Got into the car yesterday to start home and heard a reporter on WBUR talking of the musical recordings of FC. Missed the opening of the story, which I assume included the identity of FC, and so the confusion I’m about to describe could be dismissed as my own fault.
In my defense, it is the nature of radio to serve an audience, much of which is on the road, getting in and out of cars at random times. Why else do they measure ratings according to morning and afternoon “drive times”? Or brag about “driveway moments”?
Since I liked the snippets of music I was hearing, the report drew my interest, and there was something satisfying about hearing that FC is a student at Northeastern University in Boston where I once taught.
Then the reporter says that “they are from Dorchester,” and I’m wondering who “they” are. Now I’m thinking that FC is the name of a group, possibly “Eff Cee,” and the reference was to one member who, back during the Clinton Administration, might have landed in my writing class.
Or maybe all of them, as I keep hearing “they” and “them” while driving out of Bradford, through Groveland, and into Georgetown. Yet, when the reporter aired FC’s answers in a pre-recorded interview, it was always the same single, high-pitched voice.
Eventually, one of those answers included the word “non-binary,” and soon after the reporter added that FC stands for “Felicia Clarice.” So it’s all explained by what is lately called “a preferred pronoun.” FC, who is one person, prefers to be mentioned as “they” and “them.”
By now you’ve heard the reasons why plural pronouns–they, them, their— should or should not be used for individual people.
Plurals have long been commonly used when the speaker does not know the identity of a person. When we say, “they ran a red light,” it is understood that the driver of the car could be he or she. This is different. This is a request–at times a demand–to use a plural pronoun when we do know the identity of the one person of whom we speak. As a consequence, journalists are expected to do this while audiences unknown to them supposedly keep track of the plural-for-singular references.
In a free and open society, those who consider themselves neither male nor female should not have to hear themselves referred to as either. On the other hand, news sources should be committed first and foremost to clarity, not to any preferences held by those about whom they report.
Lost in that debate is a third party: The English Language.
When someone says “my preferred pronouns,” they presume that a part of speech belongs to them. The error is not in the phrase “preferred pronoun,” but in the possession inherent in the pronoun, “my.” If pronouns “belong” to individual people, then logically so do nouns, adjectives, and other parts of speech. This is why it was been so easy for the likes of Marjorie Taylor Greene and Tucker Carlson to ridicule it.
So, too, easy-going people who support all gender rights but are always ready to share a laugh, like my editor, Helen Highwater, who says my pronouns should be “nit, wit, and twit” no matter what I prefer.
Among the sayings you may see on t-shirts and elsewhere is “Ask Me About My Pronouns.” Something crucial will be missing from any possible answer. At the risk of putting this in an uncomfortable political context, most everyone who agrees with the sentiment–or who, like me, agrees with the intent, but not the expression–is right now engaged in a contest. Round one is just two months away, round two two years from that.
Whether or not we believe in or respect non-binary genders, American elections are inescapably binary. No way around it, like it or not. One side supports gender rights, reproductive rights, voting rights, environmental protection, occupational safety, affordable education and healthcare. The other side does not. That first side bases much of its (our) argument on truth and accuracy in science, in history, in language. The second insists on myths, manipulating science, whitewashing history, distorting language.
What does it do to the first side if the second side can point at the request–now available on t-shirts–to “Respect My Pronouns,” and demand, as they will, that we “Respect Our Language”? What does it say that, in such a debate, theirs will be the most inclusive pronoun, our vs. my?
More to the point, what impression will it make on those with no connection to either side as they look for the more reasonable and comfortable choices put in the most understandable and familiar terms come this November, come 2024?
Anyone’s mere use of pronouns is unlikely to influence moderates or independent voters, but the insistent requests for their acceptance and general use cannot help advance any urgent rights or causes.
Worse than that, we will make the other side seem more reasonable, if only because they will be more clear.
Regrettably, the English Language has no more say in America 2022 than it did in Orwell’s Oceania 1984. Ironically, non-binary people are forcing a binary debate: Those for them vs. those against them.
Neither side would ever accept the existing singular, neutral pronoun, it. Nor should they, for a reason too obvious to state. Rather than argue either side of the case, here’s a proposal to satisfy both, along with the logic by which I arrived at it:
What do the words she and he have in common? The letters HE. So far, no good because this leaves us with one of the two pronouns we want to avoid. So what is there in he that is part of both she and he without indicating either?
Answer: E. Why not? We already have a single-letter pronoun. And like I, a long E, pronounced EE, for as long as you want it.
Some wise-ass, like the guy in the supermarket last week wearing the shirt that says “I don’t care about your pronouns,” might demand, ” What about H?”
Either he missed the first-grade instruction that every word has to have a vowel, or he actually thinks that while writing about how we must protect one rule–the plural pronoun–I’m going to endorse breaking another.
Be that as it may, the better reason to use E is sound. Moreover, like the word you, it will sound fluid in all three cases:
E was in the supermarket.
I ran into e at the supermarket.
I ran into es car in the supermarket parking lot.
Well, that’s what bumpers are for, but there might be another bump in that last example. Vocally, the S sounds fine following the long E. In print, the tendency might be to put an apostrophe between the two.
But pronouns are purposefully free of apostrophes, and for clarity’s sake we should keep them that way. Just as plurals should be kept plural.
I’ll be interested to hear from those whose everyday language might be altered by what I propose. Unlike that guy in the supermarket, I do care about pronouns.
Not my pronouns, not his pronouns, not your pronouns, not anyone’s pronouns, not even es pronouns, but pronouns that, like every noun, every verb, every adjective, every preposition, every article, belong to the English Language, each and every one.
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Mouth of the River 