It works both ways. A word that refers to a particular person is a noun, not a pronoun. If you can get a single word added to our lexicon that will serve as a pronoun for all gender neutral people, I’ll be happy to use it. But it’s grammatically incorrect to use a noun as a pronoun. Changing the entire construct of the English language because it doesn’t suit you is wrong.
… Who’s using nouns, besides His Majesty?
Language is changing anyway. Prescriptivism shakes its fist at the sky for a while and then eventually is forced to catch up.
I agree, @TheGFG. I try to be respectful and kind to every person, but I’m getting more confused and ill at ease about how to do that in the most basic way: what to call a person when it is necessary to do so. It seems easier and less hurtful (to other people, not me) to sometimes to just avoid the person or the situation, which is one thing that leads me to think that these many suggested pronouns just serve to divide us more and put people into smaller and smaller compartments, and I question how healthy that is for society. Don’t we have enough division?
Also, did anyone else feel a bit woozy or strange when reading the incident reports of the University of Oregon link that @Zinhead posted? While I’m sure some complaints are valid (and it’s not up to me to determine their validity, of course), I wondered if I was in the middle of The Giver or many other dystopian societies in literature. Is that really where we want to go?
No it’s not where we want to go with every little thing, but until people point out some of the ridiculousness scared academia is going to cow-tow to whatever microcosm feels aggrieved. I prefer cultural diffusion of any kind rather than forced cultural diffusion quite frankly.
“Can they come up with just one pronoun that is equivalent of “it” for live human beings?
As a representative of immigrant population who can hardly handle existing pronouns I demand the end of this lunacy. For example, can you imagine being a UMich graduate student TA who just came from China and having to deal with this nonsense?”
Not going to happen. Who is going to come up with this all-inclusive, genderless, and offense-free pronoun? How will its usage be enforced? As I said you cannot change a real language by decree of some committee. You could change a fake language like Klingon or Esperanto that way but not a real language with a billion speakers.
And any immigrants who learned English as a second language should be grateful that it’s only the pronouns that have gender for them to struggle with. In nearly all other Indo-European languages all the many thousands of nouns have gender too. Any English-speaker learning say French or Spanish or German has had a much larger challenge to remember the gender of every noun. You regularly run into situations where the word for say “bottle” is one gender, but the label on the bottle is a different gender and the ink on the label has a different gender yet again. With no gender to memorize English nouns are far easier to master.
Some languages have third person pronouns that are not gender-specific, or where the male and female versions are pronounced the same.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender-specific_and_gender-neutral_pronouns#Persian
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pronoun#Personal_pronouns
Lets not pretend that pronouns have never changed in the English language … there was a time when “thee” and “thou” were actively used… Guess what? They no longer are bc pronouns evolved and keep evolving.
Take the word You for example. The word you changed to becoming acceptable in both single and plural from the words ye (singular) and thou (plural)… So there is precedent in English for a pronoun to evolve to become singular and plural…
I think the pronoun “they” (the word their has already caught on) has a real chance of following suit here…
I agree that pronoun proliferation is crazy, and the much more reasonable way to evolve the language is to eliminate gender based pronouns. Still that can be said in a productive way.
What is poor about this article is the continued homophobia of the Faux News propaganda machine. The way the article is written is incredibly disparaging to LGBT people. The “brave conservative” vanquishing the “leftwing intolerants” who "actually created a “pronoun committee”.
This article is written in such a way as to mock, inspire hatred of, and disparage people who are trying to be inclusive, not to attempt to find a better solution. I am surprised that this type very thinly veiled hate speech is allowed on cc: I think it is shame. If they can’t express themselves in such a more respectful way, I don’t think they deserve to be heard.
Culture constantly changes, and the new culture promulgated by the current crop of students certainly seems bizarre and Kafkaesque to those not immersed in it. The Atlantic had an article on this issue last year.
http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/09/the-rise-of-victimhood-culture/404794/
“Lets not pretend that pronouns have never changed in the English language … there was a time when “thee” and “thou” were actively used… Guess what? They no longer are bc pronouns evolved and keep evolving.”
Of course. As I said languages are living things. Nearly all words in English have changed over time, not just the pronouns. The Old English of a thousand years ago is pretty much unintelligible today to anyone who hasn’t learned it a second language (see example below). But what group of academics or social reformers decreed that “thee” and “thou” were now wrong and needed to replaced by the all-purpose “you?” No one did. It evolved that way on its own.
This is how English was spoken a thousand years ago:
The Lord’s Prayer in Old English.
Fæder ure þu þe eart on heofonum;
Si þin nama gehalgod
to becume þin rice
gewurþe ðin willa
on eorðan swa swa on heofonum.
Urne gedæghwamlican hlaf syle us todæg
and forgyf us ure gyltas
swa swa we forgyfað urum gyltendum
and ne gelæd þu us on costnunge
ac alys us of yfele soþlice
(note: the Old English “þ” is pronounced “th”)
Thank you for providing an example of “left wing intolerance.”
Funny, My father told me his generation was “up in arms”, “sure the ruination of society was at hand” over college students’ sexual liberation cultural changes… His generation couldn’t remotely fathom people acting like this and changing the culture into this viewpoint of “sex before marriage” becoming acceptable …
Relax, each generation has done this… this is normal 
Yes, I agree with that zinhead. When i was little if I ever got whinny over some situation my mom would say dont’ act like a victim, don’t become a victim…from her I believe this super strong 50s mom was reinforcing the idea that I could be a strong woman but it’s particularly grating on me these days as we culturally struggle with this “victim mentality” aspect to every day life. I still think the main issue I have with UofM is that they actually created a committee of 11, who knows how much money got spent and engaged the work of the IT department for something a layperson can see right from the get-go was doomed to be an epic “failure” and yet apparently within that supposed collective intelligence no one had the guts to call it ugly.
All of us on here seem to be just fine with the addition of an alternate pronoun or two. But not 18 or 30 new pronouns, and not different pronouns on different days simply because the gender fluid person is feeling more one way than the other on a given Tuesday.
The heart of the issue raised in the OP is what happens when someone inadvertently makes a mistake managing these language changes? A big problem is that our culture has become so accusatory. An error is not simply an error due to confusion or human imperfection, it’s labeled an “aggression,” or worse, an indication of racism, intolerance, hatred, you name it.
None of us like to be labeled, much less incorrectly labeled. But convention and practicality require categories and grammatical structures and we can’t all just freak out every time someone uses a word we dislike due to some personal experience with that word, and we can’t get offended at a term we feel doesn’t perfectly describe our individual, distinct selves. No word encompasses all we are and that’s true of everyone.
I don’t think that sexual liberation directly affected those who didn’t believe in it in the same ways that this issue affects every person, and I somehow doubt that college administrations created committees and pamphlets, etc., promoting and enforcing it. (Admittedly, I don’t know about the latter, however; I did not live through it and I didn’t research it.) Parts of this “PC movement,” including the suggestion of many different pronouns that cover every single possibility, though, affect everyone, and, imo, have the potential to cause more division, not less.
Don’t get me wrong; I think we do need to be careful and respectful in our all of our interactions with the goal of understanding and courtesy, and I don’t think all parts of PC are questionable at all; in fact, much of it is good and necessary. I wonder how far is too far, though, in the way this is being presented and promoted, and what parts are actually healthy for our society.
Again, @TheGFG, I completely agree with what you’ve said. I think it becomes destructive and builds up negative combativeness rather than building helpful, healthy bridges.
Y’all don’t see these made up pronouns in the south now do you?
I for one have never heard of someone asking to be called 18-30 different pronouns depending on how they are feeling on a particular day. (I kind of think that is exaggerating things)
My experience has been when a form or a name tag asks for your preferred pronoun, you write one down. Just one. I have never seen anyone write more than one pronoun down. I have seen people choose he/him, she/her, they/their, and ze/hir. I have never seen any others and I travel in LGBT circles.
My understanding here was a teacher asked students to write down their preferred pronouns so as to not inadvertently offend anyone. I am sure most only chose one.
I have made mistakes and called people by the wrong pronouns. When it happens, I can assure you it is not a federal offense. They generally say something to the effect of “I just want to let you know I prefer to go by they/their”. Then I apologize and try not to make the same mistake again. Thats it, its really no big deal.
And hey, the neat thing about today’s language is your apology doesn’t have to be long or drawn out … you can simply say “my bad”
@zinhead Thank you for providing a good example of hypocrisy.
I propose “that can be said in a productive way” and " a more respectful way." In response, you then mock me for suggesting a more productive tone and label that “left wing intolerance.” However, if both sides of a discussion just hurl insults, how will people be able to reach agreement on anything?
I disagree with your view that expecting productive respectful discussion is “left wing intolerance.” I see productive, respectful discussion as the middle, not the left at all. What do you think the middle is?
@Much2learn - You are welcome. You advocated shutting down speech for people you disagree with by categorizing it as “hate speech.” This is the same tactic used by campus bullies who want to intimidate and coward anyone who does not agree with them. If you want a respectful discussion, then be respectful yourself.
The other issue that grates on me is that the demand for tolerance has expanded to a demand for approval or moral sanction. Everyone is free to do and be who they want to be in our society. The problem is that certain groups seem to want everyone to not only accept them, but pronounce them to be super special, courageous heroes for coming out and admitting they engage in activities that for centuries have been considered deviant. Although according to one of the banned phrases list it’s now offensive to say I don’t care what other people do in the privacy of their own bedrooms, I really don’t care. But if you subject me to accounts of your alternative sexual activities, as has happened to both my kids in college, don’t expect me to say I think bestiality or sado-masochism is wonderful. My D has had girls in her dorm give introductions of themselves detailing not just their preferred gender ID, but explanations of their preferred sexual activities. Then they stood there waiting for her to say, “That’s great!” or something congratulatory. When she didn’t, they became hostile.
If we start proliferating pronouns beyond one or two alternatives to he and she, won’t that entail rather personal distinctions involving someone’s genitalia at birth, what if any changes were made to that genitalia and how far along in the process the transition is, and considerations of that nature? That’s simply too far, TMI, and demands too much of polite society.