Quote:
Originally Posted by ScandalAndy
Okay, well zie/zir are, i believe, the most common pronouns. Zie was grooming zir moustache before the drag show.
I also have a poet friend who prefers "they". They include this information in their biography before sending it to be published for a performance.
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Focusing on individual pronoun use does not address institutional inequities. There is a kind of obsession with individuality in the gender movement that feels like it becomes a distraction from deeper systemic issues. I do understand that using pronouns not burdened with stereotyped histories (in the 1970s Marge Piercy suggested "per," Kate Swift suggested "tey, ter, tem"), is appealing, but does it dismantle anything, or is it an option for a privileged few?
I agree Scandal, that we may have a disconnect which is only word-deep, as I think we both support the idea of gender as
liberatory rather than oppressive. The idea I don't support is that gender is useless, out-dated, and needs to be erased, done away with. That's throwing the baby out with the bathwater IMO.
I think where the more interesting discussion lies is in notions of the BINARY. I never experienced male/female feminine/masculine as restricted boxes. They have always been a landscape to me from as far back as I can remember. Perhaps that's thanks to my rather bohemian upbringing. What I have experienced, of course, is conflict between my own wide perception of gender and the broader culture's desire to restrict me as a woman, to have me agree to ridiculously and dangerously narrow ideas of what a woman is. I have fought this for a long-ass time. As the mother of a son, I have also resisted stereotyped notions of what it means to be a boy or a man.
Perhaps I don't want to see that hard and worthy battle reduced to an array of pronouns from which we can pick like a buffet. On the other hand, perhaps that is exactly what I fought for.
Heart