Pronouns: The monkeywrench

One of the sorrows of living in the “everything is terrorism” era is the dearth, almost the death, of monkeywrenching opportunities.

The harmless prank of the 1990s has become the terroristic threat of the 21st century.

Still, monkeywrenching can never die, and one perfect (and perfectly charming) opportunity exists, particularly for you who are forced to live among the politically correct and the worst sorts of social-justice pecksniffery. That opportunity lies in the previously humble, unassuming pronoun. You know: he, she, his, hers, its, they, theirs.

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Now, before I get pitchforked to death by the urban mob, I must hasten to say that I respect everyone’s right to have his, her, their, zher, hir, or its pronoun of choice. If a person formerly known as she wants to call herself “they,” fine and dandy. If she wants to ask her friends to call her “they” and the friends are willing, great. No problem.*

When, however, people resort to political power or social ostracism to force others to obey their fanciful self-identity dictates — problem. Very much a problem. Orwell understood such problems, but he was concerned about the state trying to manipulate thoughts by manipulating words. Here we have a tiny, quirky minority of individuals, mostly young, backed by institutions, allegedly run by adults (but adults who have lost their minds), attempting to manipulate thoughts by imposing chimerical, made-up terminology on us all. And rendering us “guilty” if we can’t figure out their arbitrary rules.

We now have university classes in which professors are required to call students by whatever pronouns the students choose, and at least one law (in California, of course) that makes it potentially a criminal offense for caregivers to use the “wrong” pronoun for their client/patients.**

There has already been monkeywrenching of course, as in the student who chose “His Majesty” for his personal pronoun.

But there are simply not enough people taking advantage of the abundant possibilities here.

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Consider: You meet a young person at a party who demands to be called “they.” Observing that said person isn’t plural, your inner grammarian objects. Rather than create a scene, you simply announce, “Oh, I’m so glad we’re using individual pronouns here. Mine are florbaloop, when I’m the subject of a sentence, florloopabla as the object, and florbazheerf for the possessive.”

Or: Your place of employment goes politically mad and announces that everyone must respect and use everyone else’s individual pronouns. So yours become k-k-k-k-mmm (subject), k-k-k-tt-mmm (object), and t-k-k-k-mmm’n (possessive).

If someone objects that you appear to be a cis white male (the fount of all evil) and therefore have no right to your own pronouns, you can respond, “Are you so intolerant that you’d tell persecuted minorities that they can’t self-identify? I happen to identify as a pan-galactic bipedal quadrisexual bald-furbearing omnigendered otherkin. You have aggressed against me and I’m going to report you …”

You get the idea.

The beauty of this is that you don’t even have to memorize your own silly pronouns, because they’re subject to change from minute to minute. If “they” (singular) does manage to croak out florbaloop or your boss actually manages to twist her tongue around k-k-k-k-mmm, you can correct said person: “No, I’ve now changed my self-identification to omni-galactic quadrapedal heterokin dualistic treble-gendered felinidae-canid, so my pronouns are now grzzzble, grzzzargle, and grzzzflerp.”

Okay, I get that you probably don’t want to be fired from your job. But if more people did this, just imagine the lovely and well-deserved chaos it would inflict upon the terminally self-righteous and desperately over-inclusive.

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* It’s true that there a small minority of individuals are born intersex and are genuinely in need of a pronoun. Others can do as they wish with their personal identities, of course. But absolutely nothing makes individual choices (or even individual needs), sexual or otherwise, inherently everyone else’s obligation.

** Such dictates could themselves be considered monkeywrenching, if they were delivered with the slightest sense of humor and a whole lot less force.

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Don’t forget — the blog fundraiser closes at the end of the day Thursday! We’ve reached goal but are still climbing. The temperature rose by another $90 today, courtesy of MB and TSO, and that’s in addition to the whopping $270 over the weekend.