President-elect Barack Obama talked about words earlier this year.
“Do you have a girlfriend?”
“You should totally come to this event, there are going to be lots of cute girls.”
I have no reason to be personally offended when people make statements which assume that I’m heterosexual. In fact, I do identify as heterosexual in most contexts. But I know that this assumed heterosexuality is counterproductive to society as a whole. The message sent is that there is something fundamentally off or odd about being queer.
I sometimes accuse people of making statements that are heteronormative. Some people rebut by pointing out that, given simple statistics, heterosexuality is “normal.” I would remind these people that they’re not likely to ask someone of unknown religiosity which local church they go to, despite the fact that Christianity is statistically “normal.”
Relatedly (and, in my opinion, more interestingly), when describing a singular, hypothetical person (or a person of unknown gender), we have a dilemma. “They” is grammatically incorrect, he/she is too long, and “one” is too cumbersome, often requiring sentences to be restructured. Most people just use “he” without even thinking about it. Even women. Indeed, this is traditionally the most grammatically correct option, although it’s probably the least politically correct. “When a person checks a book out from the library, he agrees to return it within two weeks.”
I’ve developed the habit of using the pronoun “she” to describe hypothetical people. I first noticed this being done by Cory Doctorow a couple years ago. A number of other great speakers and authors do this. This practice is brilliant because of the way that it stands out. The listener or reader notices how unexpected the use of a female pronoun is, then, if she thinks critically about it, she notices how absurd it is that male pronouns are so much more acceptable. “He/she” is more inclusive (and perhaps more PC) than “she,” but it doesn’t challenge the audience to reflect on the issue.
Last week, I decided that I’m going to take this a step further. I’m going to start using Ze. It’s even louder than “she” in it’s call to the listener to reflect on the message sent by pronoun use. I anticipate plenty of queries from friends and professors, and I’m excited and prepared to have those conversations. I also anticipate that adopting this practice will take quite a bit of time (to be honest, I have yet to become fully consistent with my use of “she”). While I’m still developing the habit, I see myself being accused of simply looking for attention or trying to sound smart. Well, you have to start somewhere, and anyway, the dialog is always useful. The exercise of altering word choice forces both speakers and
These are just words. But words have both implicit and explicit meaning. Word choice sends a message, and most of this message is processed and internalized entirely subconsciously.
You can either play in to the dominant paradigm, or you can challenge and subvert it. You can make the world a more open and accepting place where everyone, not just the average white heterosexual man, is “normal.” You can fix it, even if it ain’t broke.
