By James Alexander, Daily Sceptic. (Photo: Katie Rainbow/Unsplash)
Is it not grotesquely imperialist to insist that everyone, everywhere, will refer to you in such a way as to indulge your little foible?
During COVID-19, when it was hard to tell the difference between a virus and a vaccine, it was reassuring to have some sort of certainty. We found certainty, especially in Twitter handles and on Zoom conversations, in pronouns. Everyone seemed to know who he/she/they was or were.
I still find the pronoun business a bit odd. I noted in a recent piece that Julius Caesar, who always spoke of himself in the third person, obviously preferred the pronouns He/Him to I/Me. An ingenious below-the-liner called PeterM observed that even if the Woke afficionados do claim pronouns for themselves they should not be allowed to lay claim to our verbs. I had written, “They use they/them pronouns,” and I was told by PeterM that I should have written, “They uses they/them pronouns.” Bravo.
The truth about pronouns is, of course, that they are almost entirely rubbish.
My pronouns are ‘I/Me’. And so are yours. Or I/Me/Me/Mine if one wants to echo George Harrison. But NB: only I use these pronouns. Aye, there is a logic:
I can be an I, a You, or a He.
- Only I can refer to myself as I. (Note: no gender.)
- You, of course, refer to me as You. (Note: no gender.)
- They, naturally, refer to me as Him. (Note: here is gender.)
I don’t gender myself, you don’t gender me, but they gender me. (Genderise? genderate? engender? genduflect?) Is this significant?