I’ve never cared about how anyone identifies themselves…(well, except White Supremacists, Nazis, Neo-Nazis, Al-Quida, Inquisitors and the like, etc. Their identifications scare the crap out of me.) Rewind: let me say, I’ve had problems with people’s hate-preferences, but never with anyone’s love-preferences.
When I taught at a local university, one of my students wanted to write his major research project on legalizing the rights of homosexual men and women to adopt children; he knew he was required to present the paper to the class and was afraid of the consequences—“People might guess I’m gay. Then they’ll tell others…?” He had not begun to feel comfortable in his skin. Lee was an older student, returning to college after a decade in the work force; he desperately wanted children in a time before the laws were enlightened, and begged me to be able to write his deeply personal essay, but not deliver it.
I told him, “Right now, hiding who you are cannot feel good. You do not put this on and off like a suit. You are YOU. You are strong enough to deal with people’s negativity—You cannot imagine how free you will feel when you meet the universe as yourself…”
His classmates welcomed his speech, a fresh topic back then among all those clichéd abortion, gun control, and capital punishment papers that Comp II students still seem driven to write. The worst reaction was no more than a Yawn.
I received thank-you notes for years from Lee for encouraging him to live his truth before the phrase “living your truth” was even in our lexicon, notes I’m proud of and save in my memory box. To give perspective, this took place years ago, in the decade right after AIDS had appeared and rattled bigots’ cages in the Bible belt. Lee’s speech was his first step towards his own advocacy. And he went on to detail a much happier life in his letters to me, eventually becoming a father.
Embracing who you really are is core to your happiness.
So don’t misunderstand when I say I have a beef with non-binarism. Not the identity, nor the action (I’m not one of those love-the-sinner-but-hate-the-sin sorts), nor even the politics bug me. It’s the freaking PRONOUN I have an issue with…
My God…this “they, their, them” shit is an English teacher’s nightmare. Getting writers to make their subjects and verbs agree in Georgia is hard enough. The verb IS rules here. “They’s just foolin’” or “Them’s the ones you want…” And that’s when Southerners actually use helping verbs…Many folks don’t even bother with conjugating to be at all: “What Y’all doing?” or “Where you going?” And the concept that NONE and EVERYTHING and ANYONE is a singular subject is just impossible. Nobody ever learns that rule, not even most English teachers, for learning language is by exposure to speakers, not textbooks. And now you want me to try and explain how a single person should now get a plural pronoun if you know this person identifies as non-binary? UGGH!
Oh, sure on a philosophical level, maybe even a symbolic one, I can totally see how “they” can represent what a non-binary person is trying to express: the multi-faceted, non-singular perspective of their love or their gender fluidity.
HOWEVER, Can we please come up with a word that doesn’t already have a very specific function in our grammar world? I cannot tell you how often I’ve been reading a published essay or article lately and had to stop. “Wait, who shot the perp?” “Huh? Just a second…who got awarded the medal?” I go back, feeling illiterate, like I had a brain fart and missed something. All because the word “they” is used grammatically incorrectly. Seriously. And we expect people who won’t even recognize homosexuality as “normal”—let alone non-binarism—to have a clue what they are reading? In a Zoom meeting, one of our group members had posted her name like Zoomers do—Maggie—but tagged on “she/her”. The confusion among the others when she tried to explain why was laughable. Of course, Maggie’s use might be an attempt to mock non-binarism or to support its importance, who knows for sure. But either way, the others were not moved to grasp the issue, let alone change their pronouns. It was like trying to teach them why split infinitives and dangling prepositions are wrong, times a zillion.
The question might be for some: why can’t society create an all new pronoun? The answer is often that a new word separates those people who identify as non-binary into a separate, lessor class, sort of like those idiots who insist on calling my pets “It” instead of recognizing them as the fabulous beings they are…However, I’d argue that applying “they, them, theirs” for single, non-binary people separates this group even more pointedly by the intended confusion this causes. Others might suggest that this confusion forces readers/listeners to perk up and ask, “Whuuuuh?” thereby introducing the non-binary platform. Frankly, so would a new pronoun, but without butchering the grammar of sentences, and thereby disorienting readers and listeners.
The answer lies in what we who care are trying to achieve with a pronoun shift. Is it to identify as non-binary by classing oneself into a separate group, or is it to erase pigeonholes of gender?
If the first, embrace a new pronoun representing only non-binary folks that does not confuse readers and listeners. I doubt that anyone is ever going to get used to stopping in the middle of a paragraph to go back and figure out who “they” is referring to. Look at this sentence from HuffPost about Demi Lovato: “I watched with interest as talk show host after talk show host documented their heroin-induced strokes and heart attack, along with their struggles with depression, substance use, self-harm, bullying and bulimia.” Whose strokes and heart attack? Whose assorted serious illnesses?
A plural version of a new non-binary pronoun could make clear that the writer refers to Lovato’s health crises; a multitude of talk show hosts are not nearly dropping dead…
But if the change is to erase gender-identity pitfalls, coming up with a new gender-neutral pronoun for all human beings might be easier than repurposing one that is already entrenched to mean plural “people, places or things.” True, we do occasionally use “they” singularly with indefinite antecedents, but we do so in a clear manner. “Everyone should love their mother,” for instance, or “The caller asked you to call them back.” However, though both those illustrations are not confusing, a grammar teacher would still strike you down for “antecedent/pronoun agreement errors.”
Either way, I do not look forward to trying to teach any of these new pronouns should they become widely accepted by the MLA, but a one-size-fits-all new singular word and its plural version would probably be easier to teach than the current non-binary use of “they, them and their.” Using “They, them, and their” would continually require self-conscious use, providing critics negative fodder in its unnaturalness. I’m just thankful I teach English and I’m not given the task of reshaping all the other languages in the world with their gender designated NOUNS, ARTICLES and ADJECTIVES and VERBS.
Die Katze, die auf dem Tisch saß, miaute das Mädchen an. Even a male cat Katze gets a female article „die“, the road Tisch is neutral, the verb meow Miaute is female because the word for the male cat is feminine, the girl Madchen, because she is a child, is neutered with „das“.
Oh, My WORD!
Steering with My Elbows 