I like to consider myself a wordsmith, someone who is fascinated by words and how they’re used. I love learning new words. I love the way words can make people cry, can make them laugh, can communicate almost anything you can think of. Words can shape the way we think about and view the world. They can move mountains.

In this case, one little word is moving a culture that was previously hidden into the light of day. This last week, the Oxford English Dictionary added a thousand new words to their repertoire. Among them are “YOLO” and “scrumdiddlyumptious”. But the word that has people buzzing is genderfluid.

Genderfluidity is now officially defined as “not wholly male or female; androgynous”. This is a term that is pretty familiar in most circles in the LGBTQIA+ community, but, until now, was fairly obscure everywhere else.

There are so many reasons I love this term. But my favorite reason is the simplicity of the word. It says, at the most basic, fundamental level, that gender is not a fixed concept. It runs on a spectrum, a spectrum that people can move across freely. And by spectrum, I don’t mean a straight line. I mean something more like a giant circle, in which people can move about as freely as swimming in a pool.

Now, the purpose of this article is not necessarily to debate the intricacies that are involved in gender, though it could certainly serve as a starting point for that, if you wish to discuss it (though, with me, that would be a long and involved conversation). No, the purpose of this article is to express my joy that this can even be a conversation. The fact that people are starting to talk about this, even starting to accept it, makes me giddy, makes me want to sing out to the world.

I believe the addition of genderfluid to the OED is significant because it finally shows that the conversation about gender is happening. For a very long time, the majority of conversations have been centered around sexuality, and while this is also super duper important and we need to keep having these discussions, we also need to start addressing the gender binary. We need to start acknowledging that gender is not a straight line, is not an either/or situation. Gender is fluid. Gender is dynamic and flexible. It does not need to stick to a strict progression of male to female, but can move all over the place in a big ball of wibbly wobbly, gendery wendery…stuff.

And, most of all, we need to start addressing the fact that people actually do identify as genderfluid. Or non-binary. Or agender. Or gender-noncomforming. Or any other number of gender identities previously left undiscussed. We need to start accepting that “they” can be used as a singular, and that people do use “they” as a pronoun.

Because language is always evolving. We don’t speak the same now as we did 100 years ago, or even 50 years ago. Language is always changing, adapting to the times and adjusting for new discoveries.

And, as far as I’m concerned, it seems to be moving in a very positive direction.