That title is leading and misleading simultaneously – leading to the interrogation of pronouns, and misleading because it’s only one piece of the discussion. Something has changed in advertisement emails from universities…under the full name of the sender, “She/her/hers” or “He/him/his.”
The other day, I found a Discord profile that wrote: “he/she (if we’re friends, you can use she).” Huh? Does the strength of a relationship determine pronoun usage? Another example: “she/him/their.” Does your identity shift with circumstance? This shift seems to reduce the pronouns value. While I have no problem referring to someone by a preferred pronoun—because it’s just a name; the crux of it is gender identity—you cannot call someone a girl or boy or man or woman if it is not a label they identify with.
However, this seems a bit ironic. What is a man? Are there distinguishing attributes that make a person qualify for that label? Are there characteristics that come to mind when someone is a woman? And lastly, do we assign stereotypes to those who identify as non-binary? A ‘yes’ response to the last question is sure to offend many people. But, if we shouldn’t assume things of those who identify as non-binary, why should we about women or men? We are stretching, and stretching to accommodate every single possible identity that exists and that has yet been invented. Healthline, a website frequented to check if a suspicious-looking mole could be cancerous or if coughing is a sure sign of pneumonia, lists sixty-eight different terms to describe not someone, but a part of someone. Similar to how the solution to violence is not to supply everyone with weapons but to remove access to them, the solution to gender identity is to rid of all labels, not create new ones. Every person is complex and unique; I do not believe there are—nor should there be—sufficient labels to categorize individuals.
phto cred: https://uwm.edu/lgbtrc/support/gender-pronouns/
When scrutinizing the italicized pronouns at the bottom of the email, I really try to think, what this could possibly tell me about the person. He, she, they; these monosyllabic words don’t ring an alarm or tick any sort of expectation—they shouldn’t. Grammar class introduced them as a way to abbreviate names, so we write “Mark went to the supermarket, where he bought a pig,” instead of “Mark went to the supermarket, where Mark bought a pig.”
A universal pronoun should exist, perhaps ze/zir/zirs; it sounds odd, but so did English when first learning it. There cannot be an aversion to stereotypes, from which the desire for various gender identities stem, if there are no stereotypes. Our society works towards equality. Right now, we’re perilously close to giving the “unconventional” (as if there is such a thing) preferential treatment. All I’m saying is…there’s a reason affirmative action was banned in nine states.
— Writer Amarisa Chalermratananon can be reached at holyshishkabab@gmail.com. Follow her/him/zir on discord.
