“You must refer to me this way”

Virtue-signaling people are posting “their pronouns” in various places.

I know some people see this as some sort of virtue. I see it as a vice. Specifically, narcissism.

“You must address us in this manner.”

I might put up with that from royalty. I don’t know why we put up with this from ordinary people.

Individuals don’t own the language. You no more have your own pronouns than you have your own adjectives.

3 thoughts on ““You must refer to me this way””

  1. I’m so glad that I didn’t pursue an academic career in the USA where you absolutely have to deal with this stuff. Binary gender is so interwoven into some languages, especially the Slavic languages, that you are stuck with it in the countries where they speak them.

  2. I’ve always found it interesting that people don’t seem to care much about second-person pronouns. Probably there are some out there, but I’ve never encountered anybody who wanted to be referred to not as “you” but some other word like “zyou”. And for “you” that’s most likely to be involved in conversations *with* the person, whereas discussions of third persons try to control how someone is spoken *of* where the presumption of deference to what the speaker wants is a lot weaker.

    Japanese pronouns are more interesting by comparison. There you really *do* try to avoid saying “you”, and there are a half-dozen options, most of which are rude. And a dozen ways to say some form of “I”, with varying degrees of politeness and different connotations.

    I guess it’s just that some people care more about sex, and ways to think about sex, and ways to imagine other people thinking about your sexual life, and so on, than other things.

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