But what are pronouns?
The BBC has been letting the children loose on their website again. The result is An Article About Bespoke Pronouns.
How to be an ally to friends who’ve changed their pronouns
Walk away. Don’t linger, don’t express regrets, don’t wave, just walk away.
There is no such thing as “their pronouns.” Pronouns aren’t a thing you can possess. Personal names, yes; pronouns, no. That’s pretty much the point of them. Personal names are, as the title suggests, personal to the people whose names they are. Pronouns are the short items that substitute for the personal names because it gets weird saying the name over and over. They are necessarily generic.
We all like to be referred to in a way that makes us feel accepted.
No we don’t. That’s childish. We don’t expect third parties to refer to us in a flattering or cuddly way at all times and in all circumstances. In fact not only do we not expect it, we would find it creepy and intrusive.
That claim is a claim for narcissism. That’s what’s wrong with Children’s Leftism these days: it’s all about the narcissism. There is nothing progressive about narcissism. Narcissism is inherently right-wing, and it’s also massively off-putting to people who aren’t narcissists. Don’t believe me? Look at Donald Trump.
This can include the use of our name, gender and pronouns.
Non-binary celebrities such as Jonathan Van Ness, Sam Smith and Lachlan Watson have done a lot to raise awareness and encourage conversations about being non-binary.
Well by god we certainly do want to derive our understanding of the world from non-binary celebrities such as Jonathan Van Ness, Sam Smith and Lachlan Watson, right?
But there’s a slight problem, which is that non-binary doesn’t mean anything. There is feeling that much of one’s behavior and appearance doesn’t match the irritating social rules about which sex does what, but that doesn’t = being literally neither female nor male.
On the back of this, you might have seen some discussions about pronouns online. But what are pronouns, how are they related to non-binary people, and why do you need to know?
Using information from Stonewall we’ve put together a quick guide to pronouns. Here are some tips and questions that can help you understand non-binary identities, and what you can do!
Oh hooray, information from Stonewall, put together quickly by deluded children who work for the BBC – what could go wrong?!
And of course right out of the gate, they get it…wrong.
Non-binary is an umbrella term for people who don’t fit comfortably into ‘male’ or ‘female’ categories. Not everyone uses ‘he’ or ‘she’ pronouns to express their identity.
Nobody uses third-person pronouns to express her/his identity, for the very simple reason that we don’t use third-person pronouns to refer to ourselves but only to other people. That’s why this whole idea of having bespoke pronouns for other people to use when talking about us is such a non-starter: we can’t control that. We can’t control it, and it’s narcissistic to want to, and it’s narcissistic plus idiotic to think we can.
There’s a bunch more stupid shite after that. It’s the usual stupid shite. It seems the BBC twitter person didn’t like the reaction to the stupid shite.
Werrllll… That’s yer problem right there, innit, guv?
Looks to me like all the dudes in the picture are he/him, even though one is wearing lipstick. And why is they/them wearing glasses? Is that part of non-binary identity? Hooray! I’m non-binary! Quick, everyone, check out my new pronouns…
When the oddball pronouns like “Xe / Xim” were first conceived, back in the ’60s or ’70s, they were intended for speakers to use to discuss people without specifying gender, not for people to fasten on themselves. Only royalty (“Her Highness”) had specialized pronouns to apply to them. (Other languages do have “familiar” vs. “respectful” second person pronouns, like “tu”/”usted” in Spanish, but it’s the speaker’s prerogative to decide which to use and possibly be criticized for a bad choice.)
Using information from KFC we’ve put together a quick guide to healthy eating.
Using information from Donald Trump we’ve put together a quick guide to tax returns.
Using information from Jerry Springer we’ve put together a quick guide to quality television.
Using information from Stephen Hawking we’ve put together a quick guide to mountaineering.
Using information from Proud Boys we’ve put together a quick guide to immigration.
Using information from Phil Collins we’ve put together a quick guide to music.
OK, maybe that last one was wrong. Nobody equates Collins with music.
Using information from PZ Myers, we’ve put together a quick guide to horse genders.
iknklast wins the internet.
Is narcissism is inherently right wing? I haven’t seen that intersection, but anecdotally probably a toss up.
Well, that’s fine as far as it goes, but…
1. Pronouns aren’t used only for people.
2. Kudos on mentioning case, though I suspect a lot of the target audience won’t know the meaning of the word, and I suspect the writer of this document may not be aware that English pronouns have case.
3. There’s always a bit of sleight of hand when mentioning “gender” in language. Grammatical gender is a way of classifying nouns in languages (a feature that most languages lack). In some languages it bears some relationship to real-world sex (masculine, feminine, and sometimes neuter), though of course inanimate objects which obviously don’t have a sex are often assigned to one or another gender (and there’s some evidence that that assignment colors how people perceive the object; e.g., Spanish speakers use stereotypically masculine adjectives to describe un puente while German speakers use stereotypically feminine adjectives to describe eine Brücke, and bilingual Spanish/German speakers changed depending on the language they’re speaking at the time). Other languages divide along animate/inanimate or human/non-human lines*. Some linguists will say that referring to a female animal with a feminine pronoun is not gender but sex, but in any case grammatical gender is not sex, and it’s also not what gender theory mean by gender.
4. Like most features of grammar, pronouns are meant to make communication easier by packaging known or easily knowable information in small, non-salient packages that are quickly and easily produced and understood. Placing so much emphasis on pronouns defeats their purpose.
When I am being referred to in the third person, I demand people use the pronouns “I, me, mine”. Failure to respect my pronouns is literal violence.
Those basketball players are wearing the basically the same clothing, but something stands out: “She/her” has pink socks and a scrunchie. So, femaleness as a costume again.
#2 iknklast
It seem to me they are all wearing lipstick.
By Chuthulu, Holms, I think you’re right! Wow, that’s really breaking the binary, right? Even he/him and they/them can wear lipstick. But not pink socks or a scrunchie.
They’re also breaking the colonialist, patriarchal, rad-fem, cis-gendered, white, middle-class, heteronormative, racist, ableist (did I miss any?) stereotype that humans have five digits on each hand.
I wonder if the closed eyes signifies a shared ability to sleep in odd positions?