COLUMN: Paying attention to pronouns

From Alex Gino's, "My Cleverly Titled Column," Fall '98 From Alex Gino's, "My Cleverly Titled Column," Fall '98After ze finished hir paper, ze printed it out and went to bed. I A few of you are smiling. The rest of you are wondering what in the world I'm talking about. Ze? Hir? What? Ze and hir are gender-neutral pronouns -- ze to be used instead of he or she and hir for him, her or his. This set of pronouns comes from Kate Bornstein, transgender activist and author. First off, there's the issue of the "unknown individual." When we write or talk about the "average" person, we want to employ an all-encompassing term. "He" used to stand in as "a person." However, this sexist language implies that the average person is male and that it is not important to recognize half of the planet. Sometimes, we use "we," "you" or "one," but this can be awkward. Other times, people choose to pluralize the pronoun. Often, the resulting sentence is grammatically incorrect. For example, "A person picked up their books." "A person" and "their" do not match up properly. "He or she" has become more popular lately, but it is unwieldy and switching between gendered pronouns turns into a game of making sure you use both equally. Further, a writer must decide which will go first in both of these cases. Writing about people in general is not the only time that gender becomes an issue when it need not be. When writing a paper for a class, one often does not know the gender of the author. Ambiguous names and scholars who prefer to be identified by initials are common in the academic world. Wouldn't it be much easier if you could simply use non-gendered pronouns in your paper instead of guessing or, worse, assuming that all people in academia are male? A third reason for gender-neutral pronouns comes into play when regarding people such as myself, those who are transgender. Being transgender means that I do not easily fit into either the strict sex and gender categories of male or those of female. In this definition, sex refers to your body make-up while gender is concerned with how you behave and how yourself and others perceive you. Neither the term he nor she accurately portrays who I am. Every day, I am thrust into one of two inappropriate boxes simply because of the inadequacy of the human language. It is interesting to note that not all languages make such gender distinctions. Finnish and some Chinese dialects, among others, do not differentiate between he and she. Romance languages, on the other hand, gender all of their nouns. This seems to take away some of the power of genderizing words. It seems surprising that a language with nearly 300,000 words would be so deficient so as not to allow for gender-neutral pronouns. I have determined two primary reasons for this. Both of these are closely tied to Western culture. The first is related to the patriarchal nature of our society. For centuries, it was believed that men were more important than women. When theoretical issues were discussed, only males were considered. It has only been recently that women have begun to rise in society. Even today, many people say that "it's just a pronoun," not realizing that these subtle injustices help promote a society in which people are not responsible for recognizing that all people as equal. Our language also evolved inadequately because of our culture's rooting in a male-female dichotomy. It has long believed that all people can be classified as either men or women, making words that avoid these categories unnecessary. However, this classification is not universal. The Dominican Republic, many Native American cultures and others acknowledge and accept more than two distinct cultures. Even theorists in our society, such as Anne Fausto-Sterling, talk about the existence of five or more genders. A rising transgender movement throughout the country and the world shows that not all people are comfortable with only two options for their sex or gender identification. Our language should respect and reflect these people. It is not enough to say that we will have to deal with the language we inherited. Language is always evolving and it is the duty of its speakers to make sure that the language is sufficient for their needs. We, as University affiliates, are having many of the discussions that will change the future of our world. Discussions surrounding gender need to go beyond equality for the two socially accepted genders of our culture. They need to address the limitations of this system and learn to work past them. Having genderless language is an important step in having these discussions.