the LGBTQ+ community who are asking you to do the same for them?
Author: DaN McKee (he/him)
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