Explainer | The Ethics of Pronouns | Tomas Bogardus

The second in a series of short videos by academic philosophers explaining aspects of the gender-critical or gender-critical feminist position on issues that are of current legal, social, and political interest. The first: gender-critical vs. trans activist claims (with Holly Lawford-Smith); and coming up soon: gender-affirmative medicine (with Moti Gorin), and sex-realist feminism (with Kate Phelan).

[angie]

English evolved parallel to survival. If a person, particularly a woman, can’t identify the reality of if another person is a biological woman or a biological man, we are talking about the difference between life and death.

[shiina]

From my point of view, we were all okay with using "preferred pronouns" until it started to seriously affect our rights and well-being. Like when they started to include males in our crime and health data, that created a serious problem. And when they started to act like biological sex was irrelevant for sports and intimate spaces, that made it necessary for us to put our feet down and say no, sex is still very relevant and important in these situations.

[matt]

Pronouns are rooted in sex, leave it that way. Feel free to declare yourself as masculine, feminine, neither, both, other, etc but leave existing and reasonable language alone.

[heinrich.denzinger]

Tomas is so cool. We need to pray for him and I hope more people hear what he has to say

[-Volt]

If someone asks you what your pronouns are & you respond with anything other than "I/me" then you're not using English properly.

[River]

My first inclination is to consider the practicality of the pronoun challenge. Pronouns are functor words, grammar that is rule-governed, that we code unconsciously. The choice of he or she is as automatic as the choice of a or the. Changing a grammar rule is a big ask. Try using is for are, and are for is, for a day. That’s tough to do, though it’s still rule-governed. The preferred pronoun movement asserts that there no longer is a rule, at all. The only way to use pronouns properly is to ask each individual person, and remember what you’ve been told by each. A somewhat more reasonable ask would be the use of they for everyone, singular and plural. We tend to do that when we can’t specify sex: If a student has a blue shirt, they’re a senior. I’m old so I still say: If a student has a blue shirt, he or she is a senior. Kind of clunky. Changing the use of gendered content words, such as nouns, is a far more reasonable endeavor: firefighter rather than fireman. Even then, it requires time and patience.

[emiliawisniewski]

❤ Tomas! I’m so glad you are able to work together on this issue Holly, you both have much to contribute.

[tongzhi]

Without entering into a debate about how non-sensical much of the discourse around gender and sex seems to have become, I would like to comment on the linguistics of this presentation.

To the claim that gendered pronouns support language users' ability to sort males and females (and further that this is socially helpful): this may be true, but it is not exclusively true. In other words, gendered pronouns are not the only thing that helps speakers do this; nor is language the only means of doing so. Therefore, without talking about alternatives, the claim comes across as something of an exaggeration. For example, Mandarin Chinese (which has many, many speakers in the world) does not distinguish sex/gender in spoken pronouns (the spoken form is 'ta' for 'he', 'she' and 'it'), but the socio-cultural landscapes in which Mandarin is most commonly spoken are among the most rigidly divided in terms of sex and gender.

To the claim that a speaker who asks another to participate in novel pronoun rituals is asking an interlocutor to affirm pragmatically (tacitly) the linguistic and philosophical tenets which animate that ritual: possibly, but it is just as likely that the speaker requesting participation is asking the interlocutor to affirm the pronouns the speaker has self-selected or even the speaker's choice/right to participate in any linguistic/philosophical ritual. The interlocutor not only also has every right to decline to participate but also, for example, to avoid using pronouns altogether, or any number of other possibilities in order not (pragmatically or otherwise) to affirm whatever it is the interlocutor believes a request is being made to affirm. (Surely there have been religious non-Muslim folk who were perfectly willing to wish peace upon Mohammed and continue practicing their own religion very fervently [it's not just the Muslim asking others to say this who matters in the analysis], feudal Japanese Christians who believed that stepping on an icon conveyed little about their true commitment to Christianity [it's not just the officials requiring it to be done who matter in the analysis], and gender-critical feminists who didn't take an invitation to participate in pronoun rituals as an ontological challenge [it's not just the woke people asking for participation who matter in the analysis].)

It just feels like as a linguistic or philosophical discussion, the one presented by Bogardus is very circumscribed or not yet complete or robust enough. This leads what's being conveyed here to sound rather more like an account of a very particular view of social policy (which states that gendered pronouns which conform to biological sex should be maintained for the benefit of society) presented in linguistic terms.

[andyiswonderful]

Interesting commentary. I think you are trying hard to be accommodating, and are dreaming up excuses to intellectually justify that accommodation. You point out that we often use gendered language to refer to things which really don't have a gender. While that is true, it doesn't follow that it is therefore OK to use incorrect language when referring to people, who objectively do have a sex.

I have seven transgendered friends, and I have no problem using their preferred pronouns for obvious reasons. Some people object to doing this for religious reasons, and that is their prerogative. But, the public discourse on this issue goes way beyond pronoun use. It seems obvious to me that women and girls need to be protected in intimate spaces, such as locker rooms and prisons, and need to be able to compete in sports against only biological women, not trans women.

Ultimately, the objective truth of one's sex must be recognized.

[m-ismm]

Fantastic work. Very clear and responsive.

[stevencarr]

Grammar is descriptive, not prescriptive. If people use 'him/his/himself' about a certain group of people, all you can do is describe their usage of their own language and you cannot say it is 'wrong'.

[freedom-gk]

I wonder what would happen if we allow our language to evolve to the point where everyone uses "they/them" instead or "he/she/him/her" as a matter of course (much like the almost universal adoption of "ms" in place of "miss/mrs") and out of respect for people who may be non-binary. Those who say "they/them" are plural pronouns miss the point that we happily use "you" as both plural and singular without any problem - the meaning is clear from the context. But here's the thing: how would a non-binary then identify themselves as being different, if their pronouns were then the same as everyone else's?

[gerarddearie-zdgb]

I am sorry, but for a philosopher to describe males as "disproportionately violent" is incredibly sloppy. Are males in most species not more violent than females? In a descriptive sense, it may be an essential characteristic of male behaviour. So, to what, or whom, are they "disproportionately violent", Tomas? Are they disproportionately strong, or tall?

[pamelaglickman]

Great video! Nice to hear a conservative Christian putting forward feminist takes on the subject (whether he agrees with them or not). The one nitpick I have is with regard to the claim that non-binary identities are inherently political. I agree that non-binary identities are political (in that they're derived from a political ideology - i.e. trans ideology), but focusing on the political-ness of non-binary identities seems to imply that binary trans identities somehow aren't political (presumably cos they're referring to the already recognised categories of male and female).

I would argue that changing the meanings of male / female or man / woman (such that people can identify as the opposite sex) is very much a political act with political consequences that Tomas effectively communicated (e.g. it prevents the accurate tracking of sex-based oppression, it allows men into women's spaces, etc.). So why pick on the non-binaries exclusively and let the (often equally sexist and certainly grounded in sexist politics) "binary" trans identities off the hook?

[AnitaLichtenberg]

I consider the reasons given for having pronouns rooted in sex reasons against continuing the practice. For me, my gender identity is not a "deep inner truth", I could conceivably have lived in my assigned sex, but only if people didn't ascribe to me based on biology characteristics like "potentially violent" that couldn't be further from the truth. Also, in many social situations, I find it inappropriate and do not wish to be scrutinized for reproductive potential.