The preferred-pronoun movement will not end with email signatures, or with the abrupt conversion of ‘they’ to singular.
A few years ago, “she/her/hers” appended to an email signature might have prompted questions. Today, it’s fairly common.
But the preferred-pronoun movement will not end with email signatures, or with the abrupt conversion of “they” to singular. Flipping through various pronoun and gender-sensitivity guides, one can find some startling new rules for conduct and general admonitions starting to bubble to the surface. I’ve collected a few of them here:
‘Ladies and gentlemen’ is ‘binary assumptive language’
This comes from the University of Maryland. Using context clues, we can infer that “binary assumptive” means bad. The UMD guide lists several terms that apparently fall under this category and generally should be avoided as a result. They include “ladies and gentlemen” (a thousand MC careers just died) and more:
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Ladies and gentlemen
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Boys and girls
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Men and women of the faculty
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Brothers and sisters
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He or she
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S/he
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Sir/madam
‘Non-transgender man,’ please
When I see guidance like this, I unavoidably think of Walter Sobchak giving counsel on “preferred nomenclature.” In that spirit, the same UMD guide offers a range of alternative terms to replace “outdated” ones. Some of these are reasonable, such as the suggestion to use “orientation” over “lifestyle.” Others . . . well.
This guidance here is particularly crafty, by implicitly making transgender the default in everyday gender language (emphasis mine): “Instead of ‘biological man’ or ‘biological woman,’ please use ‘cisgender man’ or ‘cisgender woman’ or perhaps ‘non-transgender man’ or ‘non-transgender woman.’”
Pronouns are not ‘preferred,’ but mandatory
From the GLSEN guide comes an explanation of why the organization has ditched the term “preferred gender pronoun” for simply “pronoun.” The reason: The pronouns are mandatory. “This change was made because a person’s pronouns are not just preferred; they’re the pronouns that must be used.”
You might have ‘pronoun privilege’
Personally, I can’t think of a more cutting rejoinder. The New York City government calls out those with “pronoun privilege,” meaning people who don’t worry about things like pronouns on their email signatures. It’s okay, you can hate them.
What is Pronoun Privilege? If your gender pronoun is something that never matters to you or that you rarely think about, then you may have pronoun privilege. It is a privilege to not have to worry about which pronoun someone is going to use for you based on how they perceive your gender.
‘Gender-neutral’ can offend people who are ‘gendered’ but also ‘nonbinary’
I’ll let Springfield College explain this one:
Don’t refer to pronouns such as “they/them/their” or “ze/hir/hir” as “gender-neutral pronouns.” While some people identify as gender-neutral, others see themselves as gendered in a nonbinary way. Better language is “nonbinary pronouns.”
On second thought, don’t use pronouns at all
A conjugation chart from Duke University plays all the hits for using pronouns — “xe,” “ze,” “ey,” “hir” (while omitting “perself,” in an act of unbridled bigotry) — but ends with the example that might represent the most sensible solution. Just don’t:
Person does not use pronouns. (example name: Mary) . . . Mary went to the movies with Mary’s friend who loves to hang out with Mary. The movie pick was Mary’s. Mary enjoyed Mary’s self.
Rolls right off the tongue, doesn’t it?
After spending some time perusing these guides, you can start to understand why Ketanji Brown Jackson had trouble with the definition of “woman.”