Pronouns: why we should not play along.

hello I thought I'd take a moment today to talk about pronouns it's becoming increasingly common to see people putting pronouns in email signatures and on name tags and wearing buttons and badges that have third person pronouns on them in order to instruct you what to how to think of them and how to refer to them and it's also becoming increasingly common to be pressured to offer up one's own pronouns even um when you may not think to do that or wish to do that just to be asked to include that for business purposes or for for communication and this was certainly the case in my graduate program that I've talked about quite a bit I've addressed this as well but I thought I'd go into it at length I wrote a paper about this oh I guess maybe like a year a year and a half ago something like that and I really wanted to dissect the issue and and really explain to myself and to anybody who's interested in reading it what it was that I found so troubling around the pronoun issue of what it was that really um I knew it made me uncomfortable and that it didn't seem right but I wanted to dissect it parse it and and really take a look at the issue and so there there's also a distinction to be drawn between giving one's own third person pronouns and respecting and others requests and so if to the first one I would say unless you are somebody who wants to engage in that kind of pronoun euphemism game I would encourage you not to play the game not to give your own I won't say she her when I'm asked for my pronouns and I would encourage you not to play along with it either but as far as respecting another person's pronoun requests that's more of a maybe that's more of a gray area because it's going to depend on who that person is to you how you actually perceive that person and many other factors so you are being asked when you are asked to call somebody by the opposite sex pronouns or by it gender neutral pronoun like they them um you're being asked to support a lie and there are times when we do support a lie in other people we could come up with examples there are times when somebody just is too fragile to face the truth and you know it and you're taking care of them there are other times when it might feel appropriate I mean we could sit here and list examples but I'll let you use your imagination so I for me I would tend not to and I usually just don't use them at all because I I don't necessarily it's not always appropriate to be confrontational about it but um I tend not to use um opposite sex or gender neutral pronouns but I I do sometimes so you know basic refresher on pronouns is that your first person pronouns are like I Me Mine we us second person is um you y'all you guys uh third person is uh he she they them Etc so you're talking about third person pronouns when you talk about pronoun preferences and this is how you talk about someone when they're not present or when you're speaking to someone else about them so being asked to use a specific set of third person pronouns is being asked by a person to help engage in reputation building on their behalf you're not being asked to lie to them but you're being asked to lie about them and for them to others and so this is um this is this is how you support their image of themself in the world you're engaging in a collusion with that person and if we all give our pronouns then it softens the uh the lie for these people who want you to uh lie for them it softens that because it gives the illusion that we all do this this is just how we engage with things we don't know what a person's appropriate third person pronouns are unless that person informs us so that's that's the um the game that we're playing when we engage so the question that that was in my mind is is this just some sort of new etiquette is this just Neo etiquette this is how we do things now is it harmless and it seems to be that a lot of people are taking it as as such but I would argue that it is not and I I think for three main reasons and I think it's because for one thing it undermines self-con confidence and resilience I mean it Fosters uh the illusion that one's self-concept is dependent on external validation by others uh for the second reason is that it endorses and encourages narcissistic behavior and the third reason is that it it creates and perpetuates gender confusion for children which is uh is really concerning so um the first reason undermining self-confidence it is a it's a it's a pro-fragility mindset because like I said when you're making a decision about whether you're going to lie for someone or to them there are times when we do that there's the white lie there's the gentle lie you don't want to hurt someone's feelings and so you prop them up maybe maybe somebody's going through grief that's really difficult and they can't handle something hard right now and so you're just going to soften that maybe somebody is you know the classic one is like do I look fat in this dress or you know you know so you you want to say uh you look great or you find something positive to comment on so you know those kind of examples we can think of times that we do that and we all when we do that I don't know if I should say always but we're we're almost always doing it because we are worried about the impact of the truth on that person because there's a fragility there there's something that they will be hurt and we're protecting them and so when we engage in the pronoun game we're doing that same thing we're treating them as if they are fragile it upholds an illusion that misgendering somebody which is failing to confirm their illusions is abusive and violent and you know the the idea that someone's self-concept is so fragile that you're going to hurt them and they're going to be wounded by not being affirmed from outside is that's really unfortunate and it's really sad and it and it I have compassion for that the experience what that must be like but we need to ask deeper questions and look for other ways to help people who are feeling that fragile not just continue to mislead them and it if if you are so unhappy with yourself that you are rejecting yourself through asking others to uphold a lie about you and even then going on to do cosmetic and medical interventions in order to change your physical body in in permanent and painful ways is it loving for those around you to support that illusion that leads you down that path towards dysfunction and fragility and continued self-harm and so that's a question and I I you know I think I know how I answer that but it's going to be different for different people but generally I would say that it's not it's not loving to Foster fragility in someone that you care about so another way that I think that this is harmful is through the second reason that I um that I listed was that it endorses and fosters narcissism narcissistic behavior interpersonally exploitative Behavior like I'm using you in order to reflect the image of myself that I want to see entitlement which is you owe it to me to affirm what I say lack of empathy which is I don't care what you really think or feel this is I want you to do it do it my way and arrogance which is I'm going to say that I'm hurt you you hurt me you have to do what I say uh you have to bend to my will or I'll say you're harming me and so through playing with pronouns we really are encouraging all of these traits which I'm create a mirroring effect and a narcissistic um perspective and Outlook and so the third reason that I gave is that it causes gender confusion in children it encourages this I mean you've got little kids who are just coming into understanding the culture that they live in in the world around them and they're being presented with this idea that they're they're physical bodies are malleable to match some mental state some mental perception it's normalizing a medicalization of puberty it's kids are uncomfortable with their developing bodies and their identities peop we go through an identity crisis in adolescence and we're we're supposed to be looking for who we are and if we add this in it's not it's not adding something positive and there are plenty of places you can go to have that conversation but just so I'm not gonna I'm just gonna scratch the surface there but um I think one of the the conundrums conundra about this is that um it's difficult to figure out how to decline when you're asked for pronouns I mean if you're being asked for instance what would have happened in my graduate program we'd be all sitting around in a new uh classroom introducing ourselves going around the room and you know state your name and your pronouns and something about yourself and there might be you also might receive a notice from your boss or from HR asking you to add it to your email signature there might be other ways in which this is being requested of you and how should you go about declining and I you know not everybody's going to be able to get away with declining because you might have somebody who's you the job is on the line if you don't comply or you uh just might there might be something that's so critical about complying with this for you that you have to do it and I understand that and that's going to be different depending on your situation but if you're able to decline I would encourage you to do so and not to just give in to peer pressure because it is a lot of pressure and so there's a few ways you could decline one is that you could just come right out and say that it's that you don't support it and you think it's unhealthy if you want to do that that's bold and um right to the point and some people will feel comfortable doing that you can simply decline just say as it comes around to you I declined to offer pronouns and because this is inherently euphemistic and it's this sort of it's this sort of like politeness ritual usually if you decline something in a polite way because you haven't broken out of that polite exchange you've remained respectful the onus then is on the other person to be the one to breach that and to break the the illusion that we're all being really nice here and so you're usually going to get away with that because they're not going to want to do that you might not always get away with it but you if you as long as you stay respectful you're usually going to be um especially if it's on the spot and in an in-person situation you're going to probably get away with with that depending on your demeanor um you can say what my favorite one was was to say I have no special requests because then I'm not I'm not playing I'm not going to give you pronouns for myself I'm not going to contribute to the idea that you can't tell that I'm female by looking at me um but I'm also framing it as a special request so that if somebody does have some reason why they they know that they present androgynously or differently than they want to present then it still honors the fact that they're able to make that request so that was my favorite one um I heard somebody somebody else once say I don't have any um I don't have any preferred pronouns but please use what you feel is appropriate for me and so that was a very polite way to put it as well and I think it sort of had a the same effect just that politeness was something that nobody was going to challenge in the moment because it was done um with an ice tone so I I hope that this is helpful or or interesting um to think about I I'd like to hear what other people think as well if you've got any creative ways that you've pushed back against this in your school or workplace or wherever this is happening in your life and um you know I just encourage you if you're finding that this is uncomfortable for you and you're not wanting to go along with it I would encourage you that to to not go along with it if you are able to not do that and thanks very much for listening

Channel: the radical center

Views: 212,368

Keywords:

Id: Yo-NC3PPOqU

Length: 15min 15sec (915 seconds)

Published: Tue May 09 2023

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[u/Dive__Bomb]

Just tell them your pronouns are "I / We" and watch their heads explode every time they refer to themselves in the first person and have to acknowledge that they're not talking to you.