"What are your pronouns?"

On going along. And, well ... not.

Janet McNeill

May 14, 2024

This pronoun thing?

I personally don't find it ... logical.

So. I just don't take part in it.

A "conscientious objector," if you will.

As in, I've given it careful thought, & it just doesn't line up for me.

It doesn't accord with plain old common sense.

Not that much of anything does, these daze, of course. 🙁

I'm not even sure how to "honour" it with those who do feel obliged to announce theirs, actually.

Because, well, here's where it seems illogical to me.

When I address you as a person, I don't use a pronoun at all.

I call you by your name - or use the pronoun "you."

I would only need to use your "preferred pronoun" (i.e. she/her, he/him, etc.) if I were speaking about you in the third person, i.e., to someone else - likely when you are not present.

In which case, I would likely first of all be mentioning you by your name.

Do you care deeply about which "pronoun" I use when I speak about you to someone else?

Why?

In what way would it be at all relevant?

Or is it, hmmm, just kind of control freak-y?

And ... well ... unnecessary.

And heck - maybe just another example of virtue signalling??

“Everyone sees what they want to see in your mom, everyone gets to be offended in their own special way. Your mother’s story allows people of any political stripe to say ‘Shame on you,’ which is just delicious these days. It’s no secret that the great American pastime is no longer baseball. Now it’s sanctimony.” – character in the amazing novel The Nix (2016), by Nathan Hill – reviewed here.

Of course most of us "get" by now that this pronoun thing is part of a larger "woke" agenda.

All this off-the-charts gender stuff these days, eh?? Which I am not going to go into here. Narrow focus here - just sticking to the pronoun piece. But. If you scroll way down here, you’ll see a few interesting items I’ve run across that can help us all understand better “how we got here.”

Really. Just … whoa.

And to which I suspect most of us do not in any way subscribe. And which, quite frankly, I think many of my now-former colleagues on the Left cannot be very clearly aware of. Because if they thought about it at all deeply, they’d be as horrified by it as I am. As so very many of us now are.

And yes, “wokeism” has probably become too deeply embedded by now in western cultural institutions for us to defeat it as an agenda.

I think it all just kind of snuck up on most of us!

While we were all just busy living our lives. Making other plans, & all that.

It certainly got past my radar screen!

My First Encounter with the Pronoun Thing

I was at a leftie environmental activist meeting - late 2019 or early 2020, as I recall.

Yes, I considered myself a leftie for decades. The Covid era certainly cured me of that! Now I'm just one of the millions who describe ourselves as "politically homeless."

And not "woke," I might add.

The gathering was being chaired by a young woman I'd never previously met, who started the meeting by asking us to do a "go-round." You know. Introduce ourselves, say why we were at the meeting - and tell the group our "preferred pronouns."

This was a new one on me!

It threw me off.

I knew I didn't possess such a thing as a "preferred pronoun," so I was unsure how to deal with the request.

It made me feel anxious, to be honest.

But I was the 5th or 6th person in the circle, & when it got to be my turn, I just said my name, a bit about my activist background & why I was at the meeting, & didn't mention pronouns at all. (I don't think this was even deliberate on my part, actually. I'd just kind of forgotten about it!)

Phew. Turned out to be easier to deal with than I thought!

More recently?

It came up again in a Zoom meeting.

I dealt with it the same way, basically.

I just didn't partake.

Happily, btw, I noticed I was not the only person who refrained. There were several of us.

On neither of these occasions did I become angry or defensive or insulting or argumentative or obnoxious or confrontational.

I just simply very politely did not go along.

Same thing with masks last year at a workshop held by this organization I volunteer for (which, btw, is very “woke.” Very-very-very). I just didn't wear one. I was not alone on that occasion, either. No one asked me why I was not wearing one - which I'd have been perfectly happy to explain!

But no one asked.

Gotta admit, it did feel good not being the only “dissenter” in the crowd!

So. That's It!

I know some folks have much more challenging circumstances vis-a-vis this pronoun thing.

Or mask thing.

Some are required to take part in all this nonsense for their jobs.

For me, not participating is an easy choice. No real consequences beyond feeling good about being true to myself.

I'm just saying that sometimes there are things in life we can pretty easily choose to not go along with.

Minor acts of "civil disobedience," if you will.

About which U.S. historian Howard Zinn once said,

“Civil disobedience is not our problem. Our problem is civil obedience.”

** more great quotations about civil diobedience!

Janet

p.s. we human beings seem to have this tendency to just go along with stuff. You know? Even things we know are illogical. Maybe even nasty or immoral. Have you ever thought to wonder why we're so darn compliant? I've learned that this is the way our species is wired. We have a hardwired "compulsion to comply." I wrote about this a while back here: The Human Compulsion to Comply. It’s kind of helpful to understand that it’s right there in our wiring. Because once we become conscious of it, we can rassle with it better. Consciously, rather than unconsciously.

p.p.s. I had my own very visceral experience with this phenomenon early on in the Covid debacle/psyop. I was in a big chain grocery store, where I saw many customers buying toilet paper. I knew logically that I had no need whatsoever to buy any - yet felt this very strong pull to buy some all the same. To, you know, “go along with the crowd.” And the thought that came to me was more or less “Whoa. You really have to watch out for this herd thing!”