September is my birthday month and it seems like a good time to jump in on the debate over gender pronouns. If you’ve noticed emails or letters with “she/her” or “he/him” after the name of the person who sent the message, you’ve already been touched by this debate. It’s gained fairly wide acceptance rather quickly and has likely left many of you wondering what the heck it’s all about.
I’m not sure who or what started it. Perhaps androgynous young people did. Or those transitioning from one sex to another. Whatever the answer, a common solution seems to be to refer to everyone as “they/them” even in the singular. If you don’t want to be a “they,” be sure to put “she” or “he” after your name.
I can remember when the great gender-related debate was whether to refer to a woman as “Miss” or “Ms” if you knew she wasn’t married. It didn’t take long for “Mrs” to be replaced by “Ms,” too. “Mr” had survived the fray until recently. Now that’s up for grabs as well. The other day I saw a signature line on something written by a man that had “Mx” on it. That’s one way to duck the issue.
So, what other options do we have other than “they/them”? How about just “it”? “It” has served us well for time immemorial as a way to reference something of an unknown sex. Ditto for using “the uni,” short for unisex. Here’s another option, one I haven’t heard used before: “the neut.” That’s supposed to refer to something that’s had the sex it was born with removed. That seems to be the reason some people jettison the “she/her” and “he/him” options (not literally). If you just want to confuse people, go with she/him and he/her, alternating genders.
Language isn’t the only place where gender is in play. Baby showers now usually include a gender-reveal feature. Sometimes the baby’s sex is shown via pink or blue layers of a cake. Often a huge balloon is popped and colored confetti rains down. Some couples spend a lot on elaborate reveals. I hope the babies will be comfortable with the pronouns they’ll be born to live with. Thoughtful parents could consider preserving their children’s options by combining both colors in their reveals, the equivalent of “they,” with a caveat that there are not twins on the way.
In this sex-aware culture, another gender feature occurred to me. I never thought about it until now, but belly buttons could be considered to have genders, too. Innies would be female; outies would be male. (Visualize that for a minute.) This may sound crazy, but is it really any more ridiculous than referring to a single person as “they”?
When I was getting ready for college, my father and I put together a hi-fi system for me using a Heathkit. He was explaining the connector cables to me, but we didn’t have those yet. He said that the male end would go in the back of one of the items (I forget which now) and the female end would attach to something else. I foolishly asked him how I would know which end of the cable was the male.
It would have been so easy for him to just wiggle his pointer finger at me, and then poke it into his loose fist. Instead, he turned purple, got out the Heath catalog and turned to the cable page. He stammered something as he pointed to one of the pictures. The light bulb went on over my head, and I assured him I now understood. I can’t tell you how relieved he was!
Who knows where this gender pronouns debate will lead over time. Will baby clothes that are considered specifically female or male be shunned? There are already a plethora of names that are so unisex they offer no clue to the gender of the person who bears them. In fact, one of the websites that ranks baby names by popularity added a unisex column to its lists two years ago. Picture this: You peer into a carriage at a newborn in a yellow onesie. You don’t want to ask the baby’s sex, so you ask “their” name. It’s Taylor or Morgan. Good luck with that.
Somehow there needs to be a stop to this gender pronouns debate before it gets completely out of control. I don’t have any idea how to do that. If you have a suggestion, feel free to send it to me, Elaine Decker, I/me.
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