The problem: English lacks a commonly used gender-neutral personal pronoun. Also, sometimes people switch pronouns.<\/p>\n
There used to be a singular “they” for unknown individuals. Shakespeare used it. It’s making a comeback, but it’s imperfect as it’s never used to refer to a person that you know. There are a punch of proposed gender neutral pronouns<\/a> (GNP), including Spivak<\/a> and my favorites: ze and hir: “Ze laughed. I called hir. Hir head hurts. I am hirs. Ze feeds hirself.” Of course, the way to get things into common usage is to use them. The problem: English lacks a commonly used gender-neutral personal pronoun. Also, sometimes people switch pronouns. There used to be a singular “they” for unknown individuals. Shakespeare used it. It’s making a comeback, but it’s imperfect as it’s never used to refer to a person that you know. There are a punch of proposed gender neutral … Continue reading Pronouns: A Fast Introduction<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"activitypub_content_warning":"","activitypub_content_visibility":"","activitypub_max_image_attachments":4,"activitypub_interaction_policy_quote":"anyone","activitypub_status":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[76,176,24],"class_list":["post-512","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorised","tag-celesteh","tag-gender","tag-trans"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.celesteh.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/512","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.celesteh.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.celesteh.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.celesteh.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.celesteh.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=512"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.celesteh.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/512\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2734,"href":"https:\/\/www.celesteh.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/512\/revisions\/2734"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.celesteh.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=512"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.celesteh.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=512"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.celesteh.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=512"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nOk, so what about people who change pronouns? Obviously, the solution is to refer to them the way they wish. If you don’t know what you’re supposed to use, go with a GNP.
\nThen, there are temporal issues. I know some folks who have transitioned. Some I only knew afterwards, but know stories about them that are from before. I usually tell those stories with the pronoun that I’ve always used. “When she was a boy, she went to math camp.” Then, there are folks I knew before they came out. I use the pronouns that matched them at the time of the story. “She was a Mills student then, but now he’s at UCLA.” If I’m talking about a public figure or writing academically, I’ll use the current pronoun. “Wendy Carlos was still known as ‘Walter’ when she released Switched on Bach<\/i>.” I can’t imagine a situation where using the most recent pronoun would be in error.
\nFor myself, I prefer male or gender-neutral pronouns. Since I haven’t really changed appearance much, I think it would be unfair for me to get annoyed when old friends refer to me as ‘she.’ Mostly, it doesn’t bother me, but sometimes it’s like fingernails on chalkboard. I feel so much more comfortable with being ‘he’ or ‘ze’ that my tolerance of ‘she’ is declining. I mean, imagine if everyone referred to you for a day by the wrong pronoun. That would be really weird and uncomfortable, right? <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"