First of all, this is my fourth blog post in less than 24 hours, which is more blog posts than I did in all of 2017. That was definitely my dark age of gaming year. I was all in my doctoral program then, and was TOTALLY in the zone with that. Good times... kinda.
Okay, so I mentioned in my last blog post (like an hour ago - wait, you didn't read that yet? Sigh) I hinted at pronouns. Pronouns are a problem.
They're a problem because of this. I have hard-wired my brain to use SINGULAR pronouns for SINGULAR subjects, and PLURAL pronouns for PLURAL subjects. It's become one of my big (like BIG BIG) pet peeves in 20 years of teaching English. It's the first thing I go through and hammer on honors papers at the beginning of the year. It's up there with 'very unique' in my list of 'things not to do in my class'. (By the way, you cannot be very unique. Unique is an absolute state of being. It's like being 'a little bit pregnant' or 'mostly dead' - you either are or you're not.)
But times change. People change. Circumstances change.
We've had a reckoning with identity, and that has caused a reckoning with language. I get and respect and appreciate that there are people who don't feel comfortable as either him or her. I have zero problem with someone deciding that their gender identity doesn't fit either of these two pronouns.
I HATE that we've decided that they/them is the solution. I mean, can't we have gender inclusivity without also breaking the fundamental rules of grammar at the same time?
We cannot. I guess. I mean, if I had a better solution, I'd propose it. But I don't.
I want my games to be inclusive. I want everyone to feel welcomed. I have students who I know and care about deeply who come from every corner of identity, and I would never want them to read what I've written and feel like they didn't belong.
But I still hate that they/them is the solution. I'm going to use it, and I'm going to default to they/them any time the gender is not clearly male or female (my default has been 'his or her' which is not inclusive) but I'm going to do it kicking and screaming that there had to be a better way.
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ReplyDeleteAnd before I invite correction - normally I would use 'fewer than' and not 'less than' for a number (24 hours), but in this case I'm using 24 hours as a generalized stand in for 'a day', so 'less than' is grammatically workable here. Fair enough? It's another of my pet peeves (when a store has '7 items or less' at the register I roll my eyes so much it hurts) but I made a decision here. On PURPOSE.
ReplyDeleteSo many new words, why not new words for genders? Maybe there would be too many to keep straight?
ReplyDeleteI'll do my best, but no one likes getting jumped on for not getting it right the first time.
Right. I think that we all need to give each other a lot of slack in getting this 'right'. You get credit for trying :)
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