Recently, I had an experience that redefined the right and the left for me. I interviewed two individuals who began by presenting me with their pronouns, as if they were ambassadors presenting a head of state with their credentials. One of the inidividuals’ pronouns was “she” and “her.” So if I were quoting her, I might say “she” on second reference. But the other person’s pronouns were “they” and “them.” (For the purpose of this post, I’ll call them S and T.)
When I explained that from a journalistic perspective, I worked for a company that used the Associated Stylebook — which allows for “they” in single usage when clarity is not at stake — and standard English, in which the masculine is still the default singular pronoun, as in the sentence “Everyone deserves his place in the sun,” well, things got a bit tense.
T. informed me that “they” were offended and then proceeded to look at “their” cellphone periodically throughout the rest of the interview. I could sense that T had written me off as a “Karen,” one of those blond-bobbed, middle-aged, opinionated white women who’s always demanding to speak to the store manager about something to which she feels entitled that has been denied her— in itself a stereotype. T was prejudging me,, the essence of prejudice.
I felt bad, as if I had let someone or something down. I felt I had been insensitive to “them.” But I also felt lightning-bolt insightful. I realized for the first time that I was not as “woke” as I thought I was. Politics, like gender and sexuality, is a spectrum. I’m too liberal for my uncle but clearly not liberal enough for the two interviewees. Yet I also understood that the whole conversation about choice of pronouns — which continued with S sending me the AP Stylebook entry on the allowance of they in the singular — was exactly how the right sees the left — as smug, superior, pedantic and politically correct. (Even though, to be fair, the right uses this as an excuse for anti-intellectualism and the perpetuation of the status quo.)
I must say the whole thing infuriated me. Here I was trying to give a deserving nonprofit some much needed publicity during a pandemic and recession — on a deadline, I might add — and I was suddenly being lectured to like a schoolgirl instead of a journalist with 40 years experience that has included extensive writings on gender, sexuality and the AIDS crisis, to say nothing of my homoerotic novels in which I’ve tried to portray sex in all its complexity. (Indeed, S brought up that I, like her, had attended Catholics schools and that her nuns would not allow for “Ms.” Well, I don’t know which order taught her, but I was educated by the Sisters of the Divine Compassion, a liberal order, and they were down with “Ms.” I may be a practicing Catholic, but I am no Amy Coney Barrett. (See next post on the ridiculousness of religious exemptions in the time of Covid.)
As a longtime writer and amateur cultural historian, few know better than I do that language shapes and reflects global and individual societies.. The whole reason that we call Jesus Christ “Jesus Christ” — and not by a Hebrew name — is because Alexander the Great disseminated Greek culture in his 330 B.C. conquest of the Persian Empire, which included much of the Middle East. English is now the language of international diplomacy, because of the assent of the United States in the postwar era. In his PBS series “And Still I Rise: Black America Since MLK,” historian Henry Louis Gates Jr. describes that ascendant trajectory in three adjectival nouns: His grandparents were colored. His parents were Negro. And he is black. (Although history repeats itself with a difference: Today we speak of “people of color” without that being pejorative.)
What caused the shift in languages and word choices in each of these examples? Power. Language evolves to shape and reflect powerful movements. Words must be backed by deeds. Otherwise, what you have is form without function — apologies to architect Louis Sullivan, who coined the phrase “form follows function” — which is precisely what the right accuses the left of. I remember when I was a student at Sarah Lawrence College, the formidable Gerda Lerner — a white, Jewish woman who taught black history and helped found the women’s studies department — used to scoff at calling history “herstory.” Such appropriations were nothing, she said, without real equality.
Sometimes the evolution of language can be slow and subtle. To some, it can seem trivial. Realtors now call the “master bedroom” the primary bedroom. “Master” connotes the master of a plantation who owned slaves. But do we think of this when looking for a new home, or are we more concerned with square footage, color schemes and the famous location, location, location?
I can appreciate the pain of someone working through issues of gender identity and inclusion. We all want our place in the sun. And I must acknowledge that as an editor, when one of my writers uses the singular, I often change it to the plural to avoid “he/his.”
But what if in this piece, I was also talking about London, Paris and Rome and wanted to write that they continue to struggle with the coronavirus.. Is it clear to the readers, all the readers, who “they” are? See the problem? There has to be some respect for rules, precedents, history, otherwise what’s the point of anything? Then anyone can change anything in any use of any language and it becomes a babble. It becomes meaningless.
What is needed is perhaps a universal pronoun that will replace “he/his” as the singular default. T has a right to call themselves anything they want. But as a replacement for the universal singular, I don’t think the word they is going to cut it.