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Saving the World One Pronoun at a Time
Before the smoke has even cleared in culture wars surrounding gay marriage, LGBT culture warriors have decided now is the ideal time for a new offensive. The oft-forgotten T (transgendered) in the LGBT is the new front for the champions of the eternally offended. Everywhere you look you can see shots fired on this new battlefield. With calls for Kevin Williamson to be fired from publications he doesn’t even work for, and cards being pulled from a game whose only purpose is literally to be offensive, I can easily spot the eventual winner of this contest. And though I am not (as far as I am aware) Italian, I can jump ship to the winning side as quickly as the next man.
Unlike the gay marriage debate, where issues such as tax status and spousal benefits rule the day, the transgender wars center around bathrooms and how you are to be addressed by others. Kevin’s mistake was stating the biological fact that Laverne Cox is a man. As my new allies inform me, this is hateful and indeed “violence” against transgendered people. I blame kindergarten teachers who have for years trained children to “use their words” as opposed to violence, when apparently, there is no distinction to be drawn between the two.
With no real demands even resembling that of the civil rights variety, what exactly does transgenderism require of society at large? The answer would appear to be our indulgence. If Bradley Manning says he’s now Chelsea Manning, it is incumbent upon all of us to pretend this is true. If not, he might just hurt himself. It is a hostage standoff reminiscent of Blazing Saddles, where Cleavon Little escapes an angry mob by holding a gun to his own head.
It all seems simple enough. If a person wants to be called a woman, call them a woman. However things get complicated rather quickly, as demonstrated by Facebook’s 51 gender options. Where once physical appearance served to accurately gauge a person’s gender 99% of the time (sorry Pat), when gender identity is “fluid” and self-determined, how is anyone to know how others wish to be addressed? Permanent “Hello, my gender is: Cis Male” tags seem clumsy and impractical.
Enter the gender neutral pronoun.
It was an obvious solution really. Simply do away with any and all references to gender in our speech, and this problem solves itself. Our rescuers come in the form of “they”, “it”, and “one.” The future is an egalitarian paradise, where every person is referred to in a uniform and drearily bland fashion.
But how can I help usher in this brave new world where belief trumps reality, and words are chosen with extreme care in order to pacify those who cry the loudest in our society?
As efforts to convert the United States to the metric system demonstrate, Americans are highly resistant to unnecessary frivolous dull positive changes forced upon them by their betters. Convincing the entire populace to get on board with our gender-neutral locomotive of justice, will require a concerted effort.
As such, I have begun the arduous, yet important task of converting the great works of literature into gender neutral language. It is a difficult labor, as English lacks some of the gender neutral pronouns that are required for such a conversion. “It” and “one” are often insufficient when a sentence references a name, e.g., Troy loved its pet giraffe. Of course the giraffe is his, but how can we convey this without committing violence against transgendered people?
Since personal pronouns always describe a specific human being, and for the entirety of human history there were only two check boxes on the gender identity form, our forbears never conceived of the need for a gender-neutral personal pronoun designed for speaking of someone but not to them. Such foresight would have required the prediction of gender-neutral human beings. How they failed to anticipate this is a mystery for the ages.
Due to their lack of vision, we are now saddled with harmful words such as “his” and “hers,” not to mention the ever-offending suffix of “man.” Anchorperson and spokesperson are the terms of the future, and have been since the early ’70s. Yet we still have no way of addressing our missing gender-neutral pronouns.
Though this entire situation is clearly an argument in favor of Esperanto, a somewhat less ambitious solution is to simply make up some new pronouns. Vancouver has decreed that children may request to be referred to by “xe, xem and xyr” instead of the gender-binary terms “he or she,” “him or her” and “his or hers.” Armed with these new terms, and others such as “nibbling” to replace familial relations such as niece and nephew, I can now recreate the classics without allowing that hack Shakespeare to wantonly commit violence against transgendered people.
Some may call this effort unnecessary, however I beg to differ. Do we truly know Hamlet’s gender identity? Xyr love of Ophelia tells us little, as xe may well have been a transperson of the “MTF” persuasion who carried the victimhood double whammy of also being a lesbian. Indeed, Hamlet’s most famous quote would seem to disagree with Kevin Williamson’s assessment that language cannot alter reality. To be pangendered or not to be pangendered, that’s the real question.
Here is a sneak peak at the new, non-offensive Hamlet.
HAMLET: You, how like you this play?
GERTRUDE: The person protests too much, methinks.
HAMLET: Oh, but xe’ll keep xem word.
CLAUDIUS: Have you heard the argument? Is there no offense in ’t?
HAMLET: No, no, they do but jest. Poison in jest. No offense i’ th’ world.
CLAUDIUS: What do you call the play?
HAMLET: The Mousetrap. Marry, how? Tropically. This play is the image of a murder done in Vienna. Gonzago is the ruler’s name, xyr spouse Baptista. You shall see anon. ‘Tis a knavish piece of work, but what o’ that? Your majesty and we that have free souls, it touches us not. Let the galled jade wince, our withers are unwrung.
Enter LUCIANUS
This is one Lucianus, nibbling to the king.
OPHELIA: You are as good as a chorus, my person who exercises control over others.
Of course, gender identity is only the beginning. If self-belief in a concept that stands in defiance of reality is sufficient to force others to change the way they address you, what is the limiting principle? I, for example, have always felt I was born to English nobility in the 14th century.
I will expect each of you to refer to me as “Lord Regent” from now on. If you decline, I must warn you that medieval nobility tend towards instability, and I may react badly to your refusal to indulge my self-identification.
So fall in line on the subject of gender identity, everyone. Besides, it is well known that gender is merely a social construct.
“But Lord Regent” you say, “the theory of social constructionism is itself a social construct. Since social constructs are baseless, the concept invalidates itself.”
To point this out is clearly transphobic. Or perhaps it’s sexist and possibly racist. Or… well, just pick one. It doesn’t really matter which, as long as you shut up.
Published in General
Actually, I don’t mind this proposal. Having a separate designation for “looks like a man, feels like a woman” would at least better reflect reality and reduce confusion than the alternative.
If someone with a Y chromosome insists on being called Jessica, I would much rather refer to that person as “xyr” than “her” – at least the former acknowledges that biology does, indeed, play some sort of role.
Also, is that Sarah Michelle Geller, or just a look-alike?
Won’t last though. Next they will say because it singles out those who are transgendered, it is “non-inclusive”. They will eventually insists that all gender pronouns be replaced with neutral ones in school.
I agree. I don’t doubt that there are a small number of people with Y chromosomes whose brains are indeed wired like a female (and vice-versa). And life can’t be fun for them.
But it would be much better to create a sub-category of gender for these people than to simply ignore what have been the defining criteria of gender since the dawn of men for the sake of a tiny minority. And similarly, instead of pretending that biology doesn’t matter or that they can wish their problems away, we should try to help them come to grips with their own reality.
Of course they would. But even if formal, PC society moves to neutral pronouns, people will simply come up with new gender-specific ones for their own private conversations.
Language, like the free market, has a weird way of following its own course despite attempts to control it. Look at all of the words coined to be polite terms for the mentally ill (like “retarded,” “special,” etc). They all started off as replacements for terms considered to be slurs, yet they all became slurs in their own right.
If large, disparate groups could negotiate as cohesive units, I would propose a compromise between transgendered people and the rest of society:
We will acknowledge that you may indeed have a biological condition which makes your brain wired differently from your body, and we accept that this condition does not make you a bad person or interfere with other aspects of your life.
But in return, you must acknowledge that, no matter how much of a woman/man you feel like, the rest of your anatomy still makes a difference. And no matter how much sympathy we may have, there are still some areas of daily life where that difference matters.
So far, we have a Lord Regent, a Fiery Majesty, El Presidente, and a goldfish. I’m going to need a program to tell who’s who soon.
great article. am i the first to point out, though, that in your article about gender neutrality, you often used the gender neutral plural on place of what ought to have been “he” or “she?”
That was intentional. I’m on board the gender neutral train Ryan. They are on the “right” side of history.
Frank,
Yes of course, from each according to their anaphor, to each according to their cataphor. In pronouns we trust! I think the Latin is Pax Grammatica Meshuggenah.
Regards,
Jim
Frank Soto’s solution: fight the “eternally offended” with his own offendedness. Genius.
There are plenty of people in the LGBT movement who’ve pushed back against gender neutral pronouns, including syndicated sex advice columnist Dan Savage. So calm down. The LGBT community is already self-policing this one to a large extent.
In my opinion, Kevin Williamson’s only offense is being stupendously boring. Calling a transgendered person by their least favorite pronoun requires incredibly little creativity.
Frank Soto and Kevin Williamson really ought to work to reduce the massive amounts of violence directed at trans people. Their pushback against gender neutral pronouns would stand more of a chance of being taken seriously if they made it clear they really did care for these people who through no fault of their own feel this way, and through no fault of their own get beat up, mutilated, and killed.
Stop the violence first. Stop the pronouns second.
What happened to compassionate conservatism?
I’d hazard a guess that America will be using gender neutral pronouns long before we adopt the metric system. Personally, the imperial system isn’t the hill that I would choose to die on; however, that fact that so many would goes to show how distorted our priorities have become. Oh well, this is yet another reason why we’re doomed.
Try looking on George W. Bush’s ranch.
You are so right. It should be illegal to beat up, mutilate, or kill transgendered people!
Surely there is some middle ground between beating people up for mental illness and cooperating in their delusions.
This is manifestly false.
Kevin was working to reduce the amount of violence against the trans community, starting with the unnecessary amputation of their genitals.
As for violence in general, do you have a specific proposal in mind? I’ve seen statistics that claim absurd things such as 1 in 12 trans people are murdered. When looking into these rates yourself it’s hard to find any evidence that they are murdered at any higher rate then the general populace.
For example in 2010 in the US there were 14,748 murders. Since approx .3% of the population identifies as trans, a proportional number would be 44 murders in that year. The actual number was 14. Even assuming massive under reporting, the number could quadruple and still be proportional.
The numbers are likely far worse in other parts of the world, but if you want to take Islamic countries to task, Kevin and I seem a strange place to start.
You can run the same type of numbers on physical assault and find a similar result in the US.
yaay. more scrabble words for the letter X. and xyr…that’s probably worth some points!
With no comment beyond “Welcome to my world,” I offer you this.
Yeah, this IS your line of work. What would be the correct pronoun for that guy, er, person…thing..?
Still, not as sorry a case as the Zune guy. Cats are prolific. Zunes are discontinued.
In Middle English, personal pronoun usage wasn’t uniformly established and was indeed rather amorphous – “he” could mean “he”, “she”, or “they”, depending on region, and “her” could mean “their”, and so on. (Personal pronouns also included “ho”, “hi”, “ha”, and “huy”.) Also, “girl” was used to denote a child of either sex, not just a she-child.
Even today, in certain West Country dialects, “er” is apparently used for both “he” and “she”. Personally, I like “er”. It has a certain hick-ish ring:
Er… I mean er was a person.
Pronouns escape me just now. I like “Katmandude” but that’s a proper noun.
And the Zuneyguy truly is another story.
This post calls to mind the recent Dan Savage imbroglio.
Thou hath displeased the Lord Regent with thy pronominal inadequacy!
*Whistles innocently.*
So long as nobody takes too close a look at my avatar, I’m fine.
All this sexual identity gobbledegook is going to confuse children growing up, and lead to massive confusion about sexual identity in a future generation. Society will have to spend massive amounts of time, energy, and money dealing with it. And still the perpetrators will fail to recognize their role.
Frank,
Your next assignment — fix the blatant gender discrimination of the romance languages (you did say you are Italian) where ALL nouns are either masculine or feminine. (This also has the added benefits of making it easier for English speakers to be able to learn these languages.)
Frank Soto: “xe, xem and xyr”
But how in heck are these actually pronounced?
zee, zem, zir?
i kind of like the X & Y function at the beginning of the new pronouns. just to confound people.
xe, ye (zee, yee)
xem, yem (zem, yem)
xyr, yyr (zir, yir)
Ricochet, the NEW words with friends app.
The only — and therefore ultimate — solution is to outlaw all pronouns completely. There is no usage for pronouns that cannot be replaced by the referent noun. “George laments the loss of George’s whatever”; “Ralph stared at Lucy, admiring Lucy’s whatever.” And so forth. (The ELCA hymnal (or whatever they call it now) has made great progress in this direction.)
Below is a link of an article by a Johns Hopkins psychiatrist regarding the dangers in society pandering to some of these poor folks delusions. this part is the real kicker and why all of these policy changes are particularly dangerous
http://online.wsj.com/articles/paul-mchugh-transgender-surgery-isnt-the-solution-1402615120
But can we at least keep a few? Like I and You? I can’t imagine a world where I’d ever say “Kim is going to the store, is there anything Kim can get for Mr. K.?
This is America after all – we can do better by the Transgendered! We must have immediate intervention by the government to translate all media i.e. books, newspapers, signs, internet postings, notes passed between school children during class into gender neutral terms and stop the violence. Those old gender specific terms are so 19th century. A Tzar must be appointed immediately to fix this id/ego/superego crushing violence. We are a better people than this . . . I kindly suggest that Frank be appointed the Tzar so xe can start fixing this huxan rights tragedy by issuing new law on what we can say and how we can say it.