I/me

Feb 4th, 2022 | By
Category: Notes and Comment Blog

Colin Wright on the “pronouns” question:

‘What are your pronouns?” is a seemingly innocuous question that has become increasingly common. Pronouns are now frequently displayed prominently in social-media bios, email signatures and conference name tags.

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The Human Rights Campaign, which claims to be the “nation’s largest LGBTQ+ civil rights organization,” recently tweeted that we should all begin conversations with “Hi, my pronouns are _____. What are yours?” We are told that asking for, sharing and respecting pronouns is “inclusive” to trans and nonbinary people, and that failing to do so may even constitute violence and oppression.

Even if you accept that claim (which I don’t), what about everyone else? What about being inclusive to people who understand what pronouns are and thus find it absurd to talk about your my our her his pronouns? What about people who want to be intelligible? What about people who are allergic to bullshit?

While being subjected to constant rituals of pronoun exchanges may seem silly or annoying at best and exhausting at worst, in reality participating in this ostensibly benign practice helps to normalize a regressive ideology that is inflicting enormous harm on society.

That too. That’s the most important reason for not complying, but there are also aesthetic, epistemic, moral, and other kinds of reasons. There are a lot of reasons not to and no good reasons pointing the other way.

Gender activists believe that being a man or a woman requires embracing stereotypes of masculinity or femininity, respectively, or the different social roles and expectations society imposes on people because of their sex. Planned Parenthood explicitly states that gender identity is “how you feel inside,” defines “gender” as a “a social and legal status, a set of expectations from society, about behaviors, characteristics, and thoughts,” and asserts that “it’s more about how you’re expected to act, because of your sex.”

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The clear message of gender ideology is that, if you’re a female who doesn’t “identify with” the social roles and stereotypes of femininity, then you’re not a woman; if you’re a male who similarly rejects the social roles and stereotypes of masculinity, then you’re not a man. Instead, you’re considered either transgender or nonbinary, and Planned Parenthood assures you that “there are medical treatments you can use to help your body better reflect who you are.” According to this line of thinking, certain personalities, behaviors and preferences are incompatible with certain types of anatomy.

So Planned Parenthood is actually encouraging people to mutilate themselves and/or mess with their hormones. It’s shockingly reckless and destructive.

So when someone asks for your pronouns, and you respond with “she/her,” even though you may be communicating the simple fact that you’re female, a gender ideologue would interpret this as an admission that you embrace femininity and the social roles and expectations associated with being female.

Are there separate pronouns for feminists? No, of course not, so we’re stuck with this “I’m a woman and that means I embrace all the stupid rules imposed on female people” – and bang goes centuries of work trying to get rid of those stupid rules.

Coercing people into publicly stating their pronouns in the name of “inclusion” is a Trojan horse that empowers gender ideology and expands its reach. 

Along with being embarrassing and pathetic. I’ve never been asked, but if I ever am, I don’t imagine it will go smoothly.

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