Annmarie Throckmorton, M.A.
- Oct 19, 2019

Preferred Pronouns

When I taught "Gender Inclusive Language"* in 1993-95, by invitation as a guest lecturer at Ohio State University and at a few nearby private collages, I had no idea that the concept would go militant. I introduced the concept politely for consideration and I assumed everyone would be free to chose whether or not they wished to be kind and gentle enough to their fellow humans to use gender inclusive language, as appropriate.

Now one fears to speak any pronouns for fear of loud, public censorship by some fledgling social justice warriors whose preferred pronoun were inadvertently neglected.

As for me, my preferred pronouns are a heterosexual she/her, no ze** for me. It still amazes me that clarifying my sexuality, gender, and preferred pronouns are "a thing".

FYI, traditional personal pronouns are: I, you, he, she, it, we, they, me, him, her, us, them. There are six types of pronouns: personal, reflexive and intensive, demonstrative, interrogative, relative and indefinite. It will take quite a bit of interpersonal work to sort all of those pronouns into the multitude of genders that we now have. It will be interesting, very interesting indeed. I hope that we keep it civil.

BTW, one's sex is biologically determined as male, female, or hermaphrodite.*** One's gender is how one expresses that sexuality in social and cultural roles. These gender roles are currently undergoing rapid, exciting, and sometimes awkward, angry changes. This is, of course, very interesting to a social scientist such as myself. Again, I really hope that we keep it civil.

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* "Gender inclusive language is any language that seeks to affirm both women and men. The (use of) gender inclusive language simply means to avoid exclusive or sexist language that subordinates one gender or suggests that one is more suited for or deserving of respect." Modified to replace the word "requirement" as it is fascist in this context..

Source: http://divinity.howard.edu/pdf_forms/Gender%20Inclusive%20Language%20Document/genderinclusivlanguagdocument.pdf

** "Ze is a gender-neutral...pronoun used in place of the masculine he or the feminine she."

Source: Dictionary.com.

*** "In biology, a hermaphrodite is an organism that has complete or partial reproductive organs...normally associated with both male and female sexes."

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hermaphrodite