This pronoun game is getting out of hand, and it’s to the point where the English language doesn’t make any sense. It’s like we’ve entered this experimental version where English looks like a mix of Gaelic, Afrikaans, and Russian regarding how people want to be referred to on specific platforms. She, her, they, xe, ze, and a host of other letters form nothing but gibberish. Comedian Dave Chappelle calls these folks the “alphabet people” for a reason—need we elaborate further on this insanity?
Take Time Magazine’s tweet about an LGBT author who penned the book ‘Gender Queer,’ the copy borders on incomprehensible. Here’s what it said:
TIME spoke to "Gender Queer" author and illustrator Maia Kobabe on about eir work, the efforts to restrict access to eir writing, and what ey make of the current cultural moment https://t.co/JLdmgu5lCL
— TIME (@TIME) September 1, 2022
“TIME spoke to ‘Gender Queer’ author and illustrator Maia Kobabe on about eir work, the efforts to restrict access to eir writing, and what ey make of the current cultural moment.”
As someone who struggles with the English language, I can empathize—but this is just imbecilic. The author, who looks like a biological female but is “nonbinary” and “asexual,” recently won a court victory over her autobiographical work, which featured some graphic sexual imagery. Critics wanted to restrict sales to minors over the content, but a judge struck down portions of Virginia’s obscenity law instead (via Time):
Maia Kobabe felt a wave of relief on Tuesday morning. Waking up on the West Coast, an early morning peek at emails revealed a Virginia court had dismissed a lawsuit seeking to label Kobabe’s book Gender Queer as obscene and restrict its sale to minors in Virginia. The suit was among the latest in an onslaught of challenges to Kobabe’s memoir, which was the most challenged book of 2021, according to the American Library Association (ALA).
In the 2019 illustrated graphic memoir, Kobabe, who uses e/em/eir pronouns, explores eir process of coming out as nonbinary and asexual. It was a 2020 winner of the ALA Alex Award, given to books written for adults that have special appeal for young adults 12-18, as well as the Stonewall Book Award-Israel Fishman Non-Fiction Honor Award for books with exceptional merit relating to the LGBTQ experience.
[…]
In Virginia, Gender Queer and A Court of Mist and Fury—the sequel in a fantasy romance series by Sarah J. Maas—were challenged by lawyer and Virginia GOP State Delegate Tim Anderson on behalf of former congressional candidate Tommy Altman. The two Republicans asked the court to declare the books obscene and unfit for children, and prevent some private booksellers from selling the book to minors without first getting parental consent.
On Tuesday, Virginia Beach Judge Pamela Baskervill ruled that neither book met the current standard of obscenity, and also struck down a portion of Virginia’s decades-old obscenity law.
Okay, you can fill in the blanks on most of these pronoun mad libs. Still, it shouldn’t be this way—and these people should recognize that we’re not going to blow up whole social orders and syntax to accommodate this hyper-extreme minority segment within our population. In this instance, the overwhelming majority does rule.
Join the conversation as a VIP Member