The Ponderer
In all the current discussions about pronouns, it is easy to get caught up in the arguments and forget what a pronoun is actually for.
A pronoun substitutes for a noun. It is used instead of a noun, to simplify speech.
We substitute pronouns to avoid saying something over and over again:
“John and Sally picked up Rebecca, Paul and Steve from school. John, Sally, Rebecca, Paul and Steve got into John, Sally, Rebecca, Paul and Steve’s van and drove to John, Sally, Rebecca, Paul and Steve’s house,”
becomes “John and Sally picked up Rebecca, Paul and Steve from school. They got into their van and drove to their house.”
Pronouns simplify speech because there are lots of nouns, but very few possible pronouns.
- There are innumerable different items – toaster, horse, needle – but every single one can be referred to by the pronoun it. Each item doesn’t have a unique pronoun for us to look up and check we get right: they all have the same one – it.
- There are an infinite number of different potential sets of items and persons, but every single set can be referred to by the pronouns they or them. (John picked up his chainsaw and lunchbox, and put them into the car.)
- There are billions of women in the world, but every single one of them can be referred to by the pronouns she and her.
- There are billions of men in the world, but every single one of them can be referred to by the pronouns he, him and his.
This means that we can see a person in the street and, without even needing to know anything about them, if they look male, say “I saw a man buying bananas: he put them into his shopping bag.”
If we accidentally said “he” when the person being referred to was actually female, there would be some embarrassment as it was not the grammatically correct form of address, but usually it would be something everyone would laugh about as a silly mistake – a very common mistake for people for whom English is a second language, or for anyone when referring to people who prefer to dress in an androgynous fashion. But it’s just been a humorously awkward social blunder.
There is now a new trend to choose personalised pronouns for oneself. This began with having a preference for he or she – and that is understandable. Everyone has a preference for he or she, usually based on their physical gender, but people have different personal views on that which they are welcome to. And it doesn’t complicate speech – if you dress like a male people will automatically refer to you as he, and if you dress like a female people will use she, and if you dress androgynously people will guess one or the other and get it wrong half the time, which you can laugh about.
But people are now choosing preferred pronouns for themselves that are not he, she, or even they – these are properly called neopronouns. Some have been around for a while – ze and hir, xe and xem – and have attained a degree of acceptance in certain social circles. But resources for transsexual people online list hundreds of unique pronoun options that people may choose. Askanonbinary.tumbler.com lists pronoun sets including mo/moon/moons/moonself, drum/drum/drums/drumself, glit/glitter/glitter/glitterself etc. People choosing these pronouns are genuinely trying to find ways of referring to themself that they feel more closely match their own personalities.
And it is also no longer a laughing matter if you choose the wrong pronouns. Many people say you should no longer refer to people’s ‘preferred’ pronouns – it is mandatory to use the ‘right’ pronoun. Using the wrong pronoun is “misgendering”, and can even be interpreted as a criminal offense in some places.
The thing that is being lost in all this is, however, the purpose of pronouns.
Pronouns exist to simplify speech.
If you have to ask someone’s pronoun before you can use it, that complicates speech, it does not simplify it.
If there is a risk of prosecution if you use the wrong pronoun, that also complicates speech. It means you can’t speak quickly and risk making errors, but must speak more slowly as you try to remember which terms to use to refer to each person in your statement.
If someone chooses a unique word to refer to themself, that unique word is not a pronoun. It is a noun. If John wants to be called drum, good for them. They can tell their friends “please call me drum”, and their friends will do that. They will however be the only person in their life referred to as drum. Drum is now a unique word that means John – not anybody else. So drum is not a pronoun. It is John’s nickname. John needs to also accept that he will be usually referred to using a generic pronoun, and not always by his nickname.
Pronouns are an important element of speech that we use in almost every single sentence. They work because we don’t have to think about them. They are very important.
People are welcome to their own views about themselves, and should all be treated with respect. But let’s show our respect by talking to each other calmly and listening to each other’s viewpoints, not by complicating our language itself in a misguided attempt to be more inclusive.
