These best wishes are belated. I’m getting absentminded in my dotage, which often leads to embarrassment. As it does now, for I’ve just realised I missed International Pronoun Day on 21 October.
The fault for this regrettable oversight lies with government officials: their promotion of that salient milestone has been rather low-key. So you too might have failed to raise a glass of bubbly to yet another victory of madness over sanity.
Thank God not everyone is so negligent. Some people keep their fingers firmly on the pulse of modernity, and their fingertips transmit powerful pulses to their brains. Appropriately addled, the brains then command the hands to pour and raise that glass, if only metaphorically.
The other day a friend of mine who teaches at one of our better universities received an e-mail from a student. The missive carried the normal salutation and sign-off, but there was a parenthetic phrase under the signature: [they, she].
Those are the personal pronouns by which my friend can address them/her without incurring the risk of a disciplinary procedure or perhaps even prosecution. He was appalled, but they/she can be certain the law is on their/her side. (I’m assuming one can still decline prescribed pronouns without suffering opprobrium).
This madness enjoys not only legal but also medical support. If you believe the NHS, addressing people by traditional pronouns may have adverse medical effects.
The administration of that august institution has issued a circular saying that: “Trans and non-binary people, staff and patients, often feel ‘unseen’ in NHS, and can have significantly worse health and wellbeing outcomes.”
Their health and wellbeing outcomes would quickly improve, methinks, if the NHS had more doctors and fewer parasites who spend their days issuing illiterate and subversive memoranda. But who am I to trespass on matters medical?
It’s not only the saintly NHS that stays abreast of modernity, but also the world of crass commercialism, as personified by Marks & Spencer. As part of its “diversity and inclusivity” initiative, M&S has given its staff new badges, identifying employees by name and chosen pronouns.
The choices are so far limited to “He/Him/His”, “She/Her/Hers” and “They/Them/Their”. This not only shows a deficit of creativity but even ignores the pronouns already in use, such as hir, ze and zie. Still, any revolutionary undertaking should leave room for further expansion.
You may say this whole thing is idiotic, and I’ll agree with you. Or you may say it’s mad, and again there would be no disagreement in these quarters. But my principal objection to this idiocy or madness is aesthetic.
Whole generations of English speakers have developed a Van Gogh ear for language. They find no verbal contortions jarring, no warning signals go off in the brain to tell them that ugliness is destroying beauty.
That’s what upsets me most, this universal atrophy of aesthetic perception. It’s as if the whole Anglophone world were suffering from mental Covid, with the loss of taste one of its known symptoms.
Even a madman or an idiot will refuse to play the pronoun game if he has taste. Even clever and sane people may relish it if they haven’t.
They don’t really wish to assert the right of each of the 72 known sexes to have its own grammar. They simply weaponise pronouns to aim them at the heart of what they’ve been conditioned to hate: Western tradition.
I understand all that even if I find it hard to countenance. But still, if they had a scintilla of taste, they wouldn’t resort to such ghastly weapons. Surely the Geneva Convention must have something to say about that.
When people, especially young ones, spout nonsense, I may find it in my heart to smile indulgently. Not always, perhaps not even often, but sometimes. God knows I said enough stupid things when I was their age, and I doubt many people never did.
Yet even those who can’t put together a cogent argument against modern perversions should still have a sensitive enough aesthetic nose to be turned off by their putrid emanations.
Thus people of taste would eschew tattoos and facial metal not because they constitute a regression to our primitive past, but because they are in bad taste.
Those who haven’t read a single serious book on climate would still pinch their nostrils just looking at Greta Thunberg and listening to her hysterical animadversions.
And even individuals who don’t really care about music of any kind would still detest pop if they saw a video of a Nuremberg rally cum orgy that goes by the name of a concert.
Aesthetic sense can only go so far, but in most cases that’s far enough – and it can certainly take one to a point where it’s repulsive to have to list one’s chosen pronouns. One’s name alone should provide enough of a clue.
“One’s name alone should provide enough of a clue.”
Except, of course, where we are insufficiently familiar with foreign names, and now the British underclass have started giving their children surnames for forenames, like Tyler, Harrison, and Denton.
My preferred pronoun, by the way, is “White Massa”. Well, they did ask…
How about ‘Sahib’? That has a nice ring to it too.
In the novels of John Buchan, I remember that Peter Pienaar often addressed Richard Hannay as “Baas”. That ought to be respectful enough to please everybody.
” It’s as if the whole Anglophone world were suffering from mental Covid”
That is what it is. A mental illness. Thank GOD that persons such as Alexander and myself are relatively immune or totally immune. Thank GOD. Hardly confined to the Anglophone nations.
“the British underclass have started giving their children surnames for forenames,”
USA too. Among the girls mostly. Madison, Bailey, Delaney, Mallory, etc. Irish names most popular for some reason.
As always, spot on sir! When I first heard of this phenomenon it caused some confusion. I was hard pressed to conjure a situation where I would normally be using he/him/his in front of said person. That is, when speaking to someone I use his name or “you”. I would only speak of a person in the third person if he were not present to hear the conversation. I suppose there are instances, but I was taught this is rude, generally.
I certainly do not have Mr. Boot’s aesthetic sense, but even my tin ear is offended by some noise: “these ones”, and the oft criticized singular antecedent followed by a plural pronoun. Just sounds terrible!
I remember some 40 or 50 years ago there was some kerfuffle over the word “Amen” in Catholic prayers. The women’s libbers wanted to force “Awoman” on us. Obviously, they did not know the provenance of the word (even at 8 or 10 years of age I knew the word had nothing to do with sex) or even understand the difference between “men” and “woman”. Never mind the fact that “woman” and “women” still contain the dreaded “man” and “men”. This issue never got much traction and seemed to be dead for so many years but has now come back with a vengeance!
As an admirer and regular user of the Book of Common Prayer, I like to say that God’s preferred pronouns are “thou”, “thee”, “thy” and “thine”.
This is one of those lines I simply have to steal. Watch this space.