As British feminist, Jane Clare Jones puts it, “The only pronouns one can prescribe to oneself, ethically, are 'I' and 'me.' Third-person pronouns are granted to you by another person.”
When I heard the news the other night about the terrible shooting in Canada, and they announced it was a female shooter, my first thought was bullshit! For various reasons, including the fact I am a therapist, I have been very interested in what leads a person to engage in a school shooting. But even if you don't have my curiosity or professional interest and experience, you are probably aware that these horrible events are typically perpetrated by young males. The last few years have added a new characteristic to the profile - transgender. What makes me furious about the mainstream media's and law enforcement's insistence of sidestepping the trans angle with their pronoun (she/her) and other semantic acrobatics ("gunperson") is that they are perpetuating the illusion that their trans identity had nothing to do with their violent act. The reality is that these young people have been troubled for a while, and there have been opportunities to intervene, but they have been missed by parents, teachers, peers, etc who affirmed them out of a belief it's a human rights thing, rather than see the trans identity as a symptom of a deeper issue and comorbid issues - depression, trauma, social ostracism, troubled family life, autism, participation in extremist online groups, built-up rage against a school system where they felt imprisoned & bored, substance use, ADHD meds, anti-anxiety meds, cross-sex hormones, screen addiction... I often tell teens that they are the first ones to know when a peer is "off" - but if we don't talk about this stuff as adults, out of a fear of being politically incorrect, how the heck are kids going to understand? And if police and journalists are not going to accurately describe profiles of these shooters, and help the general public understand them better, but instead focus on gun control, we will keep having these tragic events.
you are a religious practitioner masquerading as a secular professional
>I often tell teens that they are the first ones to know when a peer is "off"
holy fuck, teens do not need to be told that! that hyper-trained acute sense of "he's off" is exactly what causes the social ostracism, which is exactly what drives people to extremist online groups.
if you actually talk to people like the ones you "other" here -- not in your bullshit office, but online, where they're honest -- it is extremely common for them to say that their peers would make fun of them by saying "he's probably gonna shoot us all one day."
you are actively participating in the acutely cruel social dynamics that create the type of person you describe. quite frankly, fuck you. fuck you for the bullshit you practice, fuck you for the cruel ostracising behavior you support and endorse, and double fuck you for propagating the utterly othering idea of labeling weird kids "autistic" like they aren't a perfectly normal kind of human being in the grand scheme of things.
this'll probably be deleted in short order, because ms davis is polite to a fault, but seriously -- fuck you.
I'm not going to remove this or ban (despite requests) but can you please not treat people you disagree with this way here? Try rewriting it with good faith engagement.
i'm a guy, and you are an asshole. not every weird kid is a potential shooter, holy fuck. when i was in school, there were a few kids who didn't have many or any friends that i could tell -- i would see them sitting alone in the library drawing whatever on sheets of looseleaf to entertain themselves. cars, swords, dinosaurs, mario & the koopas, whatever. it seemed a little sad -- and sometimes you could tell they were pretty angry about having no one to talk to, about being picked last in gym class, about having to walk all the way home every single day alone while everyone else was walking with a friend.
so they would get upset sometimes. so what? the last thing those kids needed was people looking at them like they were going to kill everyone. the last thing those kids needed was literal bullies like you acting like it was "right" to ostracize anyone who's "off." i mean, can you not hear yourself? have you not seen a single afterschool special? literally what is wrong with you?
& i went to school just before everyone had a smartphone. that's why these kids -- at my school -- were drawing on looseleaf and reading fantasy novels, instead of burying themselves in their phones and finding certain places online that many of the perpetrators of these tragedies have spent time in. and no bully like yourself was taking pictures of them while they were sitting alone and sharing them around captioned "threat level 100" or some other kind of asshole thing. that that happens now to harmless weird kids now, i am absolutely certain of.
are you going to say, "i bet it was you"? i'm almost certain that you were. double asshole. i had a number of friends (and that number was always at least 2, one of whom is now a good-sized youtuber as a matter of fact.) i won't say i'm a fast friend-maker, but i had the advantage of being in the same town for all of my school years. if i had moved around -- as many kids do, through no choice of their own -- & had to deal with the frustration of losing any friends i'd made & having to make them all over again, i might well have gotten tired of it and just buried my nose in books or what have you.
moreover, even if i hadn't had a 6'3" 230 friend who could deck you like you've never been decked, i was never that anxious or worried about things like this. i could always feel fine because, whatever else, i was the smartest kid there. well, in everything except for math -- there i was only about on par with a few others. i had the advantage of parents who read to me a whole heck of a lot. it was quite notable that no one in the a.p. or honors classes was "weird" in the lonely, angry way. there were those without many friends in school, or without any close friends as far as i knew, but they seemed perfectly happy, and the few times i went to their houses, i saw why -- they were great friends with their parents, with their grandparents, with their siblings and cousins and so forth. and that kind of stable, helpful, commodious family life is probably a big part of not just why they seemed in good spirits but also of why they were in honors & a.p. classes.
what the few lonely, occasionally angry kids had in common was a lack of friends among their peers, and also among their family. they didn't have any siblings, or their sibling(s) were "popular" and they were the opposite -- and rather than take especial care of the kid having trouble, their family ignored them and acted like the "popular" ones were the only ones who existed.
i cannot imagine, and i am certain you cannot imagine, what it is like to go through your school years with not a single person you can talk to, anywhere in your life. that was hard enough at my school where bullies like you did not exist. (i know a few who might've been like that in an environment that tolerated or encouraged such behavior, but where i lived, it was caught & lessons were taught early.) what it was like for the poor souls at whatever hellish school let you grow up and still be this way -- that i cannot imagine.
if you want to feel a tiny fraction of what it's like to be bullied the way people like you bully people, go ahead and reply. consider that a fair warning -- this has been me being nice, though you absolutely do not deserve it.
The problem with singular "they" used for known people is that it creates cognitive dissonance.
"They" is the only third person plural pronoun we have in English. We use it for every plural noun: dogs, cats, horses, stars, planets and people.
Referring to a singular person as "they" makes it appear as if there's more than one of them, which immediately slows down comprehension of the speaker's meaning.
It’s very confusing and grammatically incorrect. If you were mugged by a solo perpetrator for example you would never refer to them as they. If you didn’t know you would say someone. Language is meant to convey information correctly.
It is only considered dehumanizing if one decides that it is. “They” is plural. Its use makes no sense when applied to one person. If people are willing to utilize linguistic gymnastics by applying a plural word to a singular one, people can similarly apply linguistic gymnastics and humanize a word that was previously only used for objects. Further “it” has been used when people didn’t know the sex of an animal. Animals are not inanimate objects or abstract concepts. All of this pronoun nonsense is a form of authoritarianism. It is about control. If you get people tied up in linguistic knots then they stop using their voices and the control is complete. It is controlling to tell someone else what to say or how to say it.
FWIW, as a 🇨🇦, my heart sank so far when I heard the news of the “female” shooter: the victims, but also the unbidden thought that the odds of this having been perpetrated by a female were astronomically low.
(Hear hooves, think horses …)
And that if my suspicions were true, that this was another tragedy likely caused *at least* in part by this fantastically dangerous ideology.
My POV, but *especially* in an active pursuit of a dangerous (or at risk) person is that police and media should make clear both the sex and gender as part of helping community identification.
If/when a situation is resolved (or reported after the fact), whether the sex is shared should depend on context:
Was it a missing person or a person of interest? Gender away!
Was it a crime? Both report the sex (and gender, whatever) to the public AND record for various legitimate government reasons the sex & gender.
Finally, I’ll use “they/them” when directly addressing trans-identifying males, but “she/her” is off limits as long as there is a pitched battle over the words woman/women/girl(s). And if we’re talk about violent or sexual criminals, he/him is necessary imho to reinforce the sexed realities of sexual violence.
In social situations, it's possible to avoid pronouns. It can make for awkward speech, sounding a bit like an over-eager salesperson (constantly using a name versus pronoun).
In my blue zone, I see the media reporting on female bank robbers, female shooters, and female computer hackers. Sure, it's possible that a handful of these crime stats are actually committed by females. I will often go down the rabbit hole searching for the actual sex of the perp. Unfortunately, society has created--through laws and ideological pressure, a means to mask biological reality.
From Gerald Posner on journalism integrity:
"Yet much of the mainstream coverage has described the killer simply as “female,” without explanation or context.
This is not a minor semantic dispute. In high-profile crimes, accurate reporting matters. Biological sex is a data category used in criminology, public policy, and statistical analysis. Erasing it — or substituting identity categories without clarity — distorts public understanding and, over time, the historical record.
When language becomes an ideological reflex instead of a factual description, journalism stops informing and starts shaping.
In cases this serious, the public deserves accuracy — not ambiguity."
Please either use their sex or refer to them by their last name. Awkward but avoids the confusion.
Otherwise you end up taking sides and (if you use a pronoun that is inaccurate as far as sex) confusing/misleading at least some readers. It is not appropriate to assume that everyone uses language the same way regarding this topic right now. Or to assume that everyone should change their language to match one's personal beliefs.
For crimes, it seems their sex and preferred pronouns are both information.
I checked the German news on the horrible tragedy in Canada, and it's "she/her" all the way. Some of the liberal media don't even point out that the shooter was "trans", not even buried deep in the article. The papers do report on "her" history of mental health issues, without ever allowing the thought that mental health issues tend to cluster in people who identify as "trans", and that therefore "her" transness is relevant to the reporting, as is of course "her" maleness. I was glad to see though that some of the commenters did point out these facts.
Germany and its media are so deeply captured, and I think people who only consume mainstream media and live in woke bubbles like my sister (who got mad at me for referring to her daughter's trans-identified boyfriend as "he" in a phone conversation) won't even hear about the true story.
When a position paper has to turn words upside down and sideways to accommodate every possible situation, combination, iteration, feeling, political position and for all I know sexual position, it is failing. No one can learn all those rules and preferences, and no "guidelines" will be acceptable to all. In contrast, consider how and why the generic "man," which supposedly included woman, became outdated, with policeMAN becoming police OFFICER, etc. It was a bottom-up change of language, abetted, I am proud to say, by my colleagues in social psychology who demonstrated that when people say "policeman" or "congressman" they literally do not mentally envision women in those jobs. It was a natural linguistic shift, accepted eventually by all. In contrast, "mur" and "sfh" and "ziz" and "floop" will never become universally accepted pronouns--no logic to them. I appreciate Lisa's tolerance of "they" for the reasons she explained. BUT what about this compromise? Refer to a trans person as "he/she" or "she/he." Natal sex first, trans identity next. The mentally ill shooter in Canada? he/she ...
Respectfully, why is a compromise necessary in this case? The murderer is dead and even if he were alive, is not being addressed to his face in any case. Why elevate the feelings of a dead person over those of his still living victims, and those of their families, as well of the families of those this man killed? Surely the feelings of the living victims and the accuracy necessary to ensure the public is informed and safe have more importance than whatever presumed insult the dead perpetrator may have felt.
(Also, non-relatedly, I have really enjoyed and learned much from your books and articles, especially the HRT one, so thank you for writing them.)
Thank you, EF, for your compliment, and also I don't disagree with you here. I was just suggesting a way that trans people might be identified by journalists, etc., going forward, even as an interim compromise. As Lisa wrote, even Rachel Levine is "she" to her. As for the Canadian killer, we have a lot to learn about ... him.
Leslie Feinberg, the 1950s lesbian pressured hard to transition, noted that "He-she" was a slur to her ears. It had a scornful quality. She didn't like "she" either and simply avoided pronouns applied to herself whenever possible. Crimes tended to happen to her, rather than the other way around.
Someone who has committed a newsworthy crime, I'm sorry, does not deserve to be granted a falsified identity. If some bloke is in the papers we deserve to know that it was a bloke rather than be forced to imagine a woman committing those crimes and shape the follow-up questions accordingly when that simply isn't what happened at all.
Until all this came up, I never gave a thought to the English language convention of sex-based pronouns. How I wish it were not so, how I wish our pronouns were sex neutral, but who knew? Still, we are stuck and in several dimensions.
I recall so well that “bottom-up” change of language, abetted by so many of us in the dark ages of the ‘70s. For me, it was the “big fight” to get our law professors, back when women were a tiny minority of students, to replace the “reasonable man” standard with “reasonable person.” Ah, those were the days . . .
But, as I noted, we are stuck. In the public square, my own view is clarity is primary. In that regard, I don’t think “he/she” would be understood, but would rather continue the confusion. “She” in our language is unfortunately sex-linked, and I don’t think it’s possible, in the public’s mind, to delink it. For that reason, in press reports and discussions of law, public policy, statistical analyses, and in terms of what is taught in schools, we have no choice but to assure that pronouns, if they must be used, accurately reflect the sex of the person to whom we refer.
One-on-one and other private conversations are another matter. There, if refusal to use preferred pronouns is a barrier to understanding, I’d be inclined to set them aside. The beauty part of that is, in such cases, third person pronouns may not be needed at all and can in any case generally be avoided, even if a bit cumbersome speechwise.
But I do think there is another, very important, point at which you may be driving. That is, people who identify as the opposite sex exist among us, and that is not going to change for some time to come. Like anyone else, people who identify as the opposite sex have a right to be treated with compassion and respect. We have undergone a profound cultural shift, and a new equilibrium will need to be found. While, in my view, it cannot be based on any compromise on biological reality (we are not gods; it is not in our power), we do need to think through together what accommodations can be made to allow all of us to live in peace and harmony.
I don’t see this happening in my lifetime, but I hope the day will come. Meanwhile, I will not use pronouns that do not accord with biological sex, but I will also do my level best to avoid needless confrontation over this in personal interactions with friends and neighbors.
Adoption of Activist language distorts public understanding when clarity and accuracy is vital . What if he was still at large would it be a manhunt ? Would telling lies keep public safe ? There is no “ be kind “ way through this. You can adopt their way to move conversations on OR you can save lives in circumstances like this and I believe save kids in general from this dangerous cult.
Boy, those pronoun "guidelines" are some dictatorial brainwashing. "there is never a reason" to write this or that. Bullshit, just look at those cowards falling back on language prescriptivism because nothing else gets them their way.
“Preferred pronouns” are self-centered, counter factual nonsense. In reporting the news, journalists should focus on factual accuracy, not ideological bullshit.
The most unbiased approach I can think of is that media write their articles without using pronouns at all. Instead, use the person's name, if available, or, if not, simply a label (e.g. "the perpetrator). However, articles must also include information of the person's actual biological gender and mention how the person wished/wishes to use pronouns different from the ones normally associated with that gender.
While awkward to read, this leaves it up to the reader to come to their own conclusions, on full information, rather than being confused or having the journalist tell the reader what to be thinking.
There was once a time when newspapers reported (some of) the things that happened. "Leave readers to guess"—about a basic fact that turns out to be pretty darn salient to grasping what happened—is hideously dystopian, on the level with "she" for him.
Your suggestion would mean that readers should guess if a murderer is male or female. Journalists are supposed to report facts plainly, not play games.
I think an awesome compromise would be that nobody gets shamed or questioned for using whatever pronouns they choose to use when referring to a trans-identified, grown-ass adult. For kids, teens and very young adults, we really need to consider whether playing into pronouns is psychologically harmful.
Imagine family members submit a missing person report on their adolescent or young adult child. Would it be better for police and the public to be told to look for a "girl", if the child is male?
Would it be better for police and the public to be told to look for a "boy", if the child is female?
Of course not!
Evolution has given all of us an almost unerring ability to discern whether a pubescent or post pubescent person is male or female, no matter how they are dressed. One still photo can be misleading, but seeing an individual in person, moving and speaking, enables us to spot who is male and who is female 99+% of the time.
language should clarify, not confuse us. I really hope sanity prevails and we as a society can just agree on the obvious- Biological sex is real, it matters (especially in crime reporting) and doesn't make you hateful for standing for truth. Thank you Lisa for digging into the details of these issues.
As British feminist, Jane Clare Jones puts it, “The only pronouns one can prescribe to oneself, ethically, are 'I' and 'me.' Third-person pronouns are granted to you by another person.”
"ut videor, fortasse sim."
When I heard the news the other night about the terrible shooting in Canada, and they announced it was a female shooter, my first thought was bullshit! For various reasons, including the fact I am a therapist, I have been very interested in what leads a person to engage in a school shooting. But even if you don't have my curiosity or professional interest and experience, you are probably aware that these horrible events are typically perpetrated by young males. The last few years have added a new characteristic to the profile - transgender. What makes me furious about the mainstream media's and law enforcement's insistence of sidestepping the trans angle with their pronoun (she/her) and other semantic acrobatics ("gunperson") is that they are perpetuating the illusion that their trans identity had nothing to do with their violent act. The reality is that these young people have been troubled for a while, and there have been opportunities to intervene, but they have been missed by parents, teachers, peers, etc who affirmed them out of a belief it's a human rights thing, rather than see the trans identity as a symptom of a deeper issue and comorbid issues - depression, trauma, social ostracism, troubled family life, autism, participation in extremist online groups, built-up rage against a school system where they felt imprisoned & bored, substance use, ADHD meds, anti-anxiety meds, cross-sex hormones, screen addiction... I often tell teens that they are the first ones to know when a peer is "off" - but if we don't talk about this stuff as adults, out of a fear of being politically incorrect, how the heck are kids going to understand? And if police and journalists are not going to accurately describe profiles of these shooters, and help the general public understand them better, but instead focus on gun control, we will keep having these tragic events.
>I am a therapist
you are a religious practitioner masquerading as a secular professional
>I often tell teens that they are the first ones to know when a peer is "off"
holy fuck, teens do not need to be told that! that hyper-trained acute sense of "he's off" is exactly what causes the social ostracism, which is exactly what drives people to extremist online groups.
if you actually talk to people like the ones you "other" here -- not in your bullshit office, but online, where they're honest -- it is extremely common for them to say that their peers would make fun of them by saying "he's probably gonna shoot us all one day."
you are actively participating in the acutely cruel social dynamics that create the type of person you describe. quite frankly, fuck you. fuck you for the bullshit you practice, fuck you for the cruel ostracising behavior you support and endorse, and double fuck you for propagating the utterly othering idea of labeling weird kids "autistic" like they aren't a perfectly normal kind of human being in the grand scheme of things.
this'll probably be deleted in short order, because ms davis is polite to a fault, but seriously -- fuck you.
I'm not going to remove this or ban (despite requests) but can you please not treat people you disagree with this way here? Try rewriting it with good faith engagement.
Not sure what point you're making, can you clarify? Thanks
She’s mad about her son being the “off” teen, 100%.
i'm a guy, and you are an asshole. not every weird kid is a potential shooter, holy fuck. when i was in school, there were a few kids who didn't have many or any friends that i could tell -- i would see them sitting alone in the library drawing whatever on sheets of looseleaf to entertain themselves. cars, swords, dinosaurs, mario & the koopas, whatever. it seemed a little sad -- and sometimes you could tell they were pretty angry about having no one to talk to, about being picked last in gym class, about having to walk all the way home every single day alone while everyone else was walking with a friend.
so they would get upset sometimes. so what? the last thing those kids needed was people looking at them like they were going to kill everyone. the last thing those kids needed was literal bullies like you acting like it was "right" to ostracize anyone who's "off." i mean, can you not hear yourself? have you not seen a single afterschool special? literally what is wrong with you?
& i went to school just before everyone had a smartphone. that's why these kids -- at my school -- were drawing on looseleaf and reading fantasy novels, instead of burying themselves in their phones and finding certain places online that many of the perpetrators of these tragedies have spent time in. and no bully like yourself was taking pictures of them while they were sitting alone and sharing them around captioned "threat level 100" or some other kind of asshole thing. that that happens now to harmless weird kids now, i am absolutely certain of.
are you going to say, "i bet it was you"? i'm almost certain that you were. double asshole. i had a number of friends (and that number was always at least 2, one of whom is now a good-sized youtuber as a matter of fact.) i won't say i'm a fast friend-maker, but i had the advantage of being in the same town for all of my school years. if i had moved around -- as many kids do, through no choice of their own -- & had to deal with the frustration of losing any friends i'd made & having to make them all over again, i might well have gotten tired of it and just buried my nose in books or what have you.
moreover, even if i hadn't had a 6'3" 230 friend who could deck you like you've never been decked, i was never that anxious or worried about things like this. i could always feel fine because, whatever else, i was the smartest kid there. well, in everything except for math -- there i was only about on par with a few others. i had the advantage of parents who read to me a whole heck of a lot. it was quite notable that no one in the a.p. or honors classes was "weird" in the lonely, angry way. there were those without many friends in school, or without any close friends as far as i knew, but they seemed perfectly happy, and the few times i went to their houses, i saw why -- they were great friends with their parents, with their grandparents, with their siblings and cousins and so forth. and that kind of stable, helpful, commodious family life is probably a big part of not just why they seemed in good spirits but also of why they were in honors & a.p. classes.
what the few lonely, occasionally angry kids had in common was a lack of friends among their peers, and also among their family. they didn't have any siblings, or their sibling(s) were "popular" and they were the opposite -- and rather than take especial care of the kid having trouble, their family ignored them and acted like the "popular" ones were the only ones who existed.
i cannot imagine, and i am certain you cannot imagine, what it is like to go through your school years with not a single person you can talk to, anywhere in your life. that was hard enough at my school where bullies like you did not exist. (i know a few who might've been like that in an environment that tolerated or encouraged such behavior, but where i lived, it was caught & lessons were taught early.) what it was like for the poor souls at whatever hellish school let you grow up and still be this way -- that i cannot imagine.
if you want to feel a tiny fraction of what it's like to be bullied the way people like you bully people, go ahead and reply. consider that a fair warning -- this has been me being nice, though you absolutely do not deserve it.
I’m happy for you or sorry that happened.
you are not worth the shit under an ass fingerer's fingernail.
The problem with singular "they" used for known people is that it creates cognitive dissonance.
"They" is the only third person plural pronoun we have in English. We use it for every plural noun: dogs, cats, horses, stars, planets and people.
Referring to a singular person as "they" makes it appear as if there's more than one of them, which immediately slows down comprehension of the speaker's meaning.
The worst is trying to speak about a person using they/them in contrast to some group of people.
It’s very confusing and grammatically incorrect. If you were mugged by a solo perpetrator for example you would never refer to them as they. If you didn’t know you would say someone. Language is meant to convey information correctly.
I’ve never understood why people who want to hide their sex use they instead of it. It would suffice.
In English, "it" is a singular, neutral third person pronoun, but it's generally only used for inanimate objects or abstract concepts.
It's considered dehumanizing when used for people.
It is only considered dehumanizing if one decides that it is. “They” is plural. Its use makes no sense when applied to one person. If people are willing to utilize linguistic gymnastics by applying a plural word to a singular one, people can similarly apply linguistic gymnastics and humanize a word that was previously only used for objects. Further “it” has been used when people didn’t know the sex of an animal. Animals are not inanimate objects or abstract concepts. All of this pronoun nonsense is a form of authoritarianism. It is about control. If you get people tied up in linguistic knots then they stop using their voices and the control is complete. It is controlling to tell someone else what to say or how to say it.
Important topic, Lisa — thank you.
FWIW, as a 🇨🇦, my heart sank so far when I heard the news of the “female” shooter: the victims, but also the unbidden thought that the odds of this having been perpetrated by a female were astronomically low.
(Hear hooves, think horses …)
And that if my suspicions were true, that this was another tragedy likely caused *at least* in part by this fantastically dangerous ideology.
My POV, but *especially* in an active pursuit of a dangerous (or at risk) person is that police and media should make clear both the sex and gender as part of helping community identification.
If/when a situation is resolved (or reported after the fact), whether the sex is shared should depend on context:
Was it a missing person or a person of interest? Gender away!
Was it a crime? Both report the sex (and gender, whatever) to the public AND record for various legitimate government reasons the sex & gender.
Finally, I’ll use “they/them” when directly addressing trans-identifying males, but “she/her” is off limits as long as there is a pitched battle over the words woman/women/girl(s). And if we’re talk about violent or sexual criminals, he/him is necessary imho to reinforce the sexed realities of sexual violence.
I think that sex matters--always.
Statistics matter. Statistics should be accurate.
In social situations, it's possible to avoid pronouns. It can make for awkward speech, sounding a bit like an over-eager salesperson (constantly using a name versus pronoun).
In my blue zone, I see the media reporting on female bank robbers, female shooters, and female computer hackers. Sure, it's possible that a handful of these crime stats are actually committed by females. I will often go down the rabbit hole searching for the actual sex of the perp. Unfortunately, society has created--through laws and ideological pressure, a means to mask biological reality.
From Gerald Posner on journalism integrity:
"Yet much of the mainstream coverage has described the killer simply as “female,” without explanation or context.
This is not a minor semantic dispute. In high-profile crimes, accurate reporting matters. Biological sex is a data category used in criminology, public policy, and statistical analysis. Erasing it — or substituting identity categories without clarity — distorts public understanding and, over time, the historical record.
When language becomes an ideological reflex instead of a factual description, journalism stops informing and starts shaping.
In cases this serious, the public deserves accuracy — not ambiguity."
💯
Please either use their sex or refer to them by their last name. Awkward but avoids the confusion.
Otherwise you end up taking sides and (if you use a pronoun that is inaccurate as far as sex) confusing/misleading at least some readers. It is not appropriate to assume that everyone uses language the same way regarding this topic right now. Or to assume that everyone should change their language to match one's personal beliefs.
For crimes, it seems their sex and preferred pronouns are both information.
I checked the German news on the horrible tragedy in Canada, and it's "she/her" all the way. Some of the liberal media don't even point out that the shooter was "trans", not even buried deep in the article. The papers do report on "her" history of mental health issues, without ever allowing the thought that mental health issues tend to cluster in people who identify as "trans", and that therefore "her" transness is relevant to the reporting, as is of course "her" maleness. I was glad to see though that some of the commenters did point out these facts.
Germany and its media are so deeply captured, and I think people who only consume mainstream media and live in woke bubbles like my sister (who got mad at me for referring to her daughter's trans-identified boyfriend as "he" in a phone conversation) won't even hear about the true story.
When a position paper has to turn words upside down and sideways to accommodate every possible situation, combination, iteration, feeling, political position and for all I know sexual position, it is failing. No one can learn all those rules and preferences, and no "guidelines" will be acceptable to all. In contrast, consider how and why the generic "man," which supposedly included woman, became outdated, with policeMAN becoming police OFFICER, etc. It was a bottom-up change of language, abetted, I am proud to say, by my colleagues in social psychology who demonstrated that when people say "policeman" or "congressman" they literally do not mentally envision women in those jobs. It was a natural linguistic shift, accepted eventually by all. In contrast, "mur" and "sfh" and "ziz" and "floop" will never become universally accepted pronouns--no logic to them. I appreciate Lisa's tolerance of "they" for the reasons she explained. BUT what about this compromise? Refer to a trans person as "he/she" or "she/he." Natal sex first, trans identity next. The mentally ill shooter in Canada? he/she ...
Respectfully, why is a compromise necessary in this case? The murderer is dead and even if he were alive, is not being addressed to his face in any case. Why elevate the feelings of a dead person over those of his still living victims, and those of their families, as well of the families of those this man killed? Surely the feelings of the living victims and the accuracy necessary to ensure the public is informed and safe have more importance than whatever presumed insult the dead perpetrator may have felt.
(Also, non-relatedly, I have really enjoyed and learned much from your books and articles, especially the HRT one, so thank you for writing them.)
Thank you, EF, for your compliment, and also I don't disagree with you here. I was just suggesting a way that trans people might be identified by journalists, etc., going forward, even as an interim compromise. As Lisa wrote, even Rachel Levine is "she" to her. As for the Canadian killer, we have a lot to learn about ... him.
This is basically what I came here to say, but you’ve already said it well, so I'll just add my "Like".
Also, shifting from "policeman" to "officer" wasn't about tailoring language to an individual's private ego needs. It was about recognizing
half the human population. That's entirely different from the idea of "personal pronouns."
Leslie Feinberg, the 1950s lesbian pressured hard to transition, noted that "He-she" was a slur to her ears. It had a scornful quality. She didn't like "she" either and simply avoided pronouns applied to herself whenever possible. Crimes tended to happen to her, rather than the other way around.
Someone who has committed a newsworthy crime, I'm sorry, does not deserve to be granted a falsified identity. If some bloke is in the papers we deserve to know that it was a bloke rather than be forced to imagine a woman committing those crimes and shape the follow-up questions accordingly when that simply isn't what happened at all.
Until all this came up, I never gave a thought to the English language convention of sex-based pronouns. How I wish it were not so, how I wish our pronouns were sex neutral, but who knew? Still, we are stuck and in several dimensions.
I recall so well that “bottom-up” change of language, abetted by so many of us in the dark ages of the ‘70s. For me, it was the “big fight” to get our law professors, back when women were a tiny minority of students, to replace the “reasonable man” standard with “reasonable person.” Ah, those were the days . . .
But, as I noted, we are stuck. In the public square, my own view is clarity is primary. In that regard, I don’t think “he/she” would be understood, but would rather continue the confusion. “She” in our language is unfortunately sex-linked, and I don’t think it’s possible, in the public’s mind, to delink it. For that reason, in press reports and discussions of law, public policy, statistical analyses, and in terms of what is taught in schools, we have no choice but to assure that pronouns, if they must be used, accurately reflect the sex of the person to whom we refer.
One-on-one and other private conversations are another matter. There, if refusal to use preferred pronouns is a barrier to understanding, I’d be inclined to set them aside. The beauty part of that is, in such cases, third person pronouns may not be needed at all and can in any case generally be avoided, even if a bit cumbersome speechwise.
But I do think there is another, very important, point at which you may be driving. That is, people who identify as the opposite sex exist among us, and that is not going to change for some time to come. Like anyone else, people who identify as the opposite sex have a right to be treated with compassion and respect. We have undergone a profound cultural shift, and a new equilibrium will need to be found. While, in my view, it cannot be based on any compromise on biological reality (we are not gods; it is not in our power), we do need to think through together what accommodations can be made to allow all of us to live in peace and harmony.
I don’t see this happening in my lifetime, but I hope the day will come. Meanwhile, I will not use pronouns that do not accord with biological sex, but I will also do my level best to avoid needless confrontation over this in personal interactions with friends and neighbors.
In loving kinship and with everlasting respect,
Sue
I nominate Susan for the role of Solomon in the forthcoming play, "How will this ever end?"
Adoption of Activist language distorts public understanding when clarity and accuracy is vital . What if he was still at large would it be a manhunt ? Would telling lies keep public safe ? There is no “ be kind “ way through this. You can adopt their way to move conversations on OR you can save lives in circumstances like this and I believe save kids in general from this dangerous cult.
Boy, those pronoun "guidelines" are some dictatorial brainwashing. "there is never a reason" to write this or that. Bullshit, just look at those cowards falling back on language prescriptivism because nothing else gets them their way.
“Preferred pronouns” are self-centered, counter factual nonsense. In reporting the news, journalists should focus on factual accuracy, not ideological bullshit.
The most unbiased approach I can think of is that media write their articles without using pronouns at all. Instead, use the person's name, if available, or, if not, simply a label (e.g. "the perpetrator). However, articles must also include information of the person's actual biological gender and mention how the person wished/wishes to use pronouns different from the ones normally associated with that gender.
While awkward to read, this leaves it up to the reader to come to their own conclusions, on full information, rather than being confused or having the journalist tell the reader what to be thinking.
There was once a time when newspapers reported (some of) the things that happened. "Leave readers to guess"—about a basic fact that turns out to be pretty darn salient to grasping what happened—is hideously dystopian, on the level with "she" for him.
Your suggestion would mean that readers should guess if a murderer is male or female. Journalists are supposed to report facts plainly, not play games.
his name is richard leland levine. giving an inch is how they took a mile.
I think an awesome compromise would be that nobody gets shamed or questioned for using whatever pronouns they choose to use when referring to a trans-identified, grown-ass adult. For kids, teens and very young adults, we really need to consider whether playing into pronouns is psychologically harmful.
Imagine family members submit a missing person report on their adolescent or young adult child. Would it be better for police and the public to be told to look for a "girl", if the child is male?
Would it be better for police and the public to be told to look for a "boy", if the child is female?
Of course not!
Evolution has given all of us an almost unerring ability to discern whether a pubescent or post pubescent person is male or female, no matter how they are dressed. One still photo can be misleading, but seeing an individual in person, moving and speaking, enables us to spot who is male and who is female 99+% of the time.
language should clarify, not confuse us. I really hope sanity prevails and we as a society can just agree on the obvious- Biological sex is real, it matters (especially in crime reporting) and doesn't make you hateful for standing for truth. Thank you Lisa for digging into the details of these issues.