Pronouns and Social Awareness or
Playing Foolish with Grammar
Published in Marietta Daily Journal Dec. 13, 2015
Today’s lesson is on pronouns. It’s all about how colleges and universities
are using grammar to achieve a particular social goal. Warning to taxpayers: you might get angry.
It’s also a lesson about the extremes
to which academia is going in order to be sensitive. I for one have just about had it with
sensitive. Why aren’t educational
institutions content to teach things that are needed? Things like mathematics and science that put
us on the moon, gave us a high standard of living, and alleviated much human
suffering.
Yes, pronouns are being abused and
even put to death in order to advance a social agenda.
Let’s start with a few questions. If you are female, are you bothered by the
expression, “To each his own”? How about
the word “freshman”? Do you fault the
psalmist for writing, “What is man that thou art mindful of him?” even though
you know he was referring to the human species and not just to males? How about the happy exclamation, “Man alive!”?
If you’re a male, has it bothered
you that countries have always been referred to in the feminine gender, or that
Lady Liberty, not a Mr. Liberty, stands tall on Ellis Island?
You may not be bothered, but many
colleges are. In fact a growing number
of college students and their enabling professors have begun to insist upon
PGPs. That’s preferred gender
pronouns.
“Huh?”
you say. So did I a few months back when
I first learned about this.
My range of emotions went from
laughter to despair. Laughter because I
thought it was one more innocent college caper.
Despair because I soon learned that it wasn’t.
No, colleges hither and yon – mostly
yon from where I live – are announcing that, as a matter of policy, they will
begin to ask students at registration which gender pronoun they prefer. The purpose of this laughable practice is to
“make our campus welcoming and inclusive for all.” Or at least those are the words of the
director of the Pride Center at the University of Tennessee. (UT?
That’s just up I-75 apiece from where I’m sitting and typing. That’s not yon; that’s hither.)
Other institutions of so-called
higher learning are also in on the act.
Little but prestigious Cornell College of Mount Vernon, Iowa ( Iowa?)
puts their policy this way: “A preferred gender pronoun is a consciously chosen
set of pronouns that allow students to accurately represent their gender
identity in a way that is comfortable for them.”
All the fuss, of course, is in the
interest of “the fluidity of sexuality.”
If one is transgender, or is simply male or female but prefers “no
pronouns,” then professors will know not to say Mr., Mrs., or Ms. when calling
the roll.
Of course Harvard is in on this
kick. So are the University of
Wisconsin, the University of Vermont, Boston University, the University of
Massachusetts, and many other institutions of higher sensitivity. Some of these
institutions have been told by students that they prefer “shem” to “she” or
“him,” again out of deep respect and concern for all students who don’t want to
be “captive to gender.”
People, the world is in strife, our
nation is in an emotional slump, and we’re getting this kind of drivel from
academia. Besides, what’s an old English
teacher like me to do? For years I’ve
taught that pronouns, like prepositions and conjunctions, are a closed class of
words, a snooty bunch that, unlike nouns and verbs, does not admit new members. I shall wait and see if the pronoun family admits
these concocted new pronouns, but given the power of the homosexual and
transgender lobby and the way academia fawns over them, I suspect we will soon
see dictionaries with some new pronouns.
There’s good news, though. When the Tennessee legislature heard about
the UT Pride Center’s policy and made noise about it, UT’s president removed
the policy.
Good for him. He has inspired me to
make a bumper sticker that reads, “Keep your hands off my pronouns.”
Now, if only some other state
legislatures will get tough as well and ward off such foolishness. Otherwise, “sensitivity” will continue to
lead us to even more denial of reality.
Incidentally, there’s a new book out
that undergirds the foolishness, the movement’s manifesto, if you will. Melvin Konner, anthropology professor at
Emory University, has produced “Women After All: Sex, Evolution, and the End of
Male Supremacy.” The blurb of the book
states that Konner “explores the knotty question of whether men are necessary
in the biological destiny of the human race.”
I simply don’t know what else to
say.
Roger
Hines
12/9/15
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