Down pointing backhand index
NPR is on the job! If you’re at a loss for how to pronoun, NPR is there to help!
Down pointing backhand index to you too, you lovely helpful advicey people.
We heard you the first time but ok I guess.
Shall we read their cute 101 guide? Oh let’s.
“Pronouns are basically how we identify ourselves apart from our name. It’s how someone refers to you in conversation,” says Mary Emily O’Hara, a communications officer at GLAAD.
No, pronouns are not how we identify ourselves apart from our name. Not basically or any other way.
This guide was created with help from GLAAD. We also referenced resources from the National Center for Transgender Equality, the Trans Journalists Association, NLGJA: The Association of LGBTQ Journalists, Human Rights Campaign, InterAct and the American Psychological Association.This guide is not exhaustive, and is Western and U.S.-centric. Other cultures may use different labels and have other conceptions of gender.
So what you’re saying is, everyone has to get an entire education on this subject, as in many hours of reading and memorization. What if we have better things to do? What if, to be exact, there are more important things to pay attention to? Poverty, inequality, exploitation, climate change, public health – you know, the big stuff. What if a small set of narcissistic people who want you to learn a new language to talk about them just don’t appear very high on that list?
One thing to note: Language changes. Some of the terms now in common usage are different from those used in the past to describe similar ideas, identities and experiences. Some people may continue to use terms that are less commonly used now to describe themselves, and some people may use different terms entirely. What’s important is recognizing and respecting people as individuals.
But we can do that without any “guide to pronouns.”
What follows is of course the usual jargon-riddled nonsense, uttered as usual with solemn confidence as if it were a set of facts as opposed to a sit of silly rules invented by some self-obsessed teenagers. A grown-up organization like NPR should not be anywhere near it.
Interesting. Among the resources to which you referred, I notice that there are no linguists, no philosophers of language, in fact no one with an expertise in language use or cognition. Very interestink.
NPR is fully in the tank for the trans agenda. Every day an article comes on the radio with somebody solemnly intoning that a bill is under consideration, or was passed, that will prevent trans girls from playing sports.
And every day someone yells back at that radio that no it won’t, all boys will still be able to play sports with other boys!
Another trope they always practice. “Language has changed over the years.” Of course it changes; it evolves to adapt to a dynamic society. But the idea that some kids can just come along and tell us what words we can use or can’t use? Because the dictionary isn’t an arbiter of words, it’s just a describer? So we can abandon the dictionary all together?
But…if we do that, and nobody knows what words mean, and everyone is using them differently, then we have a problem. So the guide comes along to tell us what words we are allowed to use, according to woke Gen-Z’s. They will tell us what thoughts we can think, what ideas we can espouse, what books we can read, what speakers we can listen to, what conferences we can attend. So nice, right?
When the baby boomers did activism, we were trying to stop wars. End racism. Gain equal opportunity for women and people of color. Get Richard Nixon out of the White House. Protect the environment. Such silly things. If only we’d known, we could have fought the battle of pronouns and had this settled already. But we were focused on trivialities, not like the deep, important issue of men who go out in woman-face.
Ah, one of the people in the image has the pronouns “she/they”. If this is parallel to the “he/him (nim?)” and “they/them” worn by the other people, does this mean that we are to refer to her as “she” in the nominative and as “they” in the oblique? E.g.: “She came over here. I say they.” Hmm.
It’s confusing, but I think it’s equivalent to what I think Eddie Izzard has claimed: he’ll be happy if referred to as either “she” or “they”. So I guess it’s more accurately {she/her,they/them}. Or perhaps {she,they}/{her,them}. In any event, don’t refer to him as “him”.
Look, when it comes to the parts of speech, I take advice from one place, and one place only.
That’s the thing that always gets me with this pronoun stuff. A pronoun is a substitute for a noun, and the point of using a pronoun is to make what a person has to say (or in these days, type) to communicate an idea a bit shorter. If the pronoun “belongs” to anyone in the sense of it being chosen, it belongs to the speaker or writer.
And I don’t identify myself with a third person pronoun. Others might choose to use a third person pronoun to make it easier to talk about me. Especially if my name is Rufus Xavier Sarsaparilla.
ARC @6 Excellent. :)
But if they don’t call you Rufus Xavier Sarsaparilla, do you feel like you have just been stabbed in the stomach?
Yes, this change is driven by the common use. You know, the same common use that has woman as ‘adult human female’.
Respectful to whom? (I know, I know, it was a rhetorical question).
iknklast.
Yes. I keep having this argument with people. The fact that language can change over time doesn’t mean that we have to let it. We can just, you know, keep right on using the existing uses of words.
I’ve lost count of how many times the ‘language evolves’ gambit has been rolled out as though it’s a shiny new checkmate; as though it means we must automatically go along with any proposed change or else…. or else what, exactly? Will we crumble to dust and blow away on the wind? What? They never say. I’ve been told several times that their proposed change in language is some kind of unstoppable force which has *checks notes* nothing to do with the people actually using the language. I see.
It has the benefit of being exactly as insane as a million other insane arguments, but that’s the best I can say about it.