In 2022 after much thought, I changed my pronouns. I have identified as gender fluid since the days when it took several paragraphs to explain, and I am quite happy that we now have a simple way of describing it. But as pronouns have become more important I have been left with a dilemma.
In the 1980s when I was at university ‘he’ was still the default in almost all our textbooks, monographs, articles and essays. Insisting on ‘she’ or s/he’ was a radical act.
This is a nice example I saw at the Disability and Design exhibit at the V&A in 2025. This is directed to women yet it uses the universal ‘he’.
As such, I was content with ‘she’. On one level I still am, in that in terms of the way I am treated in the world, and the people I identify with, I am part of the class, ‘woman’.
In the last decade, however, pronouns have come to mean gender identity. I have no objection but it left me struggling; while my class is woman, my gender identity is not; in addition, ‘they’ has come to indicate non-binary, which is not how I feel.
With this in mind, I prefer that people in the academic and convention/critical world either use my name (Farah or Farah Mendlesohn)–preferably having checked the spelling first!–or if the sentence gets too unwieldy, use they. That said, as I am gender fluid, I won’t get too upset (and haven’t in the past when I got he a lot from people who hadn’t met me) if you get it wrong. For other people it matters intensely and we all need to respect that. I happen to have such a weak and flexible (context responsive) sense of gender identity that it doesn’t grate much.
FJM, 15 July 2025
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Farah Mendlesohn was Professor and Head of Department of English and Media at Anglia Ruskin University from 2012-2017, then Associate Dean of Recruitment at Staffordshire University, and is now Emerita Professor at Anglia Ruskin University.
Most significant work:
- The Cambridge Companion to Science Fiction, 2005 with Edward James
- Rhetorics of Fantasy (2009),
- The Inter-galactic Playground: A Critical Study of Children’s and Teens’ Science Fiction (McFarland)
- Diana Wynne Jones: The Fantastic Tradition and Children’s Literature (Routledge).
- Children’s Fantasy Literature: An Introduction, written with long time colleague Professor Michael M. Levy won the World Fantasy Award in 2017.
- The Pleasant Profession of Robert A. Heinlein, 2019
- Creating Memory: Historical Fiction and the English Civil Wars, 2020.
- Forthcoming: Considering the Female Man, by Joanna Russ, or, as the Bear Swore, 2026.
Service:
- Editor, Foundation: the International Review of Science Fiction,2001-2007
- Chair of the Science Fiction Foundation, 2004-2007
- President of the International Association of the Fantastic in the Arts from 2008-2011
- Treasurer of the BSFA, 2021-2026.
- Head of Program for Discon III, World Science Fiction Convention, Washington, 2021.
- Convenor of the new Historical Fictions Research Network, Anglia Ruskin University, February 2016; the National Maritime Museum 2017; Trentham, Stoke-On-Trent, 2018; Manchester 2019; Online 2020 & 2021.
- Director of Exhibits for Loncon3, the 72nd Science Fiction World Convention, Excel Centre, London in 2014.
- 2009 Programme Director for Anticipation, World Science Fiction Convention, Montreal.
- John W. Campbell Award Juror, 2003 and 2004.
- Judge for 2003 Francelia Butler Conference Prize at Hollins College, Roanoke, VA
- James Tiptree Jr. Award Juror, 2002.
- Arthur C. Clarke Award Judge, 1997 and 1998.
Farah Mendlesohn 