Dude’s embroiled
Lately, I’ve been embroiled in what feels like constant conversations about pronouns. The wrong ones. The right ones. The preferred ones. Hint: That third category is defunct.
Of course, by “wrong” he doesn’t mean the kind of wrong where you’re learning the language and make mistakes sometimes, he means the kind of wrong where you forget or refuse to memorize anyone’s specialty pronouns.
As a nonbinary trans person who uses they/them/theirs pronouns as my terms of address, I suppose I should be celebrating this influx of discourse on the proper usage of pronouns. Truthfully, I’m exhausted.
That is, as a presumptuous narcissist he’s exhausted from trying to force people to use specialty pronouns for special him.
We don’t use pronouns that refer to us. He doesn’t “use” they/them/theirs pronouns as his terms of address, he tries to order other people to use them, which is both narcissistic and stupid. Then to make it even more so he writes an article about it. Climate change? Ukraine? Homelessness? Democracies falling to strongman dictators everywhere? Pfffff never mind all that, focus on this guy’s Luxury Pronouns.
In the six years since I have “come out,” I’ve witnessed the concept of pronoun inclusivity shift from fundamentally Martian to hotly contested.
Pronoun inclusivity! That’s a new one! Who knew pronouns were a select club?
Personally, within several of my closest relationships, the fact that I require ungendered pronouns when referring to me in the third person has become the source of deep strain and disappointment.
He requires luxury pronouns? Like, what, the way fish require water? He’ll die without them?
Nah, he “requires” them in the sense that he orders other people – even, apparently, his closes friends – to use them. It’s a wonder he has any friends.
But I feel duped by some of the positive reactions from my friends and loved ones when I initially came out as transmasc/nonbinary. In retrospect, that was the easy part. I was the only one changing.
One, wtf is “transmasc/nonbinary”? I know of someone else – a woman – who claims to be that, but how do people know they’re that as opposed to, say, just plain a trans man?
Anyway. The piece goes on and on after that. Paragraph after paragraph, all about him and his pronouns. This ideology is an absolute poison pill for the whole idea that it’s a good idea to grow up and realize the world doesn’t revolve around Precious Self.
It’s one-upmanship, an arms race of uniquity. Not contented with mere individuality (which anyone can have), this is a claim to fractal distinctiveness. “I’ll see your transness, and raise you masc AND enbeeness.” They possses an extra degree of extra-specialness, and declare a claim to an essential (if immaterial and undecetible), difference and precision of rarified being which extracts extra care and attention from those being forced to jump through the fiery hoops they are expected to. That anyone would think this Levitican degree of subserviant, masochistic, compliance is actually worth paying to be in this individual’s company is surprising. It sounds like having to do hopscotch blindfolded through razor wire and minefields, to be rewarded at the end with nothing but a stale, half-eaten Pop-tart.
That is exactly the problem:
The more the trans movement insists on TMAM and TWAW, the more trans people cease to be special. If trans women are women, so what? Being a woman is not something people tend to applaud, nothing special about it.
So to still be special, at some point you have to be not just a (trans) woman, but a special kind of woman, like a non-binary trans woman etc.
On the other hand, as long as trans women (and very occasionally trans men) are applauded for being brave, stunning etc. and can get extra consideration for being oppressed, it becomes more attractive for anybody to try and get the same treatment, calling themselves “queer” or “non-binary woman” etc., demanding special pronoun treatment, extra attention for being oppressed etc.
The movement is thus in danger of digging its own grave: If you treat “cis” people as not worthy of attention and allow everyone to claim some special identity of “queerness” etc., sooner or later everyone will be special. I predict that we will see some competition along these lines soon in the TRA movement, with people claiming “I’m more special, oppressed, queer than you” (or has this already happened?).