Why I Don’t Use Female Pronouns For My Transgender Brother

The demand that I refer to my sibling using a female pronoun is nothing less than thought policing. It is a demand that I assert what I do not believe.

Michael Booker

. . . "It’s a simple matter of common courtesy to call someone by whatever name he or she chooses. Transgender activists have tried to latch on to this simple social courtesy to insist on the use of specific preferred pronouns, which they argue is no more than an extension of that common courtesy. The pushback on this has largely been on the profusion of novel potential identifiers: he/his, she/hers, they/theirs, xe/xirs, ze/hirs, ei/eirs…the list is really endless, with individuals generating new pronouns almost daily.

Some English Pronouns Convey Gender  

"But the complaints about the profusion of pronouns miss a far more important point of language that seems to have slipped under the radar, something that makes this far more than a matter of courtesy. It has to do with the nature of second-person and third-person pronouns in English.

"When I talk to you, I can do so without a gendered pronoun. You is the same no matter who, or what, I’m talking to. I can call my misbehaving car “You old pile of garbage” without making my car a he or a she. Likewise, I can speak to a male, female, or non-binary individual with the same second-person pronoun.

"It’s the third-person pronoun in English that conveys gender (and here I’m so happy to be able to use the word gender in its appropriately technical and linguistic sense). I can use he,  she, or it as singular pronouns, and each conveys information about the object I’m referring to. There are odd circumstances when I’d use a third-person pronoun in the presence of someone who is in the room with me, but it never feels polite. In the majority of cases, I am taking about a person or thing not present.

"This is where preferred pronouns become critically intrusive." . . .

The demand that I refer to my sibling using a female pronoun is nothing less than thought policing. It is a demand that I assert what I do not believe, or at least a demand that I dare not evidence dissent from a particular pseudo-scientific understanding of human nature. Asking me to be polite is not the same thing as asking me to lie, or worse, to accept a lie as truth.

Michael Booker has a doctorate in philosophy and retired from the Army Reserve at the rank of lieutenant colonel. He has been married for 30 years, has two amazing sons, and is currently a low-level administrator in academia.