Don't Become the Bully

Why I can't use your pronouns

Bullying is a disproportionate use of power. In a world where bullying dominates, whether by governments, or by the little kid on the playground, people have become aware of how damaging it is. Many people understand now how difficult it is to repair that damage and how it takes a lot of people (or governments) standing up to a bully to make them stop. What we don’t talk about is how not to become the bully when that is the premier pattern of how power works in the world. Suddenly, on a personal level, when you get a little power like that which is afforded by social media — and then whole groups of people who had once been the victim of bullying now gain power — the only form of use they know is to become the bully.

Bullying takes many forms both overt and subtle: racism, discrimination, emotional manipulation, domestic violence, and down to the occasional sneer. Some power imbalances are natural like in parent/child relationships or Governments and the people they govern. Social convention and law regulate these situations but can never truly anticipate how creatively they can be warped. Ultimately we are talking human beings abusing other human beings.

There are many individuals, groups and governments that I could point to as an example of becoming the bully but the one that I think is most illustrative is, as Dave Chappelle says, the “letters folks”. This because it demonstrates how dangerous becoming the bully is and but also, how much potential there was to change things for the better for everyone and how that got lost. So tell me, letters folks, how do you feel when you insist other people use your pronouns? Is it a rush, do you feel vindicated, justified, satisfied? Do you feel… superior? Think about that. Because pronouns are not the problem. People are. Second person pronouns describe biological sex — in a dimorphic species you got XX and XY. He/She Him/Her. The problem is conflating biological sex with gender. Maybe though, changing up pronouns might change perception - it would depend on if it was offered or coerced.

The objective here is to change language and in this case you have to convince 50% of normies this is necessary. A daunting task but not impossible, language changes all the time. Take for instance the honorifics Mrs, Miss (long established) and Ms (the new girl on the block.) This came up through Gloria Steinem and feminism in the seventies. What sold it though was that the government, marketers and anyone else mass mailing had no idea if the honorific for a woman was Mrs or Miss. At the time this was a problem, so while Gloria was trying to stop people from defining women as objects based on marriage status, the real change came via necessity by entities with other purposes. It worked — but 55 years later honorifics are rarely used so the next change was obsolescence of this form of language.

So, first, you used third person plural pronouns for second person singular pronouns. Seriously? This is just lazy and will never work because it causes confusion. Hey look let’s borrow this already existing set, and confuse the crap out of singular and plural. Somebody figured that out eventually and went to the effort of creating pronouns for every kind of wedding. It will never cease to amaze me that people who have been bullied and demeaned and discriminated against for gender reasons, would create even smaller gendered boxes and climb in of their own volition. You hurt yourself when you do this. What happens in ten years when you decide you want to trade up, use a different pronoun, be a different person? Yes, you trapped yourself. In addition, if I’m talking about several people in the second person I have to remember half a dozen different pronouns? Not happening, doomed to failure, way too complicated even for people that care.

Second, look around the world… hell, look around the USA. Big ole authoritarian movement. Hispanics, then Somalis (code for Black) and you don’t think letters folks won’t be next? How naive. How easy will it be for the new purity crew to just go look for pronouns, eh? Yeah, didn’t think about that.

Third, now you’ve created a precedent. What if racists want pronouns for white and not-white. What if the 1% want pronouns for themselves and something else for the rest of us?

This is what happens when you don’t think it through and you become the bully; that thing you hated — you have now become. The worst of becoming the bully is that it is truly self-centric, and it preferences the pain of the individual with more of the same. It just boomerangs into more bullying, aggravated bullying. Fear. Division breeds fear. Lots of little divisions create lots of little persecutions.

Worst of all, you had the opportunity to change social norms for everyone, to create unity, to invite everyone to participate. Like this: pick one pronoun, just one, as the neutral second person. For instance “ta”. “I saw Jan last week, ta had gone to the diner and ta picked up dinner for taself and all the folks at the homeless shelter.” And in this, “ta” means “gender fluid”. It celebrates gender for everyone as being mutable, infinitely variable, a gift of self. It doesn’t differentiate, it doesn’t exclude, it includes everyone, everywhere. It transcends the gender box entirely. It says, this is personal space and we respect that, because this is what it means to be human. That is how you change perception with pronouns. You don’t require it; you use it, you explain, you offer it to others to take or leave as they wish. This is what it means to not become the bully. To put the pain of your life into unity and change and making being human a much better place for all those that come after us, and won’t have to ever deal with gender bullying again. It frees everyone at every level in the process because it teaches acceptance. It says “we will not discriminate” and that could flow over into every other disproportionate use of power. All because we made a choice not to become the bully.

So, these are the reasons why I can’t use your pronouns. I hope you understand.