Amandla Stenberg's activism has always been inspiring, and now they're shining light on another issue: gender. Stenberg doesn't use female pronouns — at least, not exclusively. The 18-year-old spoke to People about their philosophy on their identity, and the concept of gender in general.
Basically, the Where Hands Touch star believes gender can be "pretty much whatever you want it to be." That's why they've never entirely been on board with pronouns in the first place.
"I tend to believe that gender as we’ve set it up in current-day society doesn’t actually exist,” they explained. "I’ve said before that I’m comfortable with using the pronouns ‘they’ or ‘them’ alongside ‘she’ and ‘her’ just because that’s a conversation that’s important to me."
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Being addressed with female pronouns has never been something the star has been adamant about.
"I don’t necessarily always subscribe to female pronouns just because I don’t think that pronouns are necessarily very meaningful," they continued.
It's so important that Stenberg keeps talking about these things, because so many people are listening. They've always had a refreshing perspective on things like their sexuality, as well as being Black in Hollywood, and they're thoughts everyone should hear.
"Appropriation occurs," they say in a video about Black hairstyles, "when a style leads to racist generalizations or stereotypes where it originated, but is deemed as high fashion, cool, or funny when the privileged take it for themselves."
Whether it's race, gender, or anything in between, Stenberg knows what's what.
"You don’t really have to conform to those constructs in order to be valid or be worth something," they told People. "It’s been such a blessing to watch people who care about what I have to say feel more comfortable in their identities because they see I’m out here doing my thing."
And that "thing" seems to be inspiring people to be exactly who they are. Keep up the important work!
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