The older I get, the more I realize that anything has the potential to be politicized. This was increasingly apparent during the pandemic. Look at face masks, lockdowns, and vaccines. We should have looked at the efficacy of those measures, determined if the tradeoffs were worth the measure, and do our best to have the science inform policy decisions. As we saw throughout the pandemic, this was far from being the case. This is 2022. Things are so polarized that we have politicized grammar, specifically the politicization of pronouns.
A pronoun is a word or word phrase that is used to replace a noun. This subclass of noun comes in multiple forms (e.g., subject, possessive, reflexive). Not only do pronouns shorten sentences and make them less repetitive. They have the potential to convey certain information. It can show how many people there are (e.g., "I" versus "we"). There are languages where a pronoun can convey the formality or informality of a relationship. For example, in Spanish, the word "tú" is the singular, informal; whereas "Usted" is the singular formal for the word "you." In Hebrew, pronouns do not only indicate number. Hebrew pronouns are gendered (e.g., את/אתה), meaning that the pronoun has to agree with the verb in gender.
In recent years, we have seen people relate to their pronouns differently through what is called "preferred gender pronouns." You might have heard someone ask "what are your preferred pronouns" or simply "what are your pronouns?" You might have seen in an email signature or LinkedIn profile someone identifies as "He/Him/His," "She/Her/Hers," or the gender-neutral "They/Them/Theirs."
The increased emphasis on gender identity has spurred such social practices around preferred gender pronouns (PGPs). The premise of PGPs is based in equity, as well as inclusion of transgender and individuals that identify as gender non-binary. The Human Rights Campaign (HRC), which is the largest LGBT organization in the United States, believes that "using a person's chosen name and pronouns is essential to affirming their identity and showing basic respect."
You can identify however you want as a form of human agency or as a part of your pursuit of happiness. If the use of PGPs were only an issue of respect or self-identity, I would say, "it's your life; more power to you." Upon further examination, the usage of PGPs in social interactions is far from it.
My biggest issue about the practice of requesting one's PGPs is the coercive nature of it. I mostly air my grievances about government coercion. However, I have the same reaction when someone attempts this form of coercion in a social setting, such as when someone asks me what my pronouns are. University of Illinois Professor of Gender Studies M.J. Murphy labels such a practice as "a form of social coercion that only masquerades as inclusion" because "such requests 'position' the recipient of the request against their will and without their permission." Professor Murphy goes on to detail how the only responses to such a "request" are either compliance, lying, or refusal. Professor Murphy concludes by saying that "a public request for 'your pronouns' isn't a request at all. It's a subtle but powerful demand that effectively disables the recipient of the request and threatens negative consequences for any questioning, resistance, or refusal."
This rings even more true considering that this practice most commonly occurs when meeting someone for the first time. There are some contrarian individuals, people who lack social tact, or those who will stick up for their beliefs regardless of the social situation. But for most people, they are going to want to make a good first impression instead of starting a relationship in an antagonistic fashion. While it is subtle, it is nevertheless a power play used to prompt a certain behavior.
There is another coercive element of the PGP practice I want to elucidate upon further. When someone decides to introduce themselves with their PGPs, they use third-person pronouns, the most common being "he," "she", and "they." I cannot emphasize this grammatical point enough. When I talk to someone directly (in the second-person), regardless of their biological sex, sexual orientation, or gender identity, which pronoun do I use in the English language? I use the gender-neutral pronoun of "you."
When do we use third-person pronouns? Sometimes, if someone is present but are not being addressed directly. If someone is in the room and I refer to the individual in the third-person, odds are that I would simply use their name. But most of the time, third-person pronouns are used when said individual is not present. People who impose the practice of PGPs want to control how you behave and think of a certain individual even when said individual is not in the room.
As long as we are in a free society, I want to be able to exercise my freedom of speech and express my opinions, including what I think of others. If you think someone is an asshole, you should be able to call them an asshole and complain about why you think they are an asshole. If you think someone is a saint, you should be able to laud their praises. If you think something is a bad idea, you should be free to call out a bad idea. To hammer this point home, I will point out a relevant court case. Last year, the Sixth Circuit Court ruled that forcing someone to use a transgender student's PGP is a violation of the First and Fourteenth Amendment rights (see Meriwether v. Hartop et al.).
The court case above reminds us that speech is a fundamental form of expression. Yet the HRC recently tweeted that we should begin a conversation with "Hi, these are my pronouns. What are yours?" I disagree vehemently with the HRC. I should be free to express myself in a way I see fit. Why is it that gender identity should be one of the first things to learn about me or another individual you just met? Why do we pick gender identity specifically? I understand that pronouns are a commonly used part of speech, but why confine people to that single attribute? There are so many facets to identity, which can include race, ethnicity, religion, age, sexual orientation, level of educational attainment, socioeconomic status, profession, or pastimes. A better way to go about this while still allowing for authentic self-expression would be with an open-ended request of "Give us your name and one interesting fact about yourself." The practice of "requesting" PGPs limits the way one chooses to express their identity and can reduce the complexity of an individual to biological sex or gender.
We don't go around the room and ask people what their sexual orientation is because then we would be outing LGB individuals, which would be in poor taste. But by "requesting" PGPs, you're forcing someone who is questioning their gender or who has not come out as transgender to either lie or come out sooner than they would like. Another example of "hurting some of the people that were intended to be helped." If we forced people to disclose their level of educational attainment, it very well could shame or embarrass someone. Could you imagine applying such a practice to race or religion? We do not expect this level of coercion on other aspects of expressing one's identity and individuality. An individual should be allowed to express their identity and various aspects of their identity in whatever way feels comfortable to them. To reiterate, such a "request" is an imposition on freedom of speech and expression.
There are other reasons that people might not care for being asked a question apart from having their freedom of speech limited. Some individuals, especially those of older generations, are not going to understand the question. For example, Pew Research found that 39 percent of Americans do not know what gender-neutral pronouns are. Pew Research also found that 58 percent of Americans do not know a transgender individual. Asking most Americans what their PGPs are is going to be an awkward interaction.
There are some individuals that consider themselves to be "gender critical." These individuals are opposed on ideological grounds (more in the next paragraph) because they believe that the idea of sex is "real, important, and immutable," and should not be conflated with gender identity. For those who are gender critical, male-to-female transgender individuals are not really women, and vice versa. The Heritage Foundation encapsulates this view as one for those "who refuse to bend the knee to leftist groupthink, the kind that forces a subjective and manipulable view of one person's self to become a defining reality for everyone else." If you want my nuance on this particular controversy behind "sex versus gender," you can read the analysis I wrote in January 2020.
This segues into another point. Aside from it being an issue of freedom of speech, the forcing of divulging PGPs is also an issue for freedom of conscience. The ideas of sex being immutable; whether or not there is a major difference between "sex versus gender;" whether identifying with the social roles or stereotypes of masculinity or femininity makes you a man or woman; the prevalence of non-binary genders; if gender is a societal construct that needs to be deconstructed; whether personal pronouns should be based on biological sex or some other factor; and whether gender identity is important are all ideological debates that are embedded in the asking of PGPs.
In 2022 America, when you state your pronouns and/or ask someone for their pronouns, that is a political statement. It is a statement that you are on the political Left (most probably the Far Left/woke Left) and that you accept certain premises on topics related to sex and gender that I mentioned above. As we will see in the next paragraph, asking about one's PGPs is all but superfluous given certain demographic data. Language exists in part to express and convey information. For almost everyone, stating one's pronouns clarifies nothing. As such, asking for one's PGPs is primarily an act of virtue signaling to let people know that you are part of a certain in-group.
There are others who do not see the point of asking such a question in light of demographic reality. The vast majority of the population is cisgender, i.e., one's gender identity matches their biological sex. Let's take a look at statistics to confirm that notion.
- The Washington Post points out last year how there are over one million individuals that are nonbinary (or about 0.3 percent of the U.S. population).
- The Left-leaning Center for American Progress found that 0.5 percent of Americans have clinically identifiable variations that would deem them to be intersex.
- The most recent estimate of transgender individuals is from the pro-LGBT Williams Institute in 2017 when they estimated that 0.6 percent of the population is transgender.
Up until a few years ago, that is the way the world worked. I could listen to or see someone and guess with a high level of accuracy as to whether they are a man or woman. What happens in the off chance that I am incorrect? I remember growing up and seeing other families' babies. There were times when I thought it was a baby boy and it turned out to be a baby girl, or vice versa. When I made the mistake, I was not scolded or accosted. I was politely corrected by the parents and we moved on. Those seemed like simpler times.
In 2022, if you refer to someone with a pronoun that is not to their liking, it is treated with indignation as if it were a capital offense, especially if you are dealing with someone who is on the Far Left. Whether someone uses a different pronoun on purpose or simply did not know one's gender identity, there is not an assumption of goodwill. It goes well beyond being a faux pas for these individuals. It is perceived as a microaggression or a form of harassment. Last year, a human rights tribunal in the Canadian province of British Columbia went as far as ruling that intentionally misgendering someone is a human rights violation. The University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee states that "It is privilege to not [to] have to worry about which pronoun is going to use for you based on how they perceive gender." That is not privilege.
There are millions on this planet dealing with abject poverty and are figuring where their next meal is coming from. Some do not have access to clean water. Such countries as Ukraine and Venezuela are in such dire shape that the geopolitical events in these countries are creating refugees. Others are dealing with homelessness or living paycheck-to-paycheck. You want to know what privilege is? Privilege is when you have so few hardships that one of your biggest complaints in life is whether or not someone uses certain pronouns in reference to you. Not only is disproportionately complaining about microaggressions privilege, it provides a skewed perspective on the world because it puts minuscule gripes on par with legitimate problems.
In a free society, there is no right to not be offended. Why? It is not only because being offended is such a subjective, arbitrary, and nebulous concept. I'm sure those on the Left that use PGPs don't care about whether those who are compelled to use PGPs feel offended or not. An essential component to a free society is freedom of speech. As I explained after the controversial Dave Chapelle special aired last year, freedom of speech has an implicit right to offend. You have to deal with the fact that not everyone is going to view the world the same as you. Not everyone views sex and/or gender the same as you. Not everyone is going to understand if you insist on asking for other people's pronouns. Part of being in a pluralistic, democratic society is learning to interact with those who do not think, speak, or act in the same way as you do.
There is no need to command specific language in a free society. Policing word choice by telling me how to speak is as bad as telling me to be silent. Much like it is with political correctness more generally, asking for PGPs is not about convincing others or being understanding. It is an attempt at conformity and groupthink. As author and University of Toronto Professor Jordan Peterson put it, asking for PGPs is about gaining linguistic supremacy in public discourse using compassion as a guise, a similar phenomenon we see with the woke attempt to make a linguistic shift with the word "Latinx." But if I get you to accept anyone's identity or perception of reality, regardless of whether it is based in reality or not, how powerful is that? What do you call it when you force someone to agree with your conception of life, how things should work, and subsequently act on it by joining in the validation of it? That is a trademark of a totalitarian way of life.
As a side note, you should not be seeking external validation or forcing others to provide that validation to you. If you are comfortable and confident where you are at with how you interact with or perceive your biological sex and/or gender, it should not matter what someone else thinks. Use your pronouns and forget whatever anyone else thinks. If you feel the need to compel instead of convince, it signals a weakness in your argument and your character. It you ask for someone's PGPs and you are offended by a response that does not comport with your worldview, it says more about your woke fragility than it does about the person who objects to being asked what their PGPs are. If someone does not agree, we should peacefully discuss those points while still respecting other' differences in the interim. The coercive nature of asking for PGPs seeks to further divide and cause resentment.
I will end today's thoughts with a quote from Frederick Douglass: "Liberty is meaningless when the right to utter one's thoughts and opinions has ceased to exist. That, of all rights, is the dread of tyrants. It is the first right which they first of all strike down."
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