Pronouns

Pronouns

I would say I’m flummoxed by pronouns but actually I see them as a way insecure teenagers can get attention. As an insecure kid I used to get attention by misbehaving, actually the misbehaving continued for a fair while, into my forties probably.

I used to do things like drawing caricatures of the teacher on the blackboard before the class started then getting the belt for my industry, or being a clown in class with the same outcome, an average week saw me receive the belt at least a couple of times and for some weird reason I never made Prefect.

However, seeking attention seems to have got out of control, maybe because corporal punishment was banned in schools. Corporal punishment could be a great way to get even more laughs I had one female teacher who used to close her eyes before the belt hit my crossed hands, so if I opened my hands at exactly the right instant the belt would hit her leg. It all went to pot right enough when she started getting her husband to administer the belt as he was the PT instructor and to be honest a real sadist.

There used to be twelve personal pronouns "I," "you," "he," "she," "it," "we," "they," "them," "us," "him," "her," "his," "hers," "its," "theirs," "our," "your." It was quite easy to understand and proportion the relevant pronoun. Now it starts to get harder.

A gender neutral or gender inclusive pronoun is a pronoun which does not associate a gender with the individual who is being discussed. So now I have to remember for starters

SHE	HER	HER	HERS	HERSELF
HE	HIM	HIS	HIS	HIMSELF
zie	zim	zir	zis	zieself
sie	sie	hir	hirs	hirself
ey	em	eir	eirs	eirself
ve	ver	vis	vers	verself
tey	ter	tem	ters	terself
e	em	eir	eirs	emself

 

All this is fair enough if someone doesn’t know what gender they are and wants some attention I say go for it, call yourself a ve and wear a wee badge so we all know you want attention.

 

For myself I have decided to just ignore this trivial fad and either cross the street if I see a pronoun badge or pretend to be blind actually a white stick could be handy if the pronounee insists on further imposing their attention seeking.