Articles in Country Squire magazine including Pick your Pronouns Wisely

[ChristinaXYZ]

I enjoyed Effie Deans' Pick Your Pronouns Wisely

"Other possibilities might involve using Polish words such as Zólc and Zdzblo or alternatively I could insist that everyone addresses me with Russian pronouns and uses them correctly in each grammatical case."

countrysquire.co.uk/2021/08/02/pick-your-pronouns-wisely

And also this piece on the culture wars more broadly and using the concept of universalism against identity politics

"Because the smears are indelible. Once accused, you can’t escape the taint. You might argue for what you consider to be reasoned, liberal, humanistic beliefs, but there’s one problem with that. We don’t live in a reasoned, liberal, humanistic age any more. The woke – especially the young woke – have hardly ever heard of it. They think what you believe in is a smokescreen for intolerance.

What can be done? The answer is obvious. We need to ditch the long-winded waffle about Enlightenment values and Dr Martin Luther King and all that. And to do it we need to take a tip from the world of advertising. Because those canny advertising guys, the smartest operators in the world, know one thing, which is this: every product needs brand recognition. Or, to put it simply, a name."

countrysquire.co.uk/2021/08/10/we-cant-win-without-a-name/

Thanks ChristinaXYZ. It is an interesting article.

I do find it an interesting and positive side effect of the rise of gender identity and queer theory that other previously quite polarised groups are beginning to listen to one another and find common ground in order to defend reality, science, safeguarding, privacy, dignity and freedom of speech, thought and belief.

I do fear that the "wokerati" - namely middle class, white privileged (Anglosphere) students- will grow up to run the world and wreck us all, Or they'll grow up to realise they were taught batshittery then they'll be REALLY angry. (More angry then they were about pronouns).

It's basically a lose/lose situation.

I got as far as 'Marxist yobs'. But then it is called Country Squire so I should have known.

I scored a direct hit... it was glorious.
We have a pronoun policer...always correcting everyone.
A person I don't know wants to be called they, not she, and was in a relationship with a friend of ours.
We were booking seats for an event and I know it was only £10 A person, but the person who corrects us all the time , when asked about attendance passed on a message about the couple saying "they" were coming, the corrector paid £20 for 2 tickets, no there are no refunds . He is very tight over money. Which he would then hand over and be refund by the couple.
You guessed it he got it wrong. "They" was only for one ticket... OMG he is livid and £10 out of pocket...
The person who corrects everyone told

Bollindger, that made me laugh out loud.

I use the Turkish 3rd person pronoun "o", which is not marked for sex. Or gender, either. So my signature is:

o (subject), onu (object), onun (possessive), ona (denoting "towards"), onda (denoting "at, in or on, or that something is a characteristic of me), ondan (denoting either "from", or "by means/ way of").

I feel strongly that failure to use these pronouns in the correct case depending on context shows disrespect to my firm belief that pronouns should be not marked for gender/ sex, and my equally firm belief that it is not possible for English pronouns to be meaningfully unmarked in this way in the singular form except in specific depersonalised contexts.

But I am a free individual, and I will not be depersonalised.

I consider a failure to do this a personal insult.

I only use he or she.. they is 2 people and them is normally 3 people.
I can't be FORCE to use words that are made up or repurposed.
We may pay lip service to someone's face, but only because we don't want a row, we are just waiting till woke goes broke.

I like the idea of having a generalised name for everyone who believes in two sexes and doesn't believe in gender, but Universalist doesn't do it for me: it gives no sense what the belief is about and is likely, IME, to put off a lot of the more centrist and right-winger Brexit-voting nationalist types.

Modern Empiricist, maybe? Except that anything echoing the word empire will incur the wrath of the POMO generations. Anti POMO? Maybe we just go back to the Enlightenment and describe ourselves as Lit Up, or Lit?

Here are a couple more from the Country Squire that I enjoyed:

countrysquire.co.uk/2020/09/25/why-are-so-many-conservatives-gay/

countrysquire.co.uk/2017/11/09/rainbow-reich-rising/

Realist.

Yes, Realist will do.

See, I've always felt weird about pronouns. As a young woman navigating a very male field for employment I bent over backwards to not identify myself.

I played for a while with Marge Piercy's suggestion of 'per' instead of he or she - even trying to use this in speech and writing (MP's objective was for a society where gender roles were eliminated and this was part of her strategy) but everyone laughed.

Later, I tried for emails that used my initials and not my full name.

This was because I know that that the more I identified as a woman the more discriminated against I'd be.

I still do this from time to time - it is part of surviving as a woman.

But like the author of the article, I also know that if I was to discuss a man doing something (say, raping) I'd use 'he' (to 'she' - he raped her) - because this is relevant in context and also names a man's behaviour and makes the context and power differential clear.

Women have always done dances like this and I really resent having to pretend it is all about 'pronouns' as if these were divorced from their social, political, legal and economic contexts. They are not.

I like Lit. Realist is what it is, but Lit would make a good brand.

Background in advertising, I'm afraid. Branding comes naturally.

They're Woke, we're Lit.

@Shedbuilder

Background in advertising, I'm afraid. Branding comes naturally.

They're Woke, we're Lit.

I only use he or she.. they is 2 people and them is normally 3 people.

What? No… "they" and "them" refer to the same thing, just one is a subject pronoun, and the other is an object pronoun, i.e. it depends on the role being played in the sentence.

Shakespeare had the right idea with you and thou.

It's also perfectly reasonable to use "they" as a non-gender-specific pronoun when referring to a person of unknown sex e.g. "I just got an email from someone called Dr Smith saying they would like to buy a ticket" or of unspecified sex e.g. "if anyone emails wanting a refund for accidental over-purchases of tickets tell them there are no refunds". It only gets stilted and weird when it's used for an individual you'd reasonably be expected to know as being male or female.

"You" vs "thou" is more do with familiarity levels, repurposing the plural to indicate respect in much the same way the French still do.

Stating “she/her” or “he/him” in an email signature is just weird though. OK so those are two forms of the pronoun, reflecting what little the English language has left of case marking. What about the possessive form? Obviously (I assume) we’re supposed to automatically use “his” or “her” (or “their”), but given that this is an attempt to enforce a separation of pronoun choice from sex of the person being referred to, you could use “his” for the possessive pronoun even if “she” and “her” have been specified.

Strikes me that what’s really going on is that some people want their email signature to say “I’m a laydeee”. It wasn’t funny when David Walliams used to say that on Little Britain and it’s not funny now when tech companies are spearheading a mass gaslighting operation.

Yeah I've never understood that, especially since, while some people use a slash between two cases of the same pronoun (e.g. "Julie, she/her"), other people use a slash between two different pronouns they find acceptable (e.g. "Jay, he/they").

It's the inconsistency, dammit!

Personally, despite the fact it's entirely outside my dialect so I could never use it without sounding like an utter twat, I have a soft spot for:
you (s.)
y'all (pl.)
all y'all (v. pl.)

I thought it was funny when Walliams said it, because it was such obvious nonsense. The equivalent of Wallace and Gromit building a rocket powered by a firework, to go to the moon because it looks like cheese and they like cheese, and then eating slices of the moon on crackers. Obvious, inoffensive nonsense.

I object to pronouns because (as well as what you said) they are compelled speech and compelled religion. Nobody expects me to genuflect when I enter a Catholic Church, or recite the Lord's Prayer in the service. Why should I be expected to recite the creed of the trans faith when I do not believe it?

Love Lit, am Lit up, Lits are legit, Lit tle by Lit tle we'll get this crap sorted

I find pronouns offensive because they exclude everyone who finds grammar difficult already. They do not need to have this compounded by embarrassment. Also, can you imagine e.g. Vladimir Putin being asked what his pronouns were by Joe Biden?

and finally .............. this stuff stems from Harvard and I have a feeling it is a joke or, more likely, to assess just how gullible people are? Wonder when they'll give us the stats?

This is just another method of social mobility prevention.
If you state your pronouns you're signalling awareness of 'social justice' and some vague left-wing views. Left-wing employers will probably be more likely to hire you after seeing your pronouns than to hire someone who doesn't know how to navigate this linguistic convention.

Ironically, the people who have no idea about the new pronoun conventions are probably less well-off and socially privileged, because this information about pronouns/gender identity is shared either in elite universities (for the rich) or on niches in social media - only accessible to people who have spare time NOT working a full-time job, studying simultaneously, carrying out caring responsibilities, etc.

So it's basically a way of barring working-class social climbers from comfortable middle-class jobs. Virtue signalling (not RP English) is the new way to separate the haves from the have-notes. I've seen public schools go full woke in the US and the UK, so chances are they realise this too.