Pronoun: Difference between revisions

Second, for the great majority of the population —the whole “cis-normal” part, at least — there’s already a way of unfussily designating your gender: your title: Mr., Mrs., Ms., Miss, and Master.  

Of this great mass of hetero-normativity, only academics and medics have a quandary. Even they could fix it, if they really cared about it, by adding a gender title to to their honorific, the same way judges do: Mr. Doctor Jung; Mrs. Doctor Freud, and so forth.

Third, this pronoun angst appears directed at ''third person singular'' pronouns. The other five buckets are fine. Yet, when addressing someone directly, one does not use third person, except ironically, or to distance oneself from a tendentious but firmly-held opinion, as the [[JC]] often does.<ref>Though this is to switch ''first'' person for third, not second. The ''first'' person does not need to lecture the world how he should refer to himself in the third person.<>The ''second'' person pronoun, “you” — for the Americans, “y’all” — is perfectly gender inclusive already.<ref>Australian comedian Hannah Gadsby made this point well in her show ''Douglas''.</ref> But this is the one we invariably use interpersonal communication. Wherever you may be on the gender spectrum, you are politely, unoppressively, uncontroversially, incontrovertibly, ''you''. I dare say this is how language evolved, precisely because of the difficulties one would otherwise have making polite conversation with unfamiliar individuals of an apparently, but not definitively, feminine or masculine bearing.  

So, the “(he/him)” designation appears to stipulate how a reader should gender a person ''when communicating about that person with someone else''. I am going to get in trouble for saying this, readers, but that strikes me as rather ''bossy''. Who am I to tell you how to moderate the language you use with someone else? And aren’t your choices of pronoun the least of my concern?

 

The [[JC]] dreads to think what people say about (he/him) behind (he/his) back: if the worst they do is to misgender (he/him) then all is well in the world, frankly.