On Neopronouns
This is the third article in a series I’m writing on gender. Equal parts personal narrative and transgender studies I hope to explore topics that have, by-and-large, been nagging at me for some time, but that I haven’t taken the time to write about. What does a thing called “The Cyborg Manifesto” have to do with being trans? What’s the relationship between transgender people and Frankenstein’s Monster? What are neopronouns and why do they upset some people? These are just some of the topics I hope to address in this series.
When I started this series a month ago I made a list of the primary things that I wanted to write about and neopronouns were in the top six. I don’t think there’s been a time since I’ve been introduced to the concept of neopronouns that I’ve been against them. I’m a linguistic descriptivist and I think that neopronouns and gender-neutral pronouns (not to be conflated) are infinitely important. As the question above asks, I’m interested not only in neopronouns, but also in why the upset some people?
As I was writing the first draft of this article I thought about the ways in which critics would shut me in either way I went. If I establish my ethos as a scholar, I could be accused of being an ivory tower academic disconnected from the “real world,” and if I establish my ethos as a queer person who uses gender neutral pronouns and neopronouns, I could be accused of being a special snowflake, social justice warrior. Instead of picking one over the other, I’ll do what I always mean to do and embrace both. With that said, let’s get to the topic at hand, neopronouns
What exactly are neopronouns anyway? They may be exactly what they sound like, new pronouns (depending on how we want to define new).
Though the list of neopronouns is ever-growing, there are some that seem to be staples on many different lists and that can be found in most sources. These include ey, ne, ve, xe and ze (to name just a few). Christine M. Elverson created the pronouns ey/em/eir in 1975. American mathematician Michael Spivak created the gender neutral pronoun E/Em/Eir/Eirs/Emself in 1983. In Marge Piercy’s 1976 novel Woman on the Edge of Time the author uses the pronouns per/pers/perself. In 1858 Charles Crozat Converse, an attorney and composer, created the pronoun thon/thons/thonself. Ve is dated to 1980 and xe is dated to 1973.
But, it shouldn’t really be a matter of how old or new words are. Merriam-Webster added more than 1,000 words in 2017, and chances are some of those words are in your vocabulary. Language evolves. I would encourage anyone who denies that it does, claims that it shouldn’t, or claims that they do not participate in this evolution of language to reflect on their language use.
Either way, at the end of the day, this isn’t about language, this isn’t some pseudo war between prescriptivists and descriptivists (The American Dialect Society shows indication of where they stand on this issue, so do Merriam-Webster). What this should be about is basic human respect.
Respecting someone’s gender pronouns isn’t about coddling them. If you think that LGBTQ youth are being coddled, you’d benefit from reading up on the rates at which LGBTQ youth face bullying, abuse at home, the heightened rates at which they face mental illness and suicidal ideation, the heightened rates at which they face homelessness, the heightened rates at which LGBTQ folks face poverty and joblessness — the list goes on and on. It’s far beyond time to do away with the mythology of the coddled LGBTQ youth.
And with pronouns having been created by authors, mathematicians, attorneys and business people, maybe it’s time to acknowledge that neopronouns and gender-neutral pronouns are not the work or sole business of LGBTQ folks, of universities, or of any individual departments therein. Instead, the development of our English language for it’s bettered continued use is the business of all sorts of folks.
When I think about neopronouns, I think about writer and activist Eli Clare:
“We tell them: your definitions of woman and man suck. We tell them: your binary stinks. We say: here we are in all our glory — male, female, intersex, trans, butch, Nellie, studly, femme, king, androgynous, queen, some of us carving out new ways of being women, others of us new ways of being men, and still others new ways of being something else entirely. You don’t have pronouns yet for us” (Clare, 149).
Clare wrote that you don’t have pronouns for us yet, and now, we’re trying to give them to you — the transgender community is trying to say, “This is who I am, these are my pronouns — these are our new ways of being, accept it.”
I encourage everyone to investigate the history of gender-neutral pronouns in the English language, just as I encourage everyone to investigate the history of trans-/-gender deviation in the western world. There’s nothing new here. And honest historians, linguistics and lexicographers and activists and organizers every day are better and better documenting an unavoidable and unforgettable history of queerness.
AUTHOR’S NOTE: I would like to say, in a kind of unconventional way, that this piece feels incomplete to me, and that I am not fully satisfied with all that I have said in it. I want to keep to the bi-weekly publishing schedule I’ve set up for myself, and for that reason, you’ve read this piece now, but know that I may circle back to it at some point in this series, and the reason is because I feel like there’s more to say, I just can’t pinpoint what it is or how to say it at this point. Thanks!
Have questions? Don’t be afraid to leave them in the comments below! Questions asked may turn into pieces written in the future!
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