Singer Shawn Mendes has apologized to singer Sam Smith for calling him the wrong pronoun while introducing Smith at the 2020 iHeartRadio Jingle Ball show on Thursday. Mendes referred to Smith as “he” instead of “they.”
“Oh @samsmith I’m so sorry for refferring[sic] to you as a ‘he’ for your jingle ball introduction,” wrote the 22-year-old singer on his Instagram Story on Friday, according to a report by Yahoo!. “It absolutely slipped my mind. Wont happen again. Sending you so much love ! Also you absolutely are one of the funniest people I’ve ever met.”
Smith accepted Mendes’ apology by taking to Instagram to write, “We’re all learning together. Happy holidays, all my love xx,” Smith added, including two hearts.
Last year, the Grammy winner announced that he had decided to change his pronouns to “they/them.”
“I’ve decided I am changing my pronouns to THEY/THEM ❤ after a lifetime of being at war with my gender I’ve decided to embrace myself for who I am, inside and out…” Smith tweeted.
“I understand there will be many mistakes and mis gendering but all I ask is you please please try,” Smith added in a follow-up tweet. “I hope you can see me like I see myself now. Thank you.”
In an interview with actress Jameela Jamil last year, Smith also talked about identifying as “non-binary/genderqueer,” reported Vanity Fair.
“I’ve always been very free in terms of thinking about sexuality, so I’ve just tried to change that into my thoughts on gender as well,” said Smith. “Non-binary/genderqueer is that you do not identify in a gender. You are a mixture of all different things. You are your own special creation.”
Smith also suggested he has been contemplating whether or not he wants to get a sex change — until discovering the “non-binary/genderqueer” term.
“I’ve sometimes sat and questioned, do I want a sex change? It’s something I still think about: ‘Do I want to?’ I don’t think it is,” Smith told Jamil. “When I saw the word non-binary, genderqueer, and I read into it, and I heard these people speaking, I was like, ‘Fuck, that is me.'”
You can follow Alana Mastrangelo on Facebook and Twitter at @ARmastrangelo, on Parler at @alana, and on Instagram.
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