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31 lines
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31 lines
2.0 KiB
Markdown
# I am not “a they/them”
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<small>2022-07-29 | [@andrea](/@andrea)</small>
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You know what really grinds my gears? Using pronoun sets as nouns and confusing pronouns with gender.
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“Eli is a they/them”, “theydies and gentletheys!”, “Maxi came out as a they/them”, this kind of thing.
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My resentment is not about grammar.
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Other parts of speech getting [nounised](https://www.websters1913.com/words/Nounize) is nothing new or inherently wrong.
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Playing with language is cool, neologisms are awesome.
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The problem is elsewhere: using pronoun sets as a description of someone's gender perpetuates the misconception
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that gender is mainly about one's pronouns. [Gender is more complex than that](/blog/not-just-pronouns)!
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It's not just about pronouns, or language, or clothes, or makeup, or medical transition, or any single aspect of gender expression.
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I'm a _person_. A nonbinary person. An agender person.
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What I'm _not_, is a set of characters that a grammar of a given language has to offer me as a way of expressing my gender.
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Don't dehumanise me.
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And probably most importantly: I happen to use [they/them](/they), but not all nonbinary people go by those pronouns.
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There's a reason this website is called “pronouns.page” and why it lists multiple options and allows adding custom ones
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– instead of being called “just-use-they.com” and consisting of a single page that says
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“if a person is nonbinary, just replace every ‘he’ or ‘she’ with ‘they’”.
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Language is complicated. Gender is complicated. We aren't breaking out of the patriarchal gender binary
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only to end up in a ternary he-she-they world where enbies get a new set of stereotypes to uphold.
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There's already a word for nonbinary people: it's “nonbinary”. And if you need a noun, there's “enby”.
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We can just use it. But I fail to see a good reason to tightly tie pronouns to gender or to erase neopronouns users.
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