Pronoun Pronounment

Introduction

My wife and I have a good time joking around about what our preferred pronouns would be, if ever cornered. She is inclined to say her personal pronouns are “this/these” just because she thinks it would be funny to hear some human resource agent in all their sycophantic pomp to refer to another human as a “this.” I take the reductio approach, not only having a lengthy list of pronouns, but also adjectives, postures and delicate genuflections I would like to impose on others when they address me. After all, if I am demanding someone’s lips speak certain things so I feel honored and respected, why can’t I also demand a graceful curtsey and a batting of the eyes when referencing me?

It’s fun to mess around with, no? After all, pronouns are merely stand ins for the real nouns, a tiny referent to avoid repetition; I’m sure they are thrilled with all the attention they are getting. Since they play such a small part of our conversations, it is easy to think it’s not a big deal to change traditional pronouns to reflect one’s personal preference. It’s not that hard. You don’t experience any pain, you aren’t charged a fee. No kittens are killed when you refer to a biological man as “she” at his request.

But as you may suspect, there is more to preferred pronouns than what we see on the surface, and when we dig into what is really happening some foul things are revealed. In line with this, I’d like to recount something that happened to me recently, contextualize it with an analogy, and then talk a bit about an inevitable clash of visions.

The Happening

We see a fair amount of transgender individuals in the ER, and though it is a biased sample, the number presenting with psychiatric emergencies nears one hundred percent. Ask any ER nurse and they will tell you the same. On occasion there is time for prolonged conversations with them and I hear some pretty ghastly tales. The stories are tragic, the pain is real, and the compensatory attempt these patients have made can be devastating. Often the run ins I have with pronouns in my line of work has little to do with the gender confused patients but the sycophantic staff fumbling to get the tumbler combination of a persons pronouns just right.

It seems the going theory for the cause of trans individual’s psychological troubles is their societal disinheritance for not playing by the imaginary gender rules, and if we all would be more affirming and golf clap each time a person changes their sex to reflect the gender nougat inside, then their bad feelings would all go away. Suspending grammatical custom for the sake of someone’s emotional health is the least a person can do to lighten the terrific burden of being born in the wrong body. And if we do our part in padding all the sharp corners of potential offense, then maybe – just maybe – we can keep this person from killing themselves.

I state this in these stark terms because these really are the stakes held over our heads, which is more than a little pressure. Nobody wants to intentionally or accidentally cause another emotional pain if they can help it, and so we hold ourselves at gunpoint as a hostage of another person’s emotional turmoil. In short, the stakes are high and so the request is for everyone to please use preferred pronouns so we can avoid anyone’s implosion.

Here is what happened.

A fifteen year old female presented to the ER for acute suicidal intentions. She chose the “non-binary” option for gender preference and indicated she preferred he/him pronouns, which was clear by the demographic information in her medical chart. She was dressed accordingly. I triaged her, brought her into the behavioral health room, and made her comfortable in the bed. I gave a brief report to the behavioral health nurse in the privacy of the nurses station reporting, “She is here for suicidal ideations…, her father is in the lobby…, she has some minor cutting injuries…” etc. As the behavioral health nurse shares a workstation with the crisis counselors, several of them were there listening to the report. 

“You mean ‘he’?” one of the counselors corrected. “The patient uses ‘he/him’ pronouns.”

“Yes, I know,” I replied, “but the patient is not here.” I said this like it mattered because it does.

Nothing further was said, but I could tell she was about to give me a piece of her mind and destroy me in debate…as soon as I left the room.

Before I continue, a quick caveat. I am not interested here in whether anyone should ever use preferred pronouns or not; whether it is lying or telling the truth, loving or unloving, right or wrong. As far as it goes, I do think it is lying and unloving, and in general I would not acknowledge the invented category of personal pronouns, just as I would not acknowledge personal laws of physics. But sometimes it is necessary to enter into the crazy house built on sand just to point out the architectural failures, and that is the approach here. End caveat.

First and second person pronouns, I and you, are only used when the person to whom the pronouns are referring are present in the conversation. Third person pronouns (he, she, him, her, etc) are conspicuous in that the presence of the person referenced is not mandatory; they are either the third person in the conversation and are being referenced by the other two, or they may be anywhere in the world out of earshot and being talked about.

Here we encounter a curious dilemma, one of etiquette from one perspective, and of cosmic truth from another. Do I only use one’s preferred pronouns when they are within earshot? Or is the expectation that I continue using them when speaking about the person when they are not present? Am I free to reference Brutus as the “him” he clearly is when he isn’t in the room or do I need to continue with his preferred “she” even though he is not there to be offended? This is a distinction with a huge difference. In the first case I am showing deference to an individual who is present and may be offended by my mishandling of a preference which has been entrusted to me, even if I believe it to be false. In the other, I am knowingly saying something I believe to be false without the presence of the person to justify its use.

A Highly Contrived Analogy

According to Western tradition, two people meet by shaking right hands. This was meant to show that you come in peace and are unarmed. Even today, a good solid handshake goes a long way. If your daughter brought her boyfriend home and he gave you an elbow bump or high five, or worse, extended his left hand to you like he was some kind of mafia don, you would make sure to slip your daughter a knife, just in case they stumbled into a dark alley and she had to protect him.

Now, if you came into the ER with a busted right forearm, of the kind that resembles a bat wing, and during the introduction you extended your left hand to greet my right, I would suspend the expectation of the traditional greeting seeing that clearly there is something wrong. In fact, it would be rather jerky of me to expect a handshake that clearly will be a painful experience for you. To be kind, sensitive and caring, I will suspend tradition due to your unfortunate and insalubrious circumstances, but with the expectation that when you are mended we will revert to the traditional right handed grasp. Traditional propriety is suspended to accommodate acute injury.

But it would be a very different thing altogether if you then insist that all right hand greetings are baseless, senseless and arbitrary just because you fell off your longboard last week. It would be equally silly for me after our encounter to greet others with healthy forearms with left handed greetings. I would be revealing that I do not actually believe in the tradition myself. Your personal injury would define my reality.

Unpersoning People

Using a person’s pronouns in their presence is showing deference to their broken world, handling them gently. It would be unnecessary and downright douchey of me to rub salt in the gender wound by going out of my way to make it clear that I know what this person is packing between their legs. Proper names can be used and avoid the pronoun thing altogether, if you don’t mind the repetition. However, if I use their pronouns when they are not present, I am revealing that I believe their confused categories of gender are actually true; they are seeing straight and I am crooked. By believing their masculinity, femininity, or other is a choice, and then propagating that by referencing their preferred reality, I am saying it is also true over all of reality, triumphing over even my own personal beliefs in gender.

This works retroactively, in that by agreeing to their categories I must also agree that my masculinity or femininity is also a choice, nothing more than personal preference, just like theirs. So by using preferred pronouns I am agreeing to the dissolution of any gender categories, saying they really are false and socially constructed. But by doing this to categories which are so biologically and socially firm, it also casts a long and broad shadow on all other categorical truths. The category of categories is challenged. By simply agreeing to use a pronoun, I am a conceding to the dissolution of all categories where internal beliefs correspond to external reality. Pronouns preference reveals a conflict of vision that goes all the way down to the bottom.

Now that is a perfect example of hyperbole, comes the rebuttal. Why can’t you just continue to use their pronouns when they are not present, while also maintaining your own fixed gender beliefs?

But that is not satisfying to anyone, O imaginary rebutter. One thing I am certain of is the trans person doesn’t want to be patronized and treated like they are some kind of schizophrenic, where others pat you on the head and say they also can see the pink bunny, and my isn’t he big? They really believe themselves to be their chosen gender and pretending like you agree with them when you don’t is demeaning, disrespectful, and robs them of dignity; it unpersons them. As a Christian, I would think it is perfectly dickish for a person to bow with me in fervent prayer and then furtively look both ways before unloading on a coworker about what a kook I was for believing in God.

This duplicity is also unsatisfying to me because a person is nothing if not their beliefs which forms their identity, actions and sense of purpose. Denying my beliefs by using another’s pronouns outside the boundaries of deference unpersons me. Both parties end up gutted.

Conclusion

This is an argument from within. While I am all for the maverick approach of flatly stating there are only two genders and then watching people squirm like a salted slug, many times call for sincere and honest deference. Think what you will about a person’s coping mechanism, it exists for a reason. In a world as backward as ours, I think it is also profitable to play the game, so to speak, and point out the crappiness while playing by the insane rules they invented.

Thoughts must be provoked from time to time, and so if you should happen upon a situation where pronouns are being dealt to the left around the conference table, ask if the expectation is to continue these pronouns after the meeting’s adjournment, or if we are to let other’s beliefs phagocytize our own.