Desert Tale
Number 5, Volume 7
Archaic Pronouns — He, She, It, I or Me?
California as usual is leading the liberal way, now the Berkeley City Council has decided to delete certain gender-specific words in its municipal code. Words like manhole will be replaced with “maintenance hole.” Manmade will become “artificial.”
They already have gender inclusive restrooms. I prefer to use the one that is denoted: women, ladies, cowgirls, mesdames, signora, dziewczyna, frau, or even a figure wearing a skirt, because I am old-fashioned and in my family the men lowered the toilet seat. These days in public restrooms with the superviruses abounding one has to be extremely cautious.
The removal of gender specific words will create a terrible headache for actuaries who were trained to think that women outlive men by a few years, and mathematically calculate their actuarial tables as gender specific for insurance companies.
Berkeley is also changing pronouns as follows: “he” will become “they” and “she” is to be “them.” I don’t know how they will convert “it.” It seems quite neutral to me but maybe they don’t feel it is properly non-binary inclusive.
My mother was an English teacher specializing in ESL, (English as a second language) and would be totally confused today in teaching English grammar with this new methodology. She taught that a pronoun must agree with its antecedent, the word for which the pronoun stands in number, gender (pardon the pun) and person, i.e.: John said that he could fly the plane. If we substitute per Bekelian ordinance, “he” for “they” that would cause problems for the ATC (Air Traffic Controllers) who expect to be speaking to just one pilot, not “they” plural.
Since their council is already using a plural form to categorize “he” by substituting with “they” how are they going to use a plural noun when the antecedent consists of two nouns joined by and: John and I… would translate into “they and me.” In other words, by removing the gender of a person so as not to offend, they are deciding that an individual can be both male and female, plural.
I hope this neutral gender nonsense will remain in California for only the progressives and not contaminate the rest of the country because the farmer in Kansas raising chickens for a living doesn’t give a damn whether they are being held by chicken wire or poultry restraining device. The results are the same.
English is difficult enough for foreigners, and even Americans to learn, without having to grammatically desexualize pronouns.
I don’t have to be politically correct to communicate with other human beings because their sex life is none of my concern! And Berkeley is not going to make me feel guilty that I was brought up with good morals.
Keeping life simple, a man is a “he,” a woman is a “she,” and an “IT” can be whatever it wants to be, but don’t make it my problem.
Cc: my city council
Alinka Zyrmont