tatterdemalionamberite:

the-ghost-of-keith-kogane:

also, no one has brought this up at all, but i think that neo-pronouns have a place in the queer movement.  i personally don’t like most of them, and i’m reluctant to use, idfk, bun-self pronouns, but here’s the thing.

most if not all neo-pronouns exist to reject the use of GENDER as the primary identifying feature of person to person language (idk if there’s an actual word for that, i’m a linguist in spirit not in vocabulary).  in english, the set-up for singular third-person pronouns is as follows: male-aligned, female-aligned, and (if you’re not a coward) neither-aligned, neutral.  that’s he/him, she/her, and they/them, respectively.  even our neutral pronouns have a basis in the binary system of using gender as the main identifier, because ‘neutral’ is generally used to mean ‘on the same spectrum but between the two poles’.  think about it–EVERY pronoun we use to speak about someone in the third person is gendered or derived from gender in some way.

not so for ze/zir/zerself.  the closest some of these pronouns get to the actual proper pronoun system is how they reflect the use of Mx. as an honorific, and the use of Mx. is almost non-existent.  saying you use ey/em/emself pronouns is like taking a linguistic step away from the gender system.  you can still kind of trace the roots of some of these pronouns to the previous system (ey/em is likely derived from they/them, for example) but they don’t really lie on the male—-neutral—-female spectrum we’ve used for centuries.

noun-self pronouns take it a step further.  it’s not just taking the gender out of the pronoun, it’s putting something else in its place.  as a political statement, that holds INCREDIBLE meaning.  noun-self pronouns spit in the face of proper english, cishet ideology, and mainstream culture all in one fell swoop.  in fact, my own inability to completely divorce myself from the current system and accept noun-self pronouns is probably incredibly indicative of how counter to our culture it is to use them.  

there are practical arguments against neo-pronouns that may or may not hold water, but AS A TREND (i’m not using this word to belittle the usage, btw, i’m just describing the rise of neo-pronouns) they have the same roots as gnc dress and the battle against gender roles.  they FEEL different and ‘extra wrong’ because it’s been so long since we’ve had any sort of pronoun system that doesn’t rely on gender, in most languages, and that probably means neo-pronouns are all the more important in the long run.  taking gender out of conversations that don’t need it may help us move past the friction that always rises around LGBTQ+ identities.

idk, it’s just something to think about.

this is a sweet-ass post and I’m gonna tag @nbpsiioniic in it.