
Saw an interesting thread on Twitter this morning.
Speaking with a friend’s 18-year-old son, strong Christian, who started college in the fall. The request to provide his pronouns is coming up for first time in his life. How would you advise him to respond?
— Megan Basham (@megbasham) December 18, 2022
As a mom of a HS junior, and as a parent who is knee deep in the whole college selection process and already starting to stress out about vaccine requirements and mandatory Diversity, Inclusion, Equity training, I was really interested in digging into the potential good answers to this question. There are dozens and dozens, but I’m including some of those that I thought were the best here, and would love to hear your ideas too.
"Guess."
— Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry (@pegobry) December 19, 2022
In the case of my son, if he answers the obvious, which is to say, “He/Him” he would be signifying tacit approval of the entire premise of people “having” pronouns. And I’d rather he didn’t do that. I’d prefer he reject the entire IDEA of sharing pronouns, because it’s one of the dumbest things that’s happened to our culture over the past decade. I don’t want him participating in a language game that was created by the most radical fringe among us or giving that game legitimacy in any way.
Here are some other options:
I now respond with "I reject the premise that what pronouns you should use to refer to me are not self-evident."
— Neil (@SUPER7X_) December 19, 2022
I love this one:
“It doesn’t matter. I won’t demand or dictate how people speak about me in conversations with other people”
— Tripp (@cbomar_3) December 18, 2022
A friend who works as a professor in an extremely hostile university often says, “I’m post-pronoun.”
— Doug Ponder (@dougponder) December 18, 2022
This makes his coworkers wonder if the revolution has progressed so quickly that they now regressive 😏
Since I’m a grown-ass woman, and I am employed by myself, I’m under no pressure to respond in any certain way to this question if it’s ever posed to me. If someone offers me THEIR pronouns and then asks mine, I’ll likely say something like, “I don’t play the pronoun game but my adjectives are real, biological, and fully female.”
But a kid starting college is gonna feel ALL THE PRESSURE from not only peers but likely professors and admin staff too – who’ve all been conditioned to virtue signal.
What are your ideas for how to answer that question?
10 Comments
“F— off, nutbag.”
Maybe phrase that a bit differently for Professors/teachers.
Randomly throw letters together.
Or use Welsh words, which look like letters were thrown together.
I would have to return the favor and ask them the same question. “To you go by “woke” or “dumbass”.
I’d say “Dude if you are a conservative referring to me”, and “Your Honor if you are a liberal referring to me”
I’d say “Hold on a sec, and let me check”. Then look down and say, “Yep I still FEEL like that’s a penis down there”.
My answer will be it’s a stupid question.
This crap started sneaking in during my son’s Senior year in college. Being the snarky sort, he answered “Nunya/Damnbidness”.
Fortunately, his prof was of good humor that day and laughed it off. He “had to ask” because “the department wanted to know…just in case.”
Just say normal, and walk away.
Tomas Bogardus had some good talks/debates about the whole language subject about this and I recommend checking some of them out.
To answer the question:
I, me.
This is technically correct as those are the pronouns used to reference yourself which is what the exact wording asks. The bonus of this is that if they try to use those in the way they are implying then they will show how stupid the game they are playing is.
I love this! I’m totally stealing it!