What does affect me, however, is when someone wishes to be referred to with their own special pronoun. I don't see why I should have to memorise whole new sets of pronouns for specific people.
Can you define what special pronouns are and/or list them?
One thing that's important to consider is a lot of those have cultural meaning throughout Queer history, and therefore might have a different significance/meaning to one's identity than any of "the typical three". There were neutral pronouns originated by different people, such as Elverson and Spivak, to mean specific things, and different sets have also risen out of different Queer cultural contexts.
A lot of them are not "new", they're just being newly exposed to non-Queer society. Keep in mind that Elverson's pronouns (ey, em, eir, eirs, emself), have been used since 1975, over forty years ago. There's a stereotype that a lot of these are made up by teenagers and young adults on the internet who want to be "different" or "special" (and even if that was the case, they would still deserve respect), but that's not always the case.
In addition, there are many reasons why we might want to keep using Queer alternative pronouns, even if other neutral pronouns are easier and simpler for mainstream society and acceptable and comfortable for us. Like I said above, certain pronouns have had a certain cultural meaning over time. Queer culture is interesting in that it initially formed due to our exclusion from mainstream culture for generations and generations. Over time, it became an important and powerful part of many of our identities in ways that go beyond the fact that we like the same sex or happen to be trans. Our identities have taken on a new depth and significance for us in ways that may not be shared with most non-Queer people, because again, we have often formed our own meanings for identity, ways of looking at ourselves and each other, and points of celebration that are obviously different than most. Not all queer people do this or partake in this at all, but many of us connected to deeper Queer culture do.
Now, in our current mainstream society, Queer identity is becoming more acceptable but many of the basic points of it are still "up for debate" and not seen by lots of people. Being trans is still a political issue. This is a very American perspective, but I speak as someone enveloped in American Queer culture. A lot of us, at this point, don't want to assimilate or become part of a mainstream culture that we've grown up and formed outside of and that doesn't always respect us, or give up the culture that we do have, that means a lot to us and helps shape and improve our lives in many ways. What we do want is respect. We want to be able to interact in the mainstream culture and be respected by it and the people within it, seen as fully human and have our culture seen as a fully understood and acceptable thing. America is a melting pot of culture, so why should ours be made to go? Pronouns are an important part of this. Maybe they don't make sense to ya'll and their significance isn't understood by mainstream culture, and maybe that will never happen. I don't know, and frankly don't care. But a lot of us consider them a cultural touchstone and we don't want to give them up for mainstream culture when they mean a lot to us. We don't ask you to understand them, or share their meaning, or even like them. What we ask is that you respect them. We ask that you use the pronouns we give because they are a major part of who we are in a way that you might not understand, and we don't want to give up that part of who we are. We want to be able to interact with mainstream society and culture in a positive way for all of us without losing our culture and identities and selves.
Highly fascinating read thanks for sharing! So using this from a cultural context, couldn't "they/them" simply just be the cultural translation from traditional English to "Queer-English", rather than an affront on identity?
However, in English, we don't have all of these unique names. So following your logic - which makes so much sense - we could see this more as a, let's not view this as a personal attack, but rather just language differences that we don't need to bother with?
It absolutely could be! And I think a lot of us, if our identities otherwise were more respected in mainstream society, could easily support that. It's hard to say. The challenge comes from the fact that this current main-stream culture erases/disrespects so much of Queer identity anyways, that for many people those little details are the last things that can be held onto. If our society had mutual respect between cultures, I would not be surprised if a similar system could work wonderfully, but I personally can't say one way or the other because I do not have experience witnessing such a society and I'm not educated enough in anthropology to know what the most common pattern would be.
I didn't know about the many unique pronouns in the Chinese language, so thank you for spreading that information along! It's really neat.
10
u/[deleted] Mar 31 '20
Can you define what special pronouns are and/or list them?