Hey everyone, this is Alex Helberg just dropping in at the beginning of this episode to let you all know this is a special episode of reverb. This episode is being featured as part of the 2022 big rhetorical podcast carnival, whose theme this year is spaces and places in and beyond the academy. This carnival will be taking place all throughout the week. So from August 22 through the 25th capping off with a keynote address from Dr. Madison Jones being featured on the big rhetorical podcast itself on the 25th. We hope you enjoy the episode and please listen to all of the other podcasts that are participating. We've got some really great shows that are coming from the disciplines of rhetoric and composition that are being featured in the carnival and we're happy to be a part of it this year. We hope you enjoy the show.
Hello, and welcome to reverb everyone. My name is Calvin Pollak and I'm joined as always by my co host and CO producer Alex Helberg. How're you doing Alex?
I'm doing very well. Calvin, how are you?
Hanging in there, man. It's a another hot summer here in Utah. Dog days, dog day afternoons, dog day evenings.
and Three Dog nights. Just kidding.
I tell you what, I could use some some Snow Dogs, right? Cuba Gooding Jr. Anyways. Beautiful. So we are excited today to talk about a topic that we've talked about for a long time. But we realized recently that we had never covered in a full episode. Kind of astoundingly, I can't believe we've never gotten to this one. This is like
literally the interstices of language and politics. I don't know how we didn't get here
extremely in our wheelhouse. And I can describe today's episode, the topic of today's episode with a single word: pronouns.
Pronouns.
it's time to talk about pronouns, folks, we need to talk about pronouns. Yeah, we need to talk about my pronouns, your pronouns, Kevin's pronouns.
So before we get into any of this, I think it's important to contextualize what is a pronoun Calvin, what do you what do you know about pronouns? What are these things?
Well, pronouns refer to nouns earlier in the discourse.
Yes, yeah, they are, essentially reference functional reference words that point back to something else, we use pronouns essentially out of convenience, so that we don't have to keep repeating proper nouns or other nouns consistently, we can instead use words like he, she, they, it, my, your you all of these different kinds of pronouns to refer to antecedent nouns that come earlier in the discourse, they are what are known as anaphoric reference in that they point backwards to something that has already been said, but something that is contextually rooted, you know what the scene is, you can generally infer what the pronoun is referring to.
But when we talk about pronouns as a political issue, we're not just talking about any kinds of pronouns, right? We are talking about personal pronouns. And even within that, we're not just talking about any personal pronouns, we're talking about preferred personal pronouns, right?
Yes, that's right. And specifically, this becomes an issue among communities of people that would identify as transgender as gender non binary, gender non conforming any other category of queer identity that involves using a pronoun that may be different from what was medically assigned to somebody at birth, right. So if we're talking about a person who transitions from their medically assigned gender of being a man, they transition to being a woman, they now instead of using the pronouns he him or using the pronouns, she her other gender non conforming or gender non binary people often like to use alternative or gender neutral pronouns, such as they and them to be referred to. And there are all sorts of different variations of other pronouns that can be used as well, right? Should we should we should probably give our pronouns here, just actually, that's a great call, practice.
So I'm Calvin Pollak, I use he him pronouns. How about you, Alex?
I am Alex Helberg. And I also use he him pronouns.
So why do we do that? Well, I mean, before we even get into kind of justifying why we share our preferred pronouns, I just wanted to contextualize this, in the sense that I had this idea, because I was, you know, monitoring, not watching too closely, but monitoring some of the chatter coming out of this year's conservative political Action Conference CPAC. And I noticed a certain joke that conservatives love to make about pronouns. And so we have a couple clips here that we're going to share. But they love to make pronouns jokes, don't they? Alex? They do.
Yeah. And usually, well, we're gonna see exactly what their understanding of language and linguistic forms is. But yeah, usually, they take the form of something like this.
Alright, let's listen first to Senator Ted Cruz. What did he have to say on the subject of pronouns at this year's CPAC?
I talk recently with a college kid at one of these schools, the Senate each class before any student speaks, they're required to introduce themselves, say their name and say My pronouns are. Well, my name is Ted Cruz, and my pronouns are kiss my ass.
Oh my god. So what do you think of that, Alex? Oh, well, I
mean, so Well, only one of those words is a pronoun. The word "my". But kiss and ass are, kiss is a verb and ass is a noun. So I would also I would, I would really just encourage, you know, Senator Cruz to read a book. Or at least I mean, I don't know. It's stupid. It's a cheap joke. It's kind of like a dumb shot across the bow. I was more kind of fascinated by like the, the weird murmurs that came across the audience immediately after he said, they're required to state their pronouns. Oh, my God. Oh, like there was so much pearl clutching that happened in that moment. It was kind of incredible. I got to derive a little bit of schadenfreude from that.
Absolutely. So then another instance of pronoun discourse at this year's CPAC. This is from a kind of roundtable event and you'll hear the voice of former Trump official and in Matt Schlapp.
Alright. So impeachment, yes or no? Look, I the guy is not carrying out his basic duties. This guy has not even raised the minimum level of competence that you would expect from a president. We have an open border, we have a military that's a disaster. The economy's a train wreck, and this idiots talking about pronouns? You know, it wouldn't be an it would be a mercy impeachment.
So, apparently, there are all these political problems. And Joe Biden is talking about pronouns. Is that your is that your perception, Alex?
I to be to be quite honest with you. I don't think I've really and I, you know, I pay attention to the news pretty closely. I don't know if I've heard Joe Biden say anything about pronouns recently. Is that true?
I don't know. What he's referring to Biden is probably the second most "unwoke" president of all time after Trump, so I have not, I have not noticed this. Now, listeners should not be confused or under the misapprehension that this is a new thing for CPAC CPAC speakers and roundtable participants have been ragging on pronouns for years. Here's a clip of Michelle Malkin from CPAC 2019
And I'm just gonna get right down to business. My name is Michelle Malkin. I identify as an American a proud on hyphenated unapologetic, fully assimilated American My pronouns are U S, A.
So there you go. Again, not a pronoun more of an acronym.
Yeah, yeah, that is definitionally and unless unless she was talking about the pronoun you, which it doesn't sound like that's a second person pronoun to refer to to say my pronouns are you feels like the setup for an Abbott and Costello bit where they're just going back No, no, you have to go to the store. What are you talking about? I thought you were going Yes, you are going to the store you know it's late Yeah.
No, I don't know what Michelle Malkin is on there. It is interesting. You know how in that case, we have pronoun critique built into a hyper nationalist yes statement. Unlike the Ted Cruz one which is just purely fuck off. I don't want to say my pronoun.
Yeah, exactly. That was a little bit I mean, both of these are sort of carrying this tone of look at how controversial look how transgressive we're being with these statements of you know our pronouns are not actually pronouns at all, but they are either kiss my ass That's the American way or you know, we're saying USA after I just I'm so confused by the invocation of the I am an unapologetic on hyphenated on full, fully assimilated American Ah, that language is so so telling. I mean, there's more. It's
an extreme dog whistle because yes, it's specifically calling out people who identify as African American or Asian American or any other.
Ah, that's what the on hyphenated okay, I didn't get that, right.
That's what she's referring to. But it's kind of it's kind of abstract and abstruse like, yeah, you know, but I mean, that's how dog whistles often work, I guess. Yep.
Yeah, no, it's not supposed to mean something to us, but those who are in the know, they know. And I think that I mean, you know, we wanted to kind of get into this that like pronoun, like the word pronoun, or pronouns themselves, have almost become this negative ideograph. In conservative discourses, like just the invocation of pronouns, like we heard in that Ted Cruz clip, elicited, you know, the slide. Yeah, yeah. Cheers and let you know, yeah, like, Oh, God, how dare they, you know, from the audience. So that in itself is kind of fascinating that that, that the word pronoun has become a conservative dog whistle in those kinds of circles.
Yes. And I think we should make the very clear point that this is not merely something that's circulating at these big kind of conservative gatherings as a way to rally the troops so to speak, this is also making its way into policy. This also caught my eye and helped inspire the idea for this episode, there was actually a school district in Wisconsin recently, you know, the primary policy decision they made was to ban pride flags from classrooms, right, which is extremely bigoted, of course, and but also an another decision that was made by this district, which I believe is in Milwaukee, is to ban teachers and other employees of the district from putting their pronouns in their email signatures, which seems to be a major free speech issue, I would think I would not be surprised to see this challenged by a teacher who wants to be able to do that, but as being told by their employer that they cannot,
I would hope so. I mean, so and it's and it's important to take a look specifically at the language that they're using to justify this because I think that's also very telling their district superintendent of Kettle Moraine School District in Wisconsin, Stephen plum, recently told the school board that the district's interpretation of a policy that prohibits staff from using their positions to promote partisan politics, religious views and propaganda for personal monetary or non monetary gain, falls under this jurisdiction, teachers and administrators are now prohibited from displaying any political or religious messages, which I think is fascinating that the pride flag falls under that category of a political, a piece of political messaging or political propaganda that explicitly, if you are, you know, displaying something that is queer, that is an explicitly political stance, or that's marked, at least in a more, you know, conservative ideologues mind as being something that is not just, you know, a, a statement of, you know, personal, you know, your own personal life or lifestyle. It is a political statement that is meant to function as propaganda for students like that, in itself is a fascinating choice of words or a choice of how to interpret this policy.
Yeah. And presumably, that also justifies the ban on pronouns and an email signature, because from this perspective, putting Calvin Pollak, PhD, he him somehow the addition of he him is a political statement, in support of what, yeah, clear about how I prefer to be identity. I'm not sure, yeah, obviously, from the perspective of writers of this kind of policy, that is not only a statement of how I wish to be referred to, but also a statement of like, support for queer rights, which it is, in a sense, but I think that the thing that we always need to point out is that there are innumerable political statements that go unmarked, as political, particularly in public education settings. They're certainly not going to ban the American flag. So why are they banning the pride flag
rights? No. And that's exactly to the point I think we're going to keep returning to this is that pretending like some choices are political and others are not is really at the heart of a lot of the pronoun debate here, that using pronouns is considered political, the choice to ban them or to tell people not to use them is somehow not political or that somehow avoiding politics, which is fascinating.
Yes. And so it's not just Wisconsin, recently a bill passed, or at least has been scheduled. I'm not certain that it passed, I should be absolutely clear about that has been scheduled. In the Tennessee State Legislature that I'll just read the summary of the bill, as introduced specifies that a teacher or other employee of a public school is not required to refer to a student using the student's preferred pronoun. If the pronoun does not align with the students biological sex insulates a teacher or other employee of a public school from civil liability and adverse employment action for referring to a student using the pronoun aligned with the students biological sex instead of the students preferred pronoun. Wow.
So essentially a law in the Tennessee State Legislature that was passed, that essentially protects teachers or any other employees of a public school from any sort of redress if a student claims that they are being misgendered.
Yes. And the indication of biological sex here is just wild to me too, because I mean, Alex, you worked as a public school teacher briefly, right? And yes, yeah, I worked in public schools. But yes, would biological sex be information that you'd be given on students?
It's the kind of thing that like, I mean, I'm sure if I, if I did, if there are definitely records that you would have access to be able to tell you, but it gets it's one of those things where like, I never I never looked, it was never a thing that you know. Yeah, exactly. It was never a thing that I was interested in. Knowing particularly about a student, I think that my my prerogative as a teacher was less in making sure that a student is not identifying as a gender, you know, using a gender identification that goes against what is in their permanent record, but more and making them feel comfortable in my class. Because being in a comfortable environment is kind of a prerequisite for learning, if you don't feel safe. Or if you don't feel seen by the people who are ostensibly, you know, caring for you over the course of the day, you're not going to get much learning done like that is actually going to limit educational objectives
from all of you to want to focus on teaching. I know, I know, as opposed to, I mean, that's what's what I find incredibly menacing about a law like this is the way in which it seems to deputize teachers, as surveillance agents, of their students' bodies and identities. And I don't quite understand, as you say, you may have access to records of biological sex. But there's also a difference between access of records and like frequency and intensity of actual inspection and referral to those records. And this seems to empower that encourage that.
Absolutely. And I mean, this is why so much anti trans and anti queer legislation that's coming out right now, from Florida's don't say gay bill, which is another gag order on talking about issues of sexual orientation and gender identity, as well as recently pitched bills in places like Ohio and Indiana that are all about barring transgender people, transgender students in particular from participating in sports, without essentially at least in the Ohio in an early draft of the Ohio Bill having their biological sex inspected, which is just just completely bizarre and unknown, just an unconscionable invasion of privacy. Yeah, this obsession with with being a sort of surveillance bureaucrat over, you know, a student's biological information, as opposed to just I don't know, talking with and listening to a student, to me seems just so wrongheaded. But, you know, there are busy bodies out there. And I think that it, it begs a little bit more investigation into why this is such a bugbear for conservative politicians and others,
right, I did want to before we get to, you know the history of this within conservative ideology. I did want to mention just addressing this idea that somehow the Biden Harris administration is obsessed with pronouns, I was able to only find one substantive result on the White House webpage featuring the search term pronouns. And that was this executive order during pride month of 2020 ones this is over a year old, visit executive order on diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility in the federal workforce. And there's two mentions of pronouns in this executive order basically says that the Secretary of Commerce shall take steps to reduce any unnecessary administrative burden for transgender and gender non conforming and non binary employees to update their names photographs, gender markers, and pronouns on federally issued employee identity credentials where applicable. So basically encouraging The Secretary of Commerce to give employees who wanted this option to update their pronouns, nothing on here about requiring everyone to like state their pronouns were a little name tag with their pronouns while walking around the halls of government. And then the second mention is basically that the head of each agency, each federal agency, shall do the same thing take steps to reduce unnecessary administrative burdens, for particular employees who want to update their pronouns and employees, systems and profiles. So this is really extremely intense support for pronouns coming from the White House, I think we can certainly see where Matt Schlapp is spending time worrying about this.
Yeah, I mean, that's, that's like the most bare minimum anodyne kind of policy that you could put in place where it's, I think the only thing that comes from an executive order like that is like, okay, let's just update our drop down list of like, yes, gender pronouns. The drop down list has more options now. Like that's, that's all that
it is. But so if that's all it is, Alex, then why are conservatives so stuck on this, do you think?
Well, I think that there's a number of different reasons we could go to, I mean, to give the absolute best faith reading, we could go to the sort of intellectual justifications that had been offered from various ideological corners of the sort of intellectual sphere quote, unquote, if you want to call it that, there are of course people out there right now on the internet as well as you know, making the rounds in political spaces. People like James Lindsay, conceptual James recently banned from Twitter, sorry, not sorry, who spoke out pretty vociferous ly against you know what he continues to call woke ideology, this idea that people who are progressive minded or have social justice ideals are basically just creating ways to police people. This is a post from James Lindsay on Facebook in October of 2020. Quote, using non standard pronouns outside of full transition, or some stupid designator like Latin X or MX instead of Mr. or Ms, or even in many cases, Dr is mostly a way to soft bully people by creating silly little opportunities to correct them all the time. So that's one thought leader on the justification for why they are upset about pronoun usage because it because they feel besieged by people correcting them, you have on the sort of more like actual establishment intellectual side, people like Kathleen stock and other self proclaimed gender critical feminists What are otherwise I think, more appropriately known as turfs, trans exclusionary radical feminists, who ostensibly coming from a liberal position about, you know, uplifting women oppose transgender rights and other policies, you know, with regard to affirming the gender identity of trans and non binary people on the basis that it takes away the steam from the feminist movement and focus on you know, quote, unquote, biological women, or, you know, the female sex in particular, they are, of course, drawing on a lot of discourses that that are meant to demonize queer people designating this kind of fear around transgender people going into the same spaces as people who are using those spaces in accordance with their, quote, biological sex. So basically, like their fears are that trans women who are actually men in their mind, just want to be clear, they are women, that they are going into these spaces, like women's bathrooms just to be predators for the purposes of predation, alone. And so yeah, in doing this, I mean, they're not really feminists, they are essentially just kind of backdoor conservatives who are spreading anti queer propaganda, by a different name. All the way to I think probably the most famous person who at least has had the most breakthrough mainstream fame here is a former University of Toronto Professor Jordan B. Peterson, who made headlines back in 2016, for releasing video lecture series that we're taking aim at political correctness, and particularly for Dr. Peterson, refusing to use pronouns that accord with people's gender identity in the classroom. So this is a quote from a BBC News article from November 4 2016. Toronto Professor Jordan Peterson takes on gender neutral pronouns. It says here Dr. Peterson was especially frustrated with being asked to use alternative pronouns as requested by trans students or staff, like the singular they or Z and deserve, used by some as alternatives to she or he. He says further down here, quote, I've studied authoritarian Islam for a very long time for 40 years, and there started by people's attempts to control the ideological and linguistic territory, he told the BBC, quote, there's no way I'm going to use words made up by people who are doing that. Not a chance.
I just want to point out that when he says, I've studied authoritarianism for 40 years, he means he studied how to be authoritarian.
That's clearly the upshot here because
we talk ourselves to death about hypocrisy on the show. But there is something so profoundly ironic about saying authoritarianism begins with policing on language and thought, No, I will not say the pronoun that you want me to say, like, you're policing their language and thought, yes,
yes, yeah, by saying it's a made up word by people that are doing that, that this is something that is a complete fabrication, and essentially setting off a cultural firestorm that more or less has led up to this moment where, you know, we're like, teachers are being given gag orders to not talk about pronouns, like I mean, that's, that's Jordan Peterson's line of thinking right there like that. 10%. There's on free speech, Yes, yep. Yeah, a clear First Amendment violation that is started by people that are saying their rights are being infringed upon by all of these, you know, very powerful authoritarian, non binary and transgender students that they are being besieged by.
Yes. I mean, Peterson has come up a number of times on this show. And I think that every time we're kind of baffled by his ability to appropriate the stance of an intellectual while just having the most superficial and nuanced ideas about everything,
yeah, it's it is honestly astounding, his his ability to speak confidently, in this like, understandable tone, and just say, absolutely nothing of substance is really I mean, it's a it's, uh, it probably shows, you know, kind of like, what the kind of intellectual culture that we have here in North America, which is a bit of a bankrupt. People like these are, you know, are really, really being elevated to positions of, you know, popular authority on subjects like these.
And I think it also shows the material incentive to get on this bandwagon. And so, it's crucial to point out that like, there is a kind of faux intellectual justification for this, but there's also the extent to which it has driven clicks and YouTube views for these conservative micro celebrities for about five to 10 years. Yes, this obsession with pronouns as one example of ultra wokeness, cancel culture, whatever their kind of theory is of the left and liberals shutting down conservatives, shutting out conservatives, that I think Peterson realized that he could make more money or board gain more aggrandizement by kind of exiting the ivory tower and going to YouTube and selling his books. So there's actually a real kind of career benefit to taking this on as a bugbear.
100%. Yeah, intellectual contrarian ism is a big industry right now. And a lot of these people who are inveighing specifically against queer people, and trans and non binary people in particular, are making a lot of money off of it, we got to we got to make a note of that. The only other thing that I wanted to say, just as a way of contextualizing this, is to zoom out a little bit to history, particularly the history of settler colonialism and other points of actual state authority and state violence against performances of gender that fall outside of the Western constructed male, female binary.
Alex, let me just ask you, how did you get from Jordan Peterson to settler colonialism? See the connection?
There's no Yeah, no, there's no there's no possible way that any of this could have could have any connection whatsoever in terms of just the elimination and erasure of queer certain categories of people. Yeah, certain categories of people no way, shape or form except for the fact that's one of the most well known examples. For those of you that don't know I spent a lot of time this week learning about a group of people in India that's actually been around since early antiquity. As far back as you know, written historical record can tell us a group of people known as the he draws in India, who are essentially third gender or as non gendered people that do not fall within the Western conception of the gender binary between male In female, their performances are often quite gender fluid, sometimes taking on more of a performance that involves sort of femme presentations of their gender other times more masculine other times something completely out of that binary and in between but the Hijra it's important to note in the 1850s. This is I'm quoting from a book. This is from governing gender and sexuality in colonial India. The Hijra the Circa 1850 to 1900 by Jessica Hinchey provides a really interesting look at the ways that British colonial authorities treated people that you know, we might today call transgender or non binary people it was not until the 1850s that the Hijra became the subject of a panic among India's British colonizers. This Panic was prompted by several criminal cases which came before the courts in the northwestern provinces in the 1850s and 1860s, including the murder of a hero named Bura, and a handful of cases in which heroes were accused of kidnapping, enslaving and castrating children. Like other moral panics. The colonial concern with heroes involved a preoccupation with and exaggeration of the threat that quote, deviant behaviors and people were thought to pose to the social and political order. While moral panics have been noted in diverse historical contexts. Panic was at the center of how European colonial regimes operated. Despite the often bombastic rhetoric surrounding colonial rule, the European governing elites experienced a pervasive sense of vulnerability about the fragility of colonial power. Consequently, colonial administrators were especially susceptible to panics about aspects of indigenous society that were construed as a threat to colonial authority. So this sets up what Hinchey describes as a kind of structural anxiety that the actual mechanisms of governance became preoccupied with governing, basically, yeah, people's gender identity and sexuality like that. That was a hinge point for beginning the process of assimilation under British colonial rule. The he's row were largely seen in this context as being unassimilable. They were morally deviant, because they did not ascribe to or perform in accordance with the Western conception of a gender binary. And as a result, they were basically systematically eliminated, not entirely, but I mean, they were specifically targeted, there were laws passed, like the criminal tribes act that essentially was all about eliminating these people like be either, you know, forced sterilization, you know, to outright wanton murder. Ditto on the North American continent. There was a genocidal series of genocidal policies, all the way from British colonists to Spanish colonial conquistadores, who this is from Deborah Miranda in the extermination of the joyas, which is a similarly third gender, or non binary group of people from a North American indigenous tribe in California, numbering 1 million at first contact California Indians plummeted to about 10,000 survivors in just over 100 years. Part of this massive loss for third gender people who are lost not by passive colonizing collateral damage, such as disease or starvation, but through active conscious, violent extermination. So just looking through the history, this is I think it's important to contextualize the demonization of gender non binary or gender non conforming people, especially in these colonial contexts, as being the target of extermination by a ruling power. And I think it's incredibly important to note that gender has been this sort of weapon of authoritarian rule for centuries. It is a it is a mechanism for enforcing social order. And transgender and non binary people have always been at the forefront of these battles against colonial hegemony and authority in that way.
And specifically, you know, the political order, the authoritarian order that is wielding this kind of violence is a colonial is a Western colonial white order. Right. And that needs to be stated clearly, because there is a kind of reflex right now. I'm not sure exactly when it started, maybe with kind of the rise of like, early 2000s. Libertarian blogosphere, yeah, there's a reflex on the part of conservatives to continually adopt a posture of victimhood, a stance that the order the ruling order, the ruling elite, is multicultural, is liberal is anti white. And we must note that as a projection, yeah, that in the historical record, and now with these state level, policies and bills, it's very clear who is being targeted, and what the kind of Standard identity category is that is enforcing a political order it is a white cis male identity category.
Absolutely. And I think this is kind of an important transition point here, not only is that often policed with physical material violence, you know, an actual like, you know, murder castration of, you know, any other kinds of policies that are meant to eliminate groups of people in a sort of de facto sense or in a literal sense, it is also linguistically constituted, there are language norms that develop that, you know, are meant to, you know, either in this case, you know, language becomes kind of this battleground for what we consider possible and what we consider acceptable in a society as well. So, that's why pronouns become such in a very roundabout way of coming back to coming back to pronouns. This is why it's really, really important to take a look at the current battle over it, and why I think it has become such a neurotic obsession, something that really honestly is pretty simple and straightforward, or should be, has become this kind of blown out of proportion, culture war battle, by conservative ideologues, because I think they recognize and I think they're right, in this sense that the battle over pronouns is a political battle. It is one over this sort of like linguistic ideological territory, but it's one that I think is being waged for justice and inclusivity and good things generally, for society, versus what they are talking about their position being the reality that there are only two genders that they're, you know, that there must be this kind of stable sexual hierarchy and order that needs to be maintained in order for society to not go off the fucking rails or whatever crazy bullshit it is they believe.
And we can look to the history of not only colonial domination, to see how this is, in fact, a political matter, the contestation over our language around personal pronouns. There's history that shows in fact that there has been an incredibly diverse usage of personal pronouns throughout the history of the English, the English language.
Yes, absolutely. In fact, the Oxford English Dictionary as recently as four years ago, invade on this topic. So one of the more peculiar I guess, bugaboos that prescriptive grammarians that hated category of prescriptive grammar ISTS, who love to sort of pick apart pronoun discourse, using these sort of quasi logical claim that the singular form of they is grammatically illogical that they is supposed to be a collective pronoun that refers to multiple people, and using it to refer to a singular antecedent or a singular noun is illogical or it's grammatically incorrect. However, the Oxford English Dictionary blog pretty soundly debunked this, just gonna quote from them at length, your quote, The Oxford English Dictionary traces singular they back to 1375, where it appears in the medieval romance William and the werewolf, except for the old style language of that poem, its use of singular they to refer to an unnamed person seems very modern, since forms may exist in speech long before they're written down, it's likely that singular they was common even before the late 14th century, that makes an old form even older. In the 18th century grammarians began warning that singular there was an error because a plural pronoun can't take a singular antecedent. So we're essentially in the 21st century rehashing a debate that happened 400 years ago, which is pretty cool. They clearly forgot that the singular you was a plural pronoun that had become singular as well. You functioned as a polite singular for centuries, but in the 17th century, singular you replaced thou thee and thy, except for some dialect use that change. That was some resistance. In 1660, George Fox, the founder of Quakerism, wrote a whole book labeling anyone who used singular you an idiot or a fool, the Jordan Peterson of his age, we might call George Fox, and 18th century grammarians like Robert loathe and Lindley Murray regularly tested students on thou as singular you as plural, despite the fact that students use singular you when their teachers weren't looking. And teachers use singular you when their students weren't looking. And anyone who said thou and D was seen as a fool and an idiot or a Quaker, or at least hopelessly out of date.
So I want to I want to make a case for thou. But that's entirely because I'm a Ren Faire guy. Okay. I love to LARP and put on a medieval wardrobe and speak the way they speak
to you know, I respect that Calvin's eating a giant turkey leg in the background of this record hopefully is his his chopping and slurping doesn't get on the recording here.
I've been playing too much Dark Souls and that's why I'm going to the mats for thou and thee
it'll do that that will do that. Oh my god. Singular EU has now become normal and unremarkable. the OED continues. Also unremarkable are the royal we and in countries without a monarchy, the editorial week first person plurals used regularly as singulars. And nobody calling anyone an idiot or a fool. And singular they is well on its way to being normal and unremarkable as well. So I think what this OED blog does a really beautiful job of is just illustrating, first of all a language changes. And so we can think about the singular they as an emergent form that has its roots pretty well established roots in English history, but it is something that is observable as a trend in pronouns, antecedent agreement changes over time, you will not be able to use the royal we are the editorial we the same as you weren't able to use singular you. But at this point, yeah, it's on its way to becoming normal and unremarkable. Primarily because people are using it.
I just wanted to point out that, you know, I've never understood this complaint because I think that in most situations in which you're using a as a personal pronoun to refer to a single person, you make the verb agree with that plural. It sounds like you're saying, Where did Mark go? They "wents" to the store, right? No, you said they went to the store? Yeah. And so I don't understand what is grating against people's ears so much. I know there are there are other situations where there does seem to be more of a logical disagreement, but it's very rarely a marked grammatical disagreement that actually renders a sentence or an expression difficult to understand. I wouldn't
I would completely agree with that. I mean, I think we are pretty unapologetically descriptive grammarians, if that hasn't become clear yet. But essentially, the rule behind that is, if you can understand what's being communicated by the utterance, then it's fine. That is that is a successful and correct use of language, if it is understood by another interlocutor,
right? And we're talking about language here, when we say correct, we are not talking about ideology or opinion or politics. Yes, it's just entirely, is the utterance understandable to you? Can you then respond to it in a way that makes a conversation possible?
Absolutely. So just to go back to not just the point about the singular they but the use of gender neutral pronouns in particular, this is something that that indeed does also have a long and storied history. In particular, we when I did a search back through rhetoric journals, I found this really interesting piece from 1995 all the way back then. Lester Phegley and Julia Allen published a an article called discursive strategies for social change, which has a pretty interesting rundown of different discursive strategies that activists and literary figures used as basically a way of alternative world making that was pushing back against the binary gender hierarchy of Western thought. So they point to different pronouns like CO. CO is a gender neutral pronoun, introduced by Mary or Yvan and humanizing English and eight page pamphlets published in 1970, which was used in some different alternative communities around Virginia and Missouri. pronouns like TR, T and Tim, were used in an article published in the American psychologist in December 1975. Members of the taskforce on sex bias and sex roles, stereotyping and psychotherapeutic practice, use neuter gender pronouns instead of the generic he, at this point, it's also I think, important to mention that historical holdover of he being the sort of default gender, that he or him or his were, for a long time considered gender neutral markers. There's also an extensive history that's been written on the extensive histories I should say, that have been written on the use of he as kind of the default gender that when you are referring to people in the abstract or you know, any unnamed person, the use of the masculine pronoun, he is usually what is used, which I think a lot of these are also an attempt to, to address that particular historical holdover.
Right. Yeah, similar to the use of like man to refer to humankind generally.
Yeah. And also the oddly sort of use of gender to talk about things or objects as she actually my wife and I were down on Yale's campus down in New Haven just yesterday on a little bike ride. We came across a placard it is in the huge quad on the Yale's campus. The inscription reads in memory of the men of Yale, who true to her traditions, gave their lives that freedom might not perish from the earth, which I just thought was a facet. needing you know, this is something that's stood on Yale's campus ostensibly for like over a century,
and it's in nature often gets gendered as she as well. So it's like, it establishes this kind of subject position for masculinity and object position objectification for non masculine identification.
Yeah, I think it's critical at this point to address the kind of epistemic controversy over pronouns here as well. So a lot of times, what you'll hear from the detractors of using, you know, preferred pronouns for people is that they are denying reality. In fact, Kathleen stalks book, material girls actually has that right in the subheading, the invocation of reality, as an alternative or truth. Capital T truth is something that you'll oftentimes hear these people using to inveigh against non binary people and their use of preferred pronouns in their language. What this kind of reflects, at least for those detractors is this notion that language has a static reality to it, right? That the way that gender and sex like gender and sex for them are the same thing, right. This is something that has been kind of a debate over the classification of you know, sex, which in most circles is considered that is like the biological category denoted by the way that you are medically assigned, you know, male or female or intersex at birth, gender is more of a reference to what is considered a performance right. This is building off of the work of Judith Butler is kind of the most famous person who actually built off the work of linguist rhetoric guy, JL Austin, and speech act theory. This is I'm quoting from a really good article in the Oxford Handbook of linguistics on pronouns and gender and language by Kirby conrod. They write quote, in her theory of performativity Judith Butler builds on the work of JL Austin speech act theory to inscribe a socially generative power into speech acts. Not only do words reflect or refer to reality, but words in speech acts are in part responsible for the formation of the social and metaphysical world in which individuals exist, as it pertains to gender Butler's performativity is a way of inverting the causal relationship between gendered life experiences, and gendered language or speech acts. Thus, the speech acts that we use to describe differentiate claim and identify bodies are part of the social practice of how we create sex to categories, and add another level of abstraction, gendered subjects. Language is a social practice. So language is how we come to social consensus about categories and membership there in. So essentially, the kind of TLDR point from this excerpt is that gender is something that we do, it's not something that we are it is something that we perform.
And we do that and we perform that through language. Yes, if it's not as if it's not as if gender is a way we are gender as a way other people are. And then we use language to describe that, because I think that is the traditional epistemic view that's embodied in some of these reactionary critiques of preferred pronouns of non binary pronouns of using they, in a singular way, is the idea that there is one reality out there, and we need to use our language to accurately describe it. What what, what Butler's theory shows us is that, in fact, we use our language to perform gender. And so therefore, the choices we make in language help determine what gender we are doing at any given time.
Yeah. And I think it's important to because again, this is something that it could be difficult to understand if you haven't read Judith Butler, or if you don't understand speech act theory. But the idea of gender as a performance is really not all of that foreign, probably to most of us like and I mean, it comes down to gender stereotypes, just just to take a sort of base example, right? If you, you know, are somebody that holds that you know, that sex is immutable, right, that you are either male or female, and that's the end of it, then you can also claim that somebody as acting manly or more manly than somebody else, you can't claim that somebody is acting more ladylike than somebody else, right? Because these are social performances that we are associating with gender, right? If we if you know, indeed, that there is a category, or at least something recognizable, even if it's a stereotype to the word manly, or to the word lady, like, you are kind of implicitly acknowledging that gender is a performance that there are, you know, ways that the social categories emerge that we invent words for, to describe certain categories of gendered behavior, whether they're right or wrong, they do exist, they are inscribed in our language. And I think It's impossible to overlook that fact, no matter who you are.
Guess what, if you think that when Tim Allen goes [howling sound] in Home Improvement is super manly and awesome and funny, then you believe in Butler's theory.
Absolutely. Yes, it No, it's It's you're right, though, in many ways, in many ways home improvement is a very postmodern show. Because because it calls attention constantly to the fact that Tim Allen is like performing this sort of manly persona that he has, you know, very insecure about it. Yes. Yeah. He like drops the veil on an all the time and calls attention to the fact that it's a performance this happens in I mean, it doesn't have to just be home improvement. It happens everywhere. So the more you look for it, the more you can recognize, oh, yeah, yeah, most of this is socially inscribed. Most of this is coming from the ways that we interact with people. It's not like, you know, we have to consult an encyclopedia, every time we see something new in the world. These are inherited attitudes and ideas, that we are constantly remaking and relearning through our experiences in the world, and especially with our attempts to describe the world and the people within it through language.
Yes, and I would just add to your contextualization of all this, that, you know, it's not entirely new that people are talking about preferred pronouns or or even adopting a norm of introducing yourself and supplying your preferred pronouns, if you wish to do so, despite you know, CPAC constantly acting like this, this is the newest most cutting edge thing, not only CPAC. But you know, this this whole coterie of of conservative Grifters, we can refer to an article from Holly Swires and Emily Thomas, which is actually a literary analysis, that part of their article in 2018 talks about increasing acceptance of singular they in sort of professional circles, starting, you know, more than 10 years ago, they re in 2014, Facebook expanded its repertoire of gender identity choices, from two to 58 by 2015, to 2016 many Midwestern colleges and universities and incorporated something like Ohio University's name and pronoun policy to allow students to have their academic records match their gender identity. So similar to that policy that Biden Harris just instituted for the government going on Squires and Thomas Wright, in 2016, a group of medical students created the hashtag push for pronouns and encouraged everyone to add their preferred pronouns into their email signature, a practice that appears to have taken hold in many professional circles. And then they go on to talk about style guides in journalism, beginning to accept the singular they starting around 2015 2016. So we're now you know, six, seven years on from this, this really feels like a losing battle that the Conservatives are fighting. And I think we should close by talking about maybe why we defend the practice of sharing our preferred pronouns and normalizing that, as instructors, as people in academic communities. I mean, why why is this a practice that you believe is so valuable? Alex?
Yeah, well, I mean, I'll just reiterate what I said before, in any circumstance, really, whether you're talking about education, or in like a business setting, or workplace, any other any other kind of place where you can think about the need for social cohesion, to make things work, the need to, you know, be respectful of other people to, you know, be inclusive of other people. This is just a very easy way to be Invitational in your style of, you know, allowing people to be who they are to feel comfortable in that space. And then honestly, I mean, yeah, I mean, if, if that's not enough, then I guess, you know, you could make the argument about like educational attainment, it's a lot easier for somebody to perform better in any of those environments, if they feel a sense of comfort if they don't feel beset or besieged or at risk in any of those spaces. But again, for me, it's mostly just about making people feel like their best selves, like they can be affirmed, and that they are seen as who they want to be seen as, especially if they're figuring out their identity, as college students sometimes are. So the model of you know, sharing pronouns is something that I do at the beginning of every class, and I don't require students to share theirs. I think that it's you know, you don't want to out somebody who doesn't want to be outed, or make them feel on the spot. You don't want to just presume that, you know, somebody has alternative pronouns. But a good way to say that is like, you know, just give a list of things that people can share about themselves at the beginning of class and include gender pronouns. As part of that. I always share mine just to show that it's a safe practice. Sometimes, you know, every student follows suit, sometimes nobody does. And that's fine. Sometimes I get a smattering here and there and no matter what, that's okay, as long as students are feeling like they do have the I don't want, I can't use the word safe anymore because conservatives have stolen the word safe space, turn that into a negative ideograph. But you know, creating an environment where learning can actually take place. How about that? Creating an actual, conducive learning environment involves helping students feel comfortable and safe in that space?
Yeah, these are truly shocking ideas? I No, no, I think all of that is very spot on. And I would just say that there's a kind of reactionary panic and fantasy about how this actually plays out in college classrooms. And I'll say that, you know, in as conservative state as Utah, this is very normalized and very kind of humdrum. When I say my pronouns at the beginning of class and invite students to do the same if they wish to, I'm not really met with shock or disgust, or all by any student, they are totally on board with this. And, and as you say, no one is forced to do anything they don't want to do. It's entirely for me, from a moral standpoint, this is about autonomy and agency for individual students, particularly for students, because we have to remember that students always have less power in the classroom than their instructors. So there is a degree to which these reactionary policies and these rhetorics about not allowing non gendered pronouns or not even normalizing, sharing your pronouns, there's an extent to which these rhetorics re instantiate a hierarchy between the teacher and the student that I think is problematic. So I like to do it to give students more agency over how they're addressed how they identify in the classroom. I think that's a really important thing. Even putting aside the fact that it's just practically easier. I mean, how do you conduct group discussions if you don't know how to refer to people? Yeah, I think it's really just as simple as that, like, it is practical. It's normal, and it helps us move the conversation forward.
Yeah. And I mean, just to kind of tie it back, I think what you said about respecting people's autonomy is especially important right now, in an age where politically, individuals autonomy, I think is being exposed to be more at risk than ever, especially your bodily autonomy, especially if you're a person with a vagina who, you know, has the ability to reproduce, like you are certainly like bodily autonomy is at risk, individual autonomy, just in in terms of how you refer to yourself is personally at risk in a lot of these states with a lot of the laws that we've pointed out. And I think it's important to start talking about this along the terms of agency and autonomy, because that is, if you think it's just happening to queer people today, or just happening to women today, like you got another thing coming man, like authoritarian, sort of settler colonial powers, particularly conservative forces need an enemy, they need something to keep defining themselves against. And just because it's not you today, doesn't mean it won't be tomorrow, there's always going to be somebody who needs to have their rights infringed upon, in order for that kind of like white sis settler colonial power structure to maintain its power and its order, and it's placed atop the hierarchy. So keep that in mind. Just because it's not happening to you today. Doesn't mean your autonomy might not be at risk in the future. That's why I think just at a basic level, it's really at a political level. It's really important to support people's self identification as a matter of autonomy.
Yeah, and trans people and non non binary and non gender conforming people are that scapegoat for these kinds of conservative rhetorics right now, but also academics are and I think that as academics, we should not cower in fear at that instead, we should loudly and proudly justify, you know, these practices that are really not that scary, and they're really not that weird. Yeah, it's totally normal thing we do it in in Utah. Yep. Yeah.
Yeah, we do it everywhere from Connecticut to Utah. Well, thank you all for joining us on this long and fascinating journey through conservative sophistry all the way to individual rights and autonomy. Closing it out, I guess. So by saying, you know, support, support trans people support non binary people in your life, people who you don't know, because, you know, yeah, we're all in this together and you know a risks is somebody's autonomy is a risk to everyone's.
And I'll tell you what's the most important pronoun that we can all use? That's we. That's right. Let's come together and defend trans rights, indeed. So yeah, thank you all for tuning in. We will be back soon with much more reverb content. If you want to support the show. Tell your friends about us and share the episode. I love you so much. We'll talk to you soon. Take care everybody. Bye bye bye.
Our show today was produced by Alex Helberg and Calvin Pollak, with editing work by Alex. Re:Verb's co-producers at large are Ben Williams, Sophie Wodzak, and Mike Laudenbach. You can subscribe to reverb and leave us a review on Apple podcasts Stitcher, Android or wherever you listen to podcasts, check out our website at WWW dot reverb cast.com. You can also like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter where our handle is at reverb cast. That's r e v e r b underscore C A S T. If you've enjoyed our show and want to help amplify more of our public scholarship work, please consider leaving us a five star review on your podcast platform of choice and tell a friend about us. We sincerely appreciate the support of our listeners. Thanks so much for tuning in.
