Are pronouns & pronoun policing really that new?

[secular111]

I've been speculating about this recently. I watched an old episode of Upstairs Downstairs from the 1970s, set in Georgian England between 1903 and 1930. I used to watch Downton Abbey. I've also followed the sci-fi series Bridgerton, set an alternate Regency era (see Bridgerton' is an alternate universe fantasy that sci-fi fans will love).

Watching those shows it's easy-to-see that pronouns really aren't new. Indeed individuals, certainly of the upper classes expected to be addressed by the 'lower' classes in a particular and set manner, at least until the 1960s. Heaven help a parlour-maid if she addressed her mistress with the wrong pronoun, and in Dickens novels, pronoun usage is manifested as a means to ensure the lower classes know precisely who their 'betters' are.

So is insistence on pronoun usage really that new? I posit that it isn't. Whilst demanding pronouns might have declined over the last few decades, I believe the current younger generation are demanding and indeed attempting to enforce their return in an effort to distinguish between themselves and the 'lower classes'.

Ok, it might be snobbery, but it isn't really the New Snobbery that David Skelton refers-to in his book. Rather it is simply a return to an expression of entitlement that was strictly-enforced throughout British history and elsewhere in-the-past.

I doubt that those who insist that pronoun usage be enforced and if necessary policed would be grateful to see acknowledgement that they are simply echoing the classism and privileged entitlement expectation of past centuries. Nonetheless I think such people should receive recognition that they are resurrecting a past tradition that is well-documented in British history.

There was always an objective basis to the honorific title though - a person was a lord, a teacher, a judge, a doctor etc.

It wasn't as if the chimney sweep could just rock up and demand to be called m'lady.

It might be that class signifiers are also a horrible system but that doesn't say that demanding pronouns is okay in any way, I don't really follow the logic.

There's also 'tutoyering' in French.

www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/tutoyer where calling someone 'tu' rather than 'vous' can be disrespectful.

These examples replace a pronoun with an honorific.

"These examples replace a pronoun with an honorific."

Yes - I agree that the pronoun in this scenario does take on the class loading of an honorific.

And demanding that, e.g. certain men (self-chosen, bolstered by centuries of male-dominated society) be addressed and referred to as women, even though those individuals are men, male sex - that is demanding that everyone else concedes an honorific for those men. An honorific that defies reality. An honorific that actively damages women's rights by making women's rights subordinate to Men With The Honorific Title.

It's all very class-based, and at base - men seeking to assert their control over women.

oh OP your first couple of posts are a lot of words to show that you don't understand why a maid would be castigated for saying

"she went to the library" instead of "her ladyship went to the library". I'm an ancient old crone so i remember the expostulation "who's 'she'? the cat's mother?"

It was considered seriously impolite for a long time to say "she" when you could have used something else.

I can sort of understand what OP means. The recent push to enforce pronouns is a performance of dominance/force, a class enforcement. To force people to address obvious men as "she, her", when they are obviously male and will never be anything other than male. To be forced to defer to these people in their preferred identity, rather than acknowledge physical reality.

I think that's right. Of course you also have female people insisting on being called "he" or "they", but it's still arguably a show of dominance. It's not accidental that the vast majority of people identifying as trans are white and middle-class. An insistence on enforcing preferred pronouns is a display of entitlement that is alien to most working-class people.

First they came for the definition of woman, then they came for the definition of pronoun.

"When I use a word,' Humpty Dumpty said in a rather scornful tone, 'it means just what I choose it to mean - neither more nor less.'