A Modest Proposal Concerning Pronouns

A Modest Proposal Concerning Pronouns May 26, 2015

Evidently, a privilege helping me along life’s way has been my access of the pronoun “he.” Like all such privileges, it has existed apart from my knowing the gains.

Pronouns
Pronouns

There are two approaches to take when one discover’s one’s undue privilege. One is to tax or otherwise burden the winner to equalize things for the loser. I do not think in our reactionary political climate that a Pronoun Tax would pass Congress. Like my bill for restitution to Appalachians (the Hillbilly Restitution Act of 2015) for the stereotyping we have endured, intersectionality of suffering is beyond the simple minds of our present representatives. Simply grasping the necessity of weighting the many unknown privileges and burdens one is born with will require executive action and a new agency of government.

Pronouns are a clear and present danger to our communication. We know this as Facebook has given us many options. These options, however, all fall short of cutting to the root of the problem. The use of “they” to refer to self makes one sound demon possessed. While those actually demon possessed may appreciate support and solidarity for their condition (long discriminated against in a cis-soul culture), this also may serve to silence the Legion who have already suffered enough.

The use of she/he/it is cumbersome and in juvenile hands leads to mocking acronyms. We have enough trouble body shaming perfectly natural functions without opening up even greater scope to those who would laugh about anything, even pronoun usage.

As for new pronouns such as “ze,” the problem here is obvious. Historical documents, television programming, and motion pictures have not used “ze.” While I would be open to a massive redubbing of all our documents (made possible by a bigger government with greater computing powers in congenial programs like Project Samaritan), this is again unlikely to happen soon. Ze would find ze’s self no place in ze-story. We would then have literary/canonical privilege multiplied beyond the pronoun burden now held.

The simplest solution would be for all of us to take the pronoun “she” out of solidarity with the abused pronoun and let every other pronoun go. This would, however, lead to the problem of those who took “she” voluntarily versus those who were given it at birth. To paraphrase the Bard, we do not wish to live in a society where some are born she, some gain she, and some have she thrust upon them.

And so I would propose banning all pronouns but the formerly masculine “he.” This would allow all historical documents to refer to everyone as they were intended in the privileging use of “he” as the neutral term. It would give access to the subliminal privilege of being referred to as “he” in written work, emails, Tweets, and other documents until the New Person has arisen cleansed of pronoun proclivities.

Yet. . . this too is problematic as I am a “he” born “he” and now am mansplaining pronouns and having opinions about the same. How then shall we live? We must ban all pronouns. Cease to use them. This can be done. Instead of referring to “he or she,” we must embrace the clarity of writing “any x where x is a person of any gender.”

This ban will (again) make historical documents hard to read, but in a different way. Ze would not find ze-self in the documents. The pronoun-less will simply see a different language where “the pronoun” is still used the way “f” used to figure for “s” in older English. We can start the work of translating now.

Here is the Constitution:

Take any  person x, where x is a person and x resides in the United States: x can form a more perfect union, establish justice, and promote domestic tranquility . . .

Notice that after an initial clarification, x is shorter than any of the older pronouns. The hours x will save where x is a person who previously used pronouns and now eschews them will be vary great. Clarity, concision, and no privilege for anyone. . .

except perhaps the literate . . . a problem that is of even deeper concern.

 


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