Somewhere along life’s road as I meandered through my ’80 is the new 50’ fantasy, I became aware that ‘they’ had become a singular pronoun. Now, I’ve led an eventful life. I understood that smoking was bad for my health, and travel to outer space might become an eventual reality. I survived financial depressions and wars, cataclysmic events like 9/11, Fukushima and Chernobyl, AIDS and three million AR-15 Assault weapons in our midst. But ‘they?’ This was too much. The English language was under assault. I went in search of what had happened.
I perused the dictionary! Lo & behold, there are two definitions for ‘they.’
- Refers to two or more people or things previously mentioned or easily identified as: “the two men could get life sentences if they are convicted.”
- Refers to a person of unspecified gender: “ask someone if they could help.”
I’m sure that someone snuck in that 2nd option when I wasn’t looking. And that wasn’t all. This new generation was usurping the alphabet.
I tolerated GLA – Gay & Lesbian Alliance. I even remember the original Mattachine Society. Then it became LBGT before becoming LBGTIQ. Hey, people, you aren’t leaving many initials for the rest of us.
Young people, confused about their sexual identity, had usurped the word and the initials…they were no longer ‘he’ or ‘she’ or ‘him’ or ‘her…’ they were now ‘they.’ It was a blatant attack against the older generation.
Confusion over gender is as old as sexual preferences. Consider…despite oft-used quotations from Leviticus, man has often lain with other men, as have women with women. It was common in ancient Greece and across the Roman Empire. And, while neither civilization survived more than half a millennium, it wasn’t because of who was diddling who.
Until recently, however, it was more often adults who realized they preferred something other than a heterosexual relationship…In the ‘80’s and ‘90’s they poured ‘out of the closet.’ And despite our innate Puritanism, we moved forward with unexpected zeal to accept legalized gay lifestyles. In almost every walk of life, announcing that you were gay was no longer a scarlet letter.
Meanwhile, new nouns and pronouns have flooded the lexicon: trans male, trans female, lesbian, gay, bisexual, transsexual, queer plus, asexual, pansexual, demisexual, Anthro sexual, autosexual, gray sexual, hyposexual, lit sexual, sapiosexual, and skoliosexual…ad nauseum!
It was fast becoming a ’31 flavors’ of opportunity for the curious and adventurous.
I recently got an email signed:
Sender’s name
title
she/her/hers (why is this important?)
It not only offered me an option; it was helping me decide which one I wanted. In truth, I thought it should be her/hers’ private business.
Lastly, we have reached the final frontier of confusion…testosterone, estrogen, before puberty, after puberty. Is our child going through a phase? Was my parenting misdirected? Holy crap! Where is Dr. Spock when we need him?