One would have a difficult time finding a more measured, considerate, honest and probing analysis of the preferred pronouns controversy than Ryan Harkins offers here. You certainly won’t get it from me: I drew a line in the sand (Remember the Alamo!) on this long ago, when I concluded that such rhetorical demands from various minority groups were cynical power plays designed to make everyone bend to their will or be branded one kind of bigot or another. Ryan’s reflections didn’t change my mind, but they did make me consider changing my mind.
Here is Ryan Harkins’ Comment of the Day on the post, “Ethics Dunce: The National MS Society”…
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I have struggled with finding suitable reason to cave and use “preferred” pronouns. I can conceive of numerous reasons to reject them: using such pronouns is manipulative; using them is forcing division; using them is an effort to force the world to conform to an individual, rather than the individual accepting reality; or if none of those, using them is an effort to band-aid over and thus ignore serious issues.
I’ve been considering that maybe being willing to use someone’s preferred pronouns could be a measure of meeting them where they are. In Catholic apologetics and evangelization, that is one of the best tactics in seeking conversion. Walk with someone. Get to know him. Understand his problems. Genuinely care about him, because conversion is not a game where one keeps track of points, but where one is selflessly concerned about this person’s salvation. Furthermore, St. Paul tells us in 1 Cor 9: “To the Jew, I become a Jew, to win over the Jew. To the Greek, I become a Greek, to win over the Greek. To the weak, I become weak, to win over the weak. I become all things to all people so that by all means I might save some.”
My protest at following St. Paul’s advice is that when someone insists on “preferred” pronouns, this person has already made any conversation a combat. He has taken common understanding, innocuous parlance, and made it a game where at any misstep he will cry foul, cry victim, and seek to dominate and destroy. Perhaps this is simply a terrible biased perception on my part, but I conclude this from the interactions I have seen, the self-righteous indignation at people who “misgender” or won’t provide their own “preferred” pronouns. Maybe this is a poor sample set, because the people who aren’t out to tear others down for misgendering are also not the ones who are outspoken and calling national attention to themselves. The problem, though, is if I have a limited amount of time and energy to devote on other people, then engaging people who insist on their nonstandard pronouns is a high-risk/low-reward situation, I would far prefer to spend my time and energy on someone else.
Still, why be stubborn? Why not be willing to take the risk, especially if what I claim is true, and that I’m to be selflessly concerned about this person’s well-being? And if I believe that this person is in a deep struggle and truly needs help, doesn’t that stress the need all the more to get to know him and risk missteps and being lambasted as a bigot and a hater (which, as a white, male, Catholic I obviously am already)? And isn’t this all the more pressing a concern, given the following point?
For individuals to take up “preferred” pronouns is a deconstruction of human bonds. We are not by nature individuals. We require, at least minimally, society. An individual needs a father and a mother to even exist, even if the parental action was one brief encounter never intended to generate progeny (except for the very fact of engaging in the very act intended for generating progeny). But even beyond that, we need society at a psychological level. Most people will literally go insane in isolation. But to live in society we have to be willing to give as well as take, else society breaks down. Preferred pronouns fracture the bonds of society. They represent a path of hyper-individualism that can only end with each individual existing in his own private world, furious because no one will enter his world where he is in complete control, and yet unwilling to give up any of his world to enter another’s.
So I am faced with my own biases and weaknesses, in which I think maybe I should engage with individuals, and perhaps at the level of their preferred pronouns, but am averse to doing so because I feel preferred pronouns should be rejected, and I’m not feeling capable of effectively engaging said individuals in the first place. Extradimensional Cephalopod [the notable Ethics Alarms commenter] would say that I simply don’t have the tools in my toolkit to make such engagements possible and fruitful, and that maybe I need to understand that I’m trying to force said individuals into my world as much as they are trying to force me into theirs. I would argue that I’m asking them, fundamentally, to live in the real world, but I just noted above that taking that stance directly and from the beginning is not meeting them where they are at and walking with them. So, ultimately, I don’t do anything.
I’m not sure how to end this reflection. Is there a call to action that I should be heeding? Is there a request I’m making for greater elucidation? Am I hopeful that I’ve said something meaningful? I’m not sure. What I am sure about is that I don’t want to engage the world of preferred pronouns, and I dislike the fact that this has become an issue. But it is an issue, and whining about it accomplishes nothing.
Ethics Alarms 
“To the Jew, I become a Jew, to win over the Jew. To the Greek, I become a Greek, to win over the Greek.”
The apostle Paul was talking about regional cultures with which he was familiar (Judea and the Levant had been Hellenized long before the Roman occupation) and with whose members he could relate. I have read nothing in Scripture which leads me to believe that Paul spent any time ministering to populations which had rejected reality, or that when witnessing to idol-worshipers he joined in their idol worship.
I regularly witness to and pray for non-Christians from a variety of backgrounds. I try to display the love of God to all I encounter, but that does not include participating in the delusions of the mentally ill, which seems like a fool’s errand to me.
That graphic of pronoun conjugations triggers visceral memories wrestling over third declension conjugation in Koine Greek.
I wonder what would happen if someone thought it would be appropriate to use “they” instead of he or she and was called out for misgendering?
I am glad to see Ryan’s comment selected as a COTD. Well done Ryan
What happens if you spell one of the myriad ways to identify a subject wrong.
BTW. which one do trans-women use? Are their different references depending on whether a person is bi-sexual, pan-sexual, polyamorous or any of the other types of sexual proclivity? If so, does the mere fact that I must use a term that reflects their sexual preferences suggest that I am using inappropriate sexual language in the workplace. It seems to me that once we assign certain pronouns to various sexual orientations it provides a pathway for learning about potential pathways for sexual encounters on the job. Mary identifies and polyamorous and is married to a guy named Jim so is it ok to ask her out.
Activists against binary choices in the gender war state unequivocally that gender and sex are completely different. The problem with that argument is that each seems to want a specific pronoun reference reflecting their sexual proclivities. If that is not the case, why does the chart above have so many options. Ironically, the reason is binary: They have so many choices to reflect their sexual preferences; or, the many choices are used as a weapon against the vast majority of people who believe that gender is a binary construct.
Lo, I am summoned to render perspective.
Concerns of people apprehensive about preferred pronouns:
Costs: Memory space for everyone’s separate pronouns. (I myself don’t even bother with honorifics if I can help it–this is the 21st Century U.S.)
Risks: N/A
Habits: Allowing people to dictate the manner in which others interact with them.
Trust: People not getting angry if you forget their pronouns, or at least no more so than if you forget their name.
I find the memory cost isn’t noticeably greater than remembering names, since people usually try to present themselves in ways that match their preferred pronouns. For instance, if they’re sufficiently androgynous, it’s easy enough to remember to use “them”. Nobody’s yet asked me to learn new third-person singular pronouns, and if anyone did it would take a bit for the new pronouns to to feel completely natural.
I think it’s fine for people to choose how they want to be addressed. We defer to people all the time on their names. That’s just a matter of protocol. On its own, allowing people to choose their pronouns from a limited selection doesn’t prevent us from telling people things they might need to hear.
I would not consider it reasonable for someone to expect others to remember brand-new pronouns unless they interact frequently. Outside of a dedicated social group, a person would have to put up with “they” instead of whatever customized version they use. Insisting strangers abide by customized pronouns is just making up rules to wield social power and perceived moral superiority over people who aren’t obsessive enough to follow those rules. It’s a common enough human vice known as “holier than thou”, or “gatekeeping” in geek circles; I’d file it under hubris (for control) and envy (for wanting to feel superior).
Concerns of people who have preferred pronouns different from what you might expect:
Costs: N/A
Risks: N/A
Habits: They want to distance themselves in their own mind and others’ minds from ideas that are associated with a particular gender that they have little affinity for.
Trust: N/A
Biological sex may not be a social construct, but there are many social constructs surrounding it. These constructs are not usually arbitrary: they exist because of typical psychological differences between human males and females and because of the different roles the sexes play in reproduction. Some people just feel very uncomfortable with the role they were born into and prefer to act in a different role, and the easiest way to do that is to present as a different sex.
If you accept the idea that masculine and feminine genders are non-arbitrarily distinct in some way, then that implies the possibility that a person who is biologically male can prefer to be associated socially, emotionally, and physiologically with femininity, and vice versa. That in itself is not a retreat into a private reality; it’s a desire to be treated differently in certain situations by other real people.
The part where people feel threatened by reality comes from body dysphoria, the feeling of suffering because one feels one’s body is supposed to be fundamentally different from how it is. I regard body dysphoria as a true mental illness, i.e. a mental condition that harms a person who has it regardless of the extent to which society accepts them as “normal.” In the best case scenario I would expect it to be treated without invasive body modification. On the other hand, I’m not inherently opposed to body modification, and if it can help a person’s mental health in the non-best case scenarios without incurring too many other tradeoffs for them or others, that seems like a good thing.
On a separate note, I can understand why personal pronouns are so popular in correspondence, since sometimes it’s not possible to tell a person’s gender just from their first name, and the honorifics in people’s signatures that used to give people those cues are much less common nowadays.
What do you think? Did I miss any concerns people have? Are there concerns inadequately addressed by the above points? If a human whom you register as male but who wears feminine clothing asked you to treat them as a human woman, or vice versa, what exactly does that request mean to you, and what are you concerned will happen if you do?
EC
Starting with your last statement: ”If a human whom you register as male but who wears feminine clothing asked you to treat them as a human woman, or vice versa, what exactly does that request mean to you, and what are you concerned will happen if you do?
Why should we treat people differently based on assumed or assigned gender? The issue arises not necessarily because people are averse to using different pronouns it is because those who feel the need to have them reference differently seek to impose high social or economic costs if they do not.
You said “I think it’s fine for people to choose how they want to be addressed. We defer to people all the time on their names.
Deferring to people on their name is substantially different than using a pronoun as a reference to others. A pronoun is not typically used in the presence of the subject unless, as Curmie points out, you are speaking to a group of people and using this reference to identify another in the group without constantly using their name. How does the use of various references aid in communication is the audience has no clue as to the various meanings or associations of these new pronoun references? It does not.
I am confused at the following:
“If you accept the idea that masculine and feminine genders are non-arbitrarily distinct in some way, then that implies the possibility that a person who is biologically male can prefer to be associated socially, emotionally, and physiologically with femininity, and vice versa. That in itself is not a retreat into a private reality; it’s a desire to be treated differently in certain situations by other real people.”
I don’t believe that masculine and feminine genders are non-arbitrarily distinct. I believe both sexes can demonstrate behaviors of either to some degree throughout their lives. Women have proven themselves to be just as ruthless and vicious as men can be and men have demonstrated significant capacity to be nurturing and caring. People adopt one or the other dominant genders and exhibit such through their behaviors. No matter what behaviors each exhibits it has no affect on the biology. Pronouns are communication devices to help people understand that to which you are speaking.
I treat women the same way I treat men except of course for those things that are considered gentlemanly manners such as opening a door for a women. With that said, I hold doors for men too rather than let it fly in their face. The social constructs of gender create the social and emotional constructs we associate with those genders. Would the provisions of the Violence Against Women act be applied to some male who prefers to be associated with those with womanly attributes. I doubt it.
If a person approaches me that I have never met and presents themselves as a woman in all typical respects of dress, shape, voice, etc I will more than likely refer to that person as she or her to another. The problem arises when an obvious female approaches dressed as a man with a man’s haircut along with carriage typical of men if you refer to her as a male such as using sir as an honorific you will find that she will take great offense.
Good questions.
If a person doesn’t make it clear how they want to be addressed, that’s on them. If a person chooses a way of being addressed that’s hard to remember, that’s on them. If a person appears and dresses deliberately androgynously and has an ambiguous name, I may refer to them as “they” until I learn more. Or I might just refer to the gender I’m pretty sure they are if I’m not sure they prefer nonbinary pronouns, until and unless someone informs me otherwise. I don’t consider it a big deal.
If a person deliberately rejects another person’s simple chosen way of being addressed, I agree that it’s dangerous to allow people to wield that sort of social power against someone who in any other situation would just be considered a petty jerk. I don’t particularly care about petty jerks, but it’s easy to be mistaken for one, and petty jerks deserve a chance to become better people. There are better ways of dealing with obnoxious people. (Refusing to use preferred pronouns can also be an indication of protest against coercion, but there are better ways of doing that as well; choosing the issues on which to take one’s stand is important. The more justified your defiance, the better your point will be taken. Trans athletes is an excellent issue to push back on.) The reason refusal to use preferred pronouns would otherwise indicate being a jerk is that if there aren’t significant differences between genders, then there should be no objection to using the pronouns someone requests as long as they make it easy to remember, since those pronouns don’t provide critical information.
Generally speaking, I don’t think we should treat people differently based on gender. However, if a person asks to be treated as a member of a specific gender, I infer there must be some subtle, intuitive difference in how people interact with different genders that they observe and care about more than I do, and they want to evoke that reponse more easily. It’s not just about standard ethical treatment, but about general communication style and emotional impressions.
When I refer to non-arbitrary distinctions, I don’t just mean loose trends based on biology or psychology. I’m including social norms imposed on people because those norms once served a purpose for a society, or at least for the people controlling it. Those norms may no longer serve a purpose but may have become self-fulfilling prophecies or self-perpetuating traditions that people still have to deal with regardless, until people do something deliberate about the situation.
Does that make more sense?
So, there seems to be a disconnect here. You don’t use pronouns for a person when addressing them, except for you/your/yours which are NOT the pronouns in question. You use pronouns when referring to them while speaking with someone else. As long as those pronouns are easily understood by the person I’m actually speaking with, they are serving their purpose correctly, regardless of how the person being spoken about feels about it. This can be based on shared actual knowledge (parents referring to their trans-femininte son as he for instance) OR on general appearance, and the issue should only arise when there is a disconnect between the two.
I can possibly see a valid complaint about pronoun usage is when the individual is present, undeniably presents as one gender, and the individuals who are speaking insist on using the biological sex instead of appearance and demeanor. Even then, there is the argument to be made that pronouns are meant to indicate sex rather than gender. Misgendering should be called biogendering to make it clear exactly what is going on there. Unfortunately, the transgender movement doesn’t even consistently recognize a difference between sex and gender, as seen by efforts to silence people who claim a valid use for biological sex in fields such as anthropology, among other events.
There’s a separate issue which I need to think about more. Individuals who are one sex, generally try to present as the associated gender, but have physical traits which imply the opposite. I seem to recall some false accusations of transgenderism in sports for instance.
“Preferred pronouns fracture the bonds of society. They represent a path of hyper-individualism that can only end with each individual existing in his own private world, furious because no one will enter his world where he is in complete control, and yet unwilling to give up any of his world to enter another’s.”
Thank you for such a succinct summation of the harm this woke leftist fad is causing. I can only imagine the family rifts, shattered friendships and broken hearts left in its wake.
There are practical considerations, too. Teachers have been dismissed or punished for failing to use preferred pronouns, yet most middle and high school teachers see upwards of 150 students daily, each of whom can select a preferred pronoun, and even change preferences from day to day. It is no wonder that such small percentages of American children can read, write and cipher, given that such enormous amounts of time are devoted to monumentally worthless considerations.
Ryan,
I probably stand more with Jim Hodgson’s response, but I appreciated your struggle, because it’s my struggle as well. It’s the desire to be compassionate and merciful and loving while at the same time fighting against what I see as the absolute love of self and total devotion to narcissism. The text Grandma Lisa highlighted in her response was especially good. You stated that better than I ever could have.
Anyway, I think you framed the internal battle extremely well. Congrats on the well-deserved COTD!
This “call your pronoun” is just a power play, a “Calvin Ball” in linguistics. I make every effort to ignore it, something that too often is having to stifle a laugh.
If you present, or appear, to be male, you get “he” and “him” as necessary. If you present as female, it’s “she” and “her”. ”Their” is reserved for multiples of people without gender being a concern. This prevents misunderstandings when the issue is exchanging information.
Example: Over at Legal Insurrection today is an item about the “Trans” girl who died following a fight in the school restroom. The LI article includes excerpts from MSM articles about the thing, and those bend language in their attempts to “honor” or recognize the trans issue to the point you cannot understand what is being said until you do some mental substitution with true pronouns when the “preferred” is used.
I am not interested in joining mentally ill people in their mental illness world. When they start that stuff, I take a pass.