Pronouns, Anyone? Just Help Yourself

               Published in Marietta (GA) Daily Journal, 2/12/22

            For 14 years I studied pronouns and for 50 years I taught them. You could say I’m pro-pronoun. Consider the annoying repetition we would have to endure if there were no pronouns. Read the following sentence and you’ll see: Bill totaled Bill’s car when Bill ran a red light.

            The pronoun issue is too serious a matter, however, to be playful about it. It’s an issue that is confusing children, teens, and young adults alike. Oh, the lengths to which leftists will go to achieve their transformative social, political, and sexual goals. Pronouns were all nailed down until maybe a decade ago. Before then, hardly anyone would have dreamed that something as specific and apolitical as pronouns would become a topic of discussion. Perhaps we weren’t reading or heeding George Orwell, that genuine classical liberal who meant it when he spoke for freedom and wrote about the potential tyranny of language. Strangely, today’s liberals are trying to limit freedom, ignoring everything that Orwell, the 1960s students at Berkley, and even Peter, Paul, and Mary spoke up for.

            Yes, pronouns are now one of the vehicles upon which social transformers are trying to hook a ride. Call it language re-set. Linguistically this is devilishly interesting. Scientifically and socially it is both ignorant and dangerous. I was taught that pronouns are a closed class of words. Unlike nouns, verbs, and adjectives which are always growing in number, pronouns, prepositions, and conjunctions never grow. “Pronouns are a snooty bunch that never admits new members,” chuckled the beloved Dr. Marice Brown at the University of Southern Mississippi. Dr. Brown, in order to get her doctorate in linguistics, had to endure the radical rantings of her UCLA major professor, Noam Chomsky. Chomsky was the author of the textbook we were using. He is still professing his radicalism today. I’ve no doubt that in his active old age he’s in on the growing of new pronouns.

            Surprise, surprise! University administrators and professors are leading the way in the war against our long held “sexist” pronouns. Students are following. At Kent State, the student newspaper announced as far back as 2014 that its writers “would never want to use pronouns that would make certain students feel disenfranchised,” such as “he” and “she.” That’s why “ze” and “zir,” and “fae” and “faer” are acceptable as personal pronouns for those writing to KentWired.com.  But which genders do “ze” and “zir” or “fae” and “faer” refer to? Why, whichever students wish. Freedom to choose one’s own pronouns is the point of it all.

            Please join me in crying “Dear God in Heaven!” not as a profanity but as a plea for divine help in resisting the countless aberrations with which parents of school children must now deal. Just a tad of research will reveal which and how many other prestigious universities are so concerned with pronoun sensitivity and how many are asking students which pronouns they prefer. Gone are the days of asking or being asked, “What’s your sign?” meaning astrological sign. That question is so not coo-ul. Today the question is “What are your pronouns?”

            State legislatures should be railing and stomping on this foolishness. Tax-supported universities are responsible to the public that funds them. Just as state legislatures have rightly addressed the critical race theory issue, so should they inform universities that such biological denial and semantic silliness will affect their funding. If states do so, they should expect the ire of Planned Parenthood and the Human Rights Campaign. Planned Parenthood now asserts in its literature that gender identity is “how you feel inside” and that gender is a “social construct.”  The Human Rights Campaign, the well-funded homosexual and transgender lobby group, argues that “gender equality” frees us from “the stereotypes of masculinity and femininity.” Ditching the popular mantra “follow the science,” these two organizations are denying science. Did they skip 10^th grade biology? No, they are simply denying its reality.

            Countless children are being harmed because of such drivel. The Human Rights Campaign, which enjoys the blessing and endorsement of the National Education Association, is active in schools nationwide. National Review columnist Madeleine Kearns recently wrote that “the mainstreaming of youth transgenderism means children as young as five are being taught they may have been born in the wrong body.”

            What are parents to do? Get to the next meeting of their board of education, for one thing. Stay informed of what their children are being taught. And support all board members who haven’t lost their minds.

 

Roger Hines

February 9, 2022