I cannot stress enough how important
it is to refer to individuals by the correct pronouns. In our everyday
language, we refer to men with the pronouns “he”, “him”, and “his”, and women
with the pronouns “she”, “her”, and “hers”. While this is easy to follow for men
and women with a gender and biological sex that match and do not change, it is
important to keep in mind that not every individual falls within the binary
genders. There are many individuals, transgender or otherwise, who wish to
identify differently than you might assume.
First of all, not everyone has a
matching gender and biological sex. Some individuals with a male anatomy
identify as female and vice versa. While individuals who identify differently
than their natural sex often go through surgery to change their sex, not all do.
The individual may not be able to afford the cost of a sex change, for example,
though there are many other reasons that might apply. That is why, if an
individual tells you to use a certain pronoun to when referring to them or you
are corrected when using a pronoun that a person does not wish to be identified
with, you should go by what you are told.
Sometimes a person may use a pronoun
that is not “he” or “she”, but “ze”. Sometimes a person might wish to be referred
to as “they”, even in the singular tense. Sometimes a person may request
another pronoun. No matter which pronoun a person requests, it is important to
respect that person’s wishes. This is not to say that you should feel bad if
you refer to a person by the wrong gender pronoun because you did not know. It
is simply to say that, if you are informed to use a certain pronoun or
corrected to use a different pronoun, that you do so once you are informed. It
boils down to the common courtesy of respecting the wishes of others.
If someone wants me to remember to say weird like "ze", they're going to have to hang a sign around their neck. Or wait until a technological equivalent catches up with something like Google Glass. And my long-stated opinion is that for someone to use first-person plural, they better be: royalty, pregnant, or suffering from a tapeworm...
ReplyDeleteThe "Miss/Mrs" to "Ms" my and my parent's generation suffered through was painful enough. While back in the day it was easy enough to determine a woman's marital status by looking for a wedding ring, you never knew which to use. Maybe they would take umbrage if you oppressed them with a patriarchal "Miss/Mrs". Maybe they would be insulted that you labeled them one of those feminists out to destroy the correct and proper social order. You couldn't win.
Now, I've already strayed from grammatically correct syntax by how I refer to people. I decided around 1985 that I'd stop using "he" and "his" in favor of "them" and "their". So I've gotten used to working around gender pronouns. But given my memory and lack of skill with verbal repartee, I expect I will be looking for an adams apple if I have to come up with a pronoun to refer to someone.
I had never heard of "ze" before and I think it is an interesting solution to the problem of pronouns. However, there may be people who don't like that word either. Then what do we do? Create yet another word? It would be difficult to change the fabric of our entire language to satisfy everyone. We definitely want to be sensitive to how people identify, but I think there comes a point where there just isn't much more we can do. While I think once we are corrected by an individual we should work hard in the future to use the correct pronoun, I think there are more important things to emphasize in the LGBTQ world. It just is not realistic to change the way we all are biologically and socially raised to gender people.
ReplyDeleteImagine how much worse it would be if we spoke a language, like Spanish, that depended on gender even more and had almost no gender neutral terminology. (For example, the spanish "they" is either feminine or masculine depending on who specifically you are referring to).
The fabric of our language did change with the introduction of "Ms". It redressed a patriarchal imbalance. It in fact made life easier, because you no longer risked a social faux pas by guessing wrong about a woman's marital status. (Even though it was their fault for sending the wrong ring finger signal.) Nowadays, you're looked at funny if you use "Miss" or "Mrs" to refer to anyone between the ages of 12 and 60.
ReplyDeleteMy point about "Ze" is that there is no easy way to know when to use it instead of "He" or "She". Unless there is a culture shift where the younger generations use it instead of them.