if you believe gender doesnât exist and all human brains are the same then start referring to everyone as they/them
if youâre so âgender criticalâ, then why are you so insistent on gendered pronouns?
As Shulamith Firestone put it, â[T]he end goal of feminist revolution must be, unlike that of the first feminist movement, not just the elimination of male privilege but of the sex distinction itself: genital differences between human beings would no longer matter culturally.â In this future, we could ostensibly all use they/them pronouns (possibly with the exception of within medical/scientific fields, or when describing sexuality). However, we have not arrived at this future yet, and in order to fight for it, we must be able to name and describe the problem of patriarchy, and the problem is not gender-neutral. Gendered pronouns are useful in many instances, such as describing male violence towards women (ex: he hurt her), affirming women as normal by replacing âheâ with âsheâ in academic texts/ interpolating a male reader into a female point of view (ex: the reader can see examples in her own life), and identifying others within/not within the sex class (âcan i bring her along to the meeting today?â may yield a different response than âtheyâ or âheâ). Color-blindness is widely accepted as being an ineffective way to solve racism (as well as a racist microagression) so why is sex-blindness different? That being said, there are many situations today where using they/them is perfectly reasonable (such as when describing somebody one does not know, ie âwhat are they like?â âan ideal candidate for this position will have their own car.â)
As manhattanrf is says, language change without any actual change in society is simply making it harder to say what you need to say and to illustrate what you need to illustrate. Itâs erasure.
Beyond that ,there are plenty of examples of languages that are grammatically genderless, including genderless personal pronouns, and yet those societies still manage to make patriarchal distinctions between men and women, and somehow itâs mysteriously always the same pattern of oppression where âheâ oppresses âher.â
Notice how Chinese feminists in the 1910s and 20s actually tried to introduce a feminine character into the Chinese, arguing that they needed a word that referred to women so they could simply talk about themselves in their writing.
Or how in France they are currently doing the opposite of English, actually officially validating feminine versions of words because theyâre discovering that people donât remember that a woman might have a traditionally male career otherwise.
Not to be too harsh about this here, but pretending that an English âtheyâ is somehow the solution to gendered opression is historically ignorant and linguistically imperialistic.
Language change without any actual change in society
is simply making it harder to say what you need to say
and to illustrate what you need to illustrate.
Itâs erasure.
In patriarchal societies, gender neutral language is generally interpreted as male-default language for positive things, and female-default language for negative things. It therefore serves to further increase sexism and reinforce stereotypes. Eg, say âdoctorâ and people will assume a male doctor, say âprostituteâ and people will assume a woman in prostitution. Whereas using gendered language, if I say âI went to see my new doctor today - sheâs much better than my last one,â the word âsheâ in that sentence serves to challenge the unconscious stereotypes held by the listener.
