Jameela Jamil Finds Herself in Hot Waters

Jameela Jamil upset members of the LGBTQ+ community with misgendering faux pas

The Good Place star, Jameela Jamil, found herself in hot waters on Twitter last week with some members of the LGBTQIA+ community. Particularly, Jamil’s comments upset transgender individuals by making some hasty comments towards the non-binary sphere of the community, comments which appeared far from thought through. 

While Jamil came out as a member of the LGBTQIA+ community herself in 2020 and has been a vocal ally on social media and through her work, people weren’t happy with the advice she offered to trans and non-binary individuals.

Jamil tweeted: “I accidentally misgendered someone who was rude to me on here because I did not know they were NB [Non-Binary]. I instantly corrected myself, but NOBODY reads your bios people. *PLEASE* include your pronouns in your name on here to prevent misunderstandings/offence if it’s important to you.”

And, in response to herself, “OBVIOUSLY sorry for making this innocent mistake. But, if we don’t do more to prevent this mistake it will likely keep happening, which is bad for everyone. Put pronouns in your names. I’ve just done that with mine. It took two seconds.”

Whilst Jamil may have tweeted this with seemingly innocent and good-natured intentions, it appears as though non-binary individuals (and even cisgendered allies!) thought it to be rather tone-deaf. The issue lies within the somewhat demanding instruction, whilst some non-binary individuals may wish to make their pronouns more accessible, this statement places blame on the transgender individual for being misgendered, rather than Jamil. For some, this felt like the incorrect route 

One user [@sss-rikka on Twitter] tweeted, “I’m glad that you’re apologising, but you’re putting the blame on the person you misgendered by saying that they aren’t presenting the information in a way that works best for you. If you want to be an ally, then own the blame fully yourself and take an extra second to check the bio.”