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AndyZhengFirstEssay 6 - 25 Apr 2024 - Main.AndyZheng
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| | | Lia Thomas decided to quit swimming because of the pressure she faced from the public. A significant part of her decision is in response to public sentiment that she should not participate in female athletics. To express this sentiment, countless hateful messages ridicule her gender, using he/him/his pronouns to describe her and justify her win in a NCAA competition as a result of her trans status. The question at the core of the backlash against her is whether society rejects trans women as a category or tarns women competing in women’s sports. However, this is not the question I wish to address. I am interested in how linguistic and social changes interact if we envision a world where people like Lia Thomas would feel safe participating in professional sports that most identify with their gender identity.
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< | Solution? | >
> | Struggle between Linguistic Change and Social Change | | | | |
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< | Currently, there has begun a social movement to revive the emphasis on the use of pronouns. Corporations and institutions want to race to be in the forefront of diversity efforts. To that end, they have encouraged individuals to include their preferred pronouns at the end of their email signature. Diversity training also encourages people to consciously mention their pronouns when introducing themselves. All of these efforts aim to encourage inclusion by normalizing the use of pronouns and allow transgender or gender non-binary individuals to announce their preferred pronouns without feeling singled out. | >
> | Adopting a feminist view of history, language has conventionally been used to reinforce power imbalances and oppress marginalized communities. Language gains its meaning from existing social dynamics that have perpetuated throughout history. This is often rooted in inequality. For example, there is empirical sociological evidence about how women tend to use less powerful language than men because of power imbalance between men and women. They tend to use more qualifiers that demean their statements like “I am not sure but” or “I may be wrong but.” This is understandable because the continuity of language throughout history naturally informs the way we are socialized to use and understand language today. As summarized by Sally McConnell? -Ginet in her work, Words Matter, language both reflects existing social dynamics throughout history and has a tendency to construct and perpetuate history. | | | | |
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< | The Real Problem | >
> | However, gender as a construct has been understood differently throughout history. Recently, our understanding of gender and language also evolved to emphasize its performative aspects. Feminist theorist Judith Butler roots gender expression as a social performance rather than a biological inevitability. As Simone de Beauvoir describes gender, “One is not born, but becomes, a woman.” This subverts the idea that gender is a stable identity around which we act. Instead, gender expression is more akin to theater, influenced by the way we internalize “instructions” given to us through observation or instruction. We are both told and shown behaviors associated with a man to solidify our understanding of gender. However, this socialization is not always consistent with an individual’s preferred gender expression. The feminist movement to distinguish sex from gender is critical in explaining the greater presence of gender expression beyond that which is consistent with a person’s sex. | | | | |
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< | While the intention of these efforts are benign, there are fundamental faults with the underlying theory of social change. The proposition would be that by instituting these linguistic changes, social change could be possible. The language we use shapes the way we conceptualize the world. Many ancient civilizations lack the word for blue. Not only does this influence the way they describe the world, but they also physically see the world with less blue. Studies conducted demonstrate individuals who speak one of these languages have a harder time distinguishing green from blue than other people. Thus, the very difference in the languages people chose to identify colors shape the way they see the world. | >
> | The flexibility and performative nature of gender expression creates an opportunity for language to influence social change around the understanding of gender. The issue at hand is identifying the role that language plays in broadening our understanding of sex and gender and engendering a greater social acceptance of various forms of gender expression. One way forward is reflected in Eddie Ellis’s Open Letter. It urged prison reform advocates to move away from dehumanizing language like “prisoners” to more human language like “people in prison.” This is rooted in an understanding of the power of language in influencing social understandings of people in that community. | | | | |
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< | However, this proposition lacks a causal element. It is difficult to conceive that by adding words for blue in these civilizations, that their world would become more blue. While there could be a relationship between social change and linguistic change, the causal impact of linguistic change on social change seems improbable. | >
> | Pronouns are not just linguistic markers but also carry social and symbolic significance. In advocating for transgender and gender nonbinary individuals, two options seem plausible: Advocating for the respect for the wide range of pronouns that people prefer, or erasing the use of pronouns altogether. Current trans-rights activists have opted for the first option, raising awareness of pronoun usage and normalizing its ubiquity to highlight its important symbolic meaning. Efforts for institutions to suggest employees to include their pronouns at the end of their signature or integrating pronouns as part of introductions (“Please tell us your name, pronouns, [other relevant info].”). This certainly is informed by ways of thinking like Eddie Ellis’s Open Letter encouraging the use of the more personalizing and validating terminologies. | | | | |
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< | Instead, the more likely proposition is that linguistic changes are merely a reflection of social changes. One example is in the decreased usage of the N-word by people who are not Black. The shift in this linguistic change follows a complex history with Black folks that will not be explored here. However, whatever the nature of that social change is merely reflected, and not propelled by the change in the N-word being less utilized. The meaning of the N-word going from a derogatory slur when used by white folks turned into an empowering word used by Black folks in the social movement to reclaim language. | >
> | However, a key distinction that may make this method potentially ineffective is that this effort may hinder the historical trend of the English language to lose its inflections. While I do not postulate over the future development of the English language, scholars have observed this trend of languages losing certain types of inflections. By emphasizing and introducing new pronouns like “fae/faer/faers” and “zie/zim/zir” attempts to change the English language in a potentially unhelpful way. The theory behind this movement is that language should be shaped to include identities that accurately capture the expansive range of gender expression. However, it is in opposition towards the trend of losing inflections. | | | | |
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< | The Impact of Diversity and Inclusion Efforts | >
> | A potentially more helpful alternative to the current movement is to normalize the use of “they/them/theirs” pronouns for people of all gender identity. This would reduce the need for society to consider gender expression, which could reflect its arbitrariness as a result of social indoctrination. More importantly, this would likely be a more acceptable way of changing social understandings of pronouns. The framework of they/them/theirs pronouns as a placeholder for when someone’s gender expression is unclear is already accepted. The movement towards the normalization of a gender neutral pronoun would be to expand this understanding of gender ambiguity to include all cases of gender expression. This reductionist view of pronouns could be a more productive source of social change because of its consistency with the historical shift in English losing its inflection over time. It is also consistent with the current feminist understanding of gender that highlights its arbitrariness and distinction from sex. By advocating for change within the framework of existing English language usage, the movement to protect gender non-binary folks could potentially be more productively achieved through erasing the distinction in pronouns altogether through replacing all uses of pronouns with a gender neutral alternative of “they/them/theirs.” | | | | |
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< | Ultimately, if languages adapt to become more inclusive of individuals’ gender identities, the linguistic change merely reflects, rather than caused, the underlying social change of recognizing the humanity and fluidity of gender identity. If I live to see a world where people’s gender identity is merely an afterthought or something not at all relevant to daily conversations, that will not be the result of normalizing efforts like the email signatures and the gender labels on name cards. Instead, it would reflect a broader social movement that has either diminished the importance or moved on from the proper usage of pronouns.
The specific efforts of institutions to push the importance of pronouns will not inherently change social attitudes about gender. When cis-gendered people are asked to include their pronouns at the end of their email, the innate response is that it is simply part of the corporate effort to create an illusion of diversity and inclusion. Some people may even label this effort as “woke” and an effort to tailor to the morality of the elites.
Without creating an underlying social movement that prompts social change, perfunctory acts of virtue signaling cannot serve as the foundation for social change. Instead, linguistic change alone at most serves as the preface of social change by raising social awareness of the issue. While that is the best-case scenario, the worst-case scenario could be regression in the change I want to see, which is the elimination of harmful stigma against individuals who may not fit into society’s neatly created binary of gender identity. Society experiencing these changes in institutional practice could perceive these efforts as insincere and performative. The increased social awareness of the issue could result in a re-affirmation of the currently dominant view that gender must conform to.
Moving Forward
Instead of the virtue signaling, institutions that truly care about respect for gender expression must affect social change. As a result, linguistic change will naturally be widely adopted as a reflection of social change. Although less gratifying and immediate, the work of cultivating an inclusive community involves efforts to change a society’s perception about the fluidity of gender expression and gender identity. While efforts to change linguistic uses of pronouns can be part of the remedy, it cannot serve as any serious solution by itself to recognizing the humanity of transgender and gender non-binary individuals.
The progress towards inclusion of people who do not fit the current categorical binary of man and woman is nonlinear and glacial. However, the current efforts to achieve inclusion through institutional virtue signaling is not only ineffective, but potentially regressive. The root of this is in the infeasibility of linguistic change to affect any meaningful social change. Instead, addressing problems of inclusion must begin and end with social change. | >
> | While the power of history and social dynamics to influence language is undeniable, language also has the potential to affect social change. By taking advantage of the historical patterns of change in language, advocacy around a shift in language could achieve the social acceptance of the arbitrariness of gender. | | |
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AndyZhengFirstEssay 5 - 23 Apr 2024 - Main.AndyZheng
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| | | Lia Thomas decided to quit swimming because of the pressure she faced from the public. A significant part of her decision is in response to public sentiment that she should not participate in female athletics. To express this sentiment, countless hateful messages ridicule her gender, using he/him/his pronouns to describe her and justify her win in a NCAA competition as a result of her trans status. The question at the core of the backlash against her is whether society rejects trans women as a category or tarns women competing in women’s sports. However, this is not the question I wish to address. I am interested in how linguistic and social changes interact if we envision a world where people like Lia Thomas would feel safe participating in professional sports that most identify with their gender identity.
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<
< | Struggle between Linguistic Change and Social Change | >
> | Solution? | | | | |
<
< | On one hand, it seems natural that linguistic changes are merely a reflection of social changes. One example is in the decreased usage of the N-word by people who are not Black. The shift in this linguistic change follows a complex history with Black folks that will not be explored here. However, whatever the nature of that social change is merely reflected, and not propelled by the change in the N-word being less utilized. The meaning of the N-word going from a derogatory slur when used by white folks turned into an empowering word used by Black folks in the social movement to reclaim language. | >
> | Currently, there has begun a social movement to revive the emphasis on the use of pronouns. Corporations and institutions want to race to be in the forefront of diversity efforts. To that end, they have encouraged individuals to include their preferred pronouns at the end of their email signature. Diversity training also encourages people to consciously mention their pronouns when introducing themselves. All of these efforts aim to encourage inclusion by normalizing the use of pronouns and allow transgender or gender non-binary individuals to announce their preferred pronouns without feeling singled out. | | | | |
<
< | However, linguistic changes could also prompt social change. The language we use already shape the way we conceptualize the world. Many ancient civilizations lack the word for blue. Not only does this influence the way they describe the world, but they also physically see the world with less blue. Studies conducted demonstrate individuals who speak one of these languages have a harder time distinguishing green from blue than other people. Here, the very difference in the languages people chose to identify colors shape the way they see the world. | >
> | The Real Problem | | | | |
<
< | Case for Linguistic Change Pushing Social Changes in Attitude Towards Gender Non-conforming Folks | >
> | While the intention of these efforts are benign, there are fundamental faults with the underlying theory of social change. The proposition would be that by instituting these linguistic changes, social change could be possible. The language we use shapes the way we conceptualize the world. Many ancient civilizations lack the word for blue. Not only does this influence the way they describe the world, but they also physically see the world with less blue. Studies conducted demonstrate individuals who speak one of these languages have a harder time distinguishing green from blue than other people. Thus, the very difference in the languages people chose to identify colors shape the way they see the world. | | | | |
<
< | In the context of pronouns, there is an opportunity for the change in linguistic conventions to move social change, even though it would be a glacial and nonlinear shift. One reason that social change affects linguistic change is the very “rightness” of adapting language to action. Similarly, de jure changes more naturally follow de facto shifts. The primary source of legitimacy of the law comes from the buy-in from the people. And that buy-in is often reflected in the zeitgeist of morality and social expectations. The problem with linguistic movements affecting social change is rooted in the idea that language merely reflects, not dictate the individual psyche and, more broadly, social attitudes. | >
> | However, this proposition lacks a causal element. It is difficult to conceive that by adding words for blue in these civilizations, that their world would become more blue. While there could be a relationship between social change and linguistic change, the causal impact of linguistic change on social change seems improbable. | | | | |
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< | However, the proposal for linguistic change pushing social change can be rooted in analogy to de jure change moving de facto change. In the Civil Rights Era, the white majority was heavily opposed to a world with integrated schools. Even in the aftermath of Brown v. Board of Education, many people vocally oppose desegregation. This reflected a de jure change attempting to push for de facto shift in social attitudes. However, at the core of the controversy, there is a fundamental and underlying appeal to morality that couples the de jure ruling to forbid school segregation. Although without threat of violence through the law, this force is insufficient to surface social change to desegregate on its own, the legal desegregation forced society to grapple with this moral qualm. | >
> | Instead, the more likely proposition is that linguistic changes are merely a reflection of social changes. One example is in the decreased usage of the N-word by people who are not Black. The shift in this linguistic change follows a complex history with Black folks that will not be explored here. However, whatever the nature of that social change is merely reflected, and not propelled by the change in the N-word being less utilized. The meaning of the N-word going from a derogatory slur when used by white folks turned into an empowering word used by Black folks in the social movement to reclaim language. | | | | |
<
< | Similarly, at the core of the controversy around individuals not respecting others’ pronouns, linguistic change could begin a dialogue to push for social change. Each person has a preferred set of pronouns they feel most comfortable using. A cis-gender man would most likely feel comfortable with the pronouns he/him/his. For Lia Thomas, she prefers people to use she/her/hers pronouns. However, the harm is done when many hostile individuals who deny her personhood insist on using he/him/his pronouns while expressing their disapproval in Lia’s participation in women’s swimming. | >
> | The Impact of Diversity and Inclusion Efforts | | | | |
<
< | Linguistic changes that people are making could lead the efforts to respect the gender identity of people like Lia. Like in the de jure desegregation movement during the Civil Rights Era, advocating for the change in the language we use to refer to someone’s preferred pronouns reflect the fundamental desire to be recognized as human. When Lia asks for people to use she/her/hers pronouns, she is implicitly asking for the public to recognize that her way of expressing her gender is just as valid as a cis-gender person’s gender expression. At the root of the linguistic push to urge social change is a similarly fundamental moral demand that individuals who do not conform to society’s gender expectations be equally recognized. | >
> | Ultimately, if languages adapt to become more inclusive of individuals’ gender identities, the linguistic change merely reflects, rather than caused, the underlying social change of recognizing the humanity and fluidity of gender identity. If I live to see a world where people’s gender identity is merely an afterthought or something not at all relevant to daily conversations, that will not be the result of normalizing efforts like the email signatures and the gender labels on name cards. Instead, it would reflect a broader social movement that has either diminished the importance or moved on from the proper usage of pronouns. | | | | |
<
< | Current efforts to correct individuals who misgender others reflect an example of a push for linguistic change that could prompt a broader social change. Just like the prohibition of de jure segregation after Brown, reminding individuals who misgender others that their misgendering is harmful would bring the topic of gender to the forefront. By demanding this linguistic shift to use the proper set of pronouns for individuals who do not conform to their gender identities, I hope to see a world where our conception of gender and sexuality broadens to a complex spectrum of identities rather than a strict binary. | >
> | The specific efforts of institutions to push the importance of pronouns will not inherently change social attitudes about gender. When cis-gendered people are asked to include their pronouns at the end of their email, the innate response is that it is simply part of the corporate effort to create an illusion of diversity and inclusion. Some people may even label this effort as “woke” and an effort to tailor to the morality of the elites.
Without creating an underlying social movement that prompts social change, perfunctory acts of virtue signaling cannot serve as the foundation for social change. Instead, linguistic change alone at most serves as the preface of social change by raising social awareness of the issue. While that is the best-case scenario, the worst-case scenario could be regression in the change I want to see, which is the elimination of harmful stigma against individuals who may not fit into society’s neatly created binary of gender identity. Society experiencing these changes in institutional practice could perceive these efforts as insincere and performative. The increased social awareness of the issue could result in a re-affirmation of the currently dominant view that gender must conform to.
Moving Forward
Instead of the virtue signaling, institutions that truly care about respect for gender expression must affect social change. As a result, linguistic change will naturally be widely adopted as a reflection of social change. Although less gratifying and immediate, the work of cultivating an inclusive community involves efforts to change a society’s perception about the fluidity of gender expression and gender identity. While efforts to change linguistic uses of pronouns can be part of the remedy, it cannot serve as any serious solution by itself to recognizing the humanity of transgender and gender non-binary individuals.
The progress towards inclusion of people who do not fit the current categorical binary of man and woman is nonlinear and glacial. However, the current efforts to achieve inclusion through institutional virtue signaling is not only ineffective, but potentially regressive. The root of this is in the infeasibility of linguistic change to affect any meaningful social change. Instead, addressing problems of inclusion must begin and end with social change. | | |
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AndyZhengFirstEssay 4 - 10 Apr 2024 - Main.AndyZheng
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< | The Paradox of Progress in Pronouns | >
> | The Linguistic Push for Gender Inclusion | | | -- By AndyZheng - 23 Feb 2024 | |
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< | The Duality of Language | >
> | Problem | | | | |
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< | Language is expansive and enables precise communication. Part of language is synthesizing an individual’s essence into a noun. When we say “Beyoncé,” we summon a general image of a pop star in the collective psyche of individuals we are communicating with. Rather than describing all of someone’s essence, a name stands in the place for their accomplishments, personality, and history. While the specific details about Beyoncé that each person knows may differ, there is a collective image associated with the name that fulfills the purpose of communication. This is helpful to convey large amounts of information in a short period of time. Series of carefully chosen words can be strung together to deliver ideas and thoughts that would be difficult to express without language. Thus, language is a useful tool for expressing complex thoughts and feelings using prescribed words that have concrete meanings. | >
> | Lia Thomas decided to quit swimming because of the pressure she faced from the public. A significant part of her decision is in response to public sentiment that she should not participate in female athletics. To express this sentiment, countless hateful messages ridicule her gender, using he/him/his pronouns to describe her and justify her win in a NCAA competition as a result of her trans status. The question at the core of the backlash against her is whether society rejects trans women as a category or tarns women competing in women’s sports. However, this is not the question I wish to address. I am interested in how linguistic and social changes interact if we envision a world where people like Lia Thomas would feel safe participating in professional sports that most identify with their gender identity. | | | | |
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< | Language is also restrictive. We use language to express our thoughts, but we are simultaneously confined by language in our expression. When we describe a person as “she,” we inherently trigger each individual’s understanding of what a “she” should be. Through internalizing a large volume of data, and being told how to label each person we see as “she” or “he,” we each develop a paradigm that quickly and mostly accurately identifies individuals into one of the two buckets. Over time, our understanding of language becomes solidified. Rather than being fed information, we begin to predict information from what we see. We start to predict that the individual of shorter stature, long hair, lack of facial hair, and larger pelvis would be labeled as “she.” The problem is that the label is not necessarily reflective of how others think about themselves. | >
> | Struggle between Linguistic Change and Social Change | | | | |
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If it is worth spending almost 300 words on this part of the essay, it is probably worth not making up one's linguistics and philosophy of language on the fly. These aren't self-evidently true statements, and it would be worth learning what the people who also think hard about these matters think. Whether words correspond to objects, in the way you suggest is so obvious as not to require discussion, has been much discussed since St. Augustine at least. I'm not sure you actually want this to be an essay about the philosophy of language, however, so perhaps it could be edited away.
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> | On one hand, it seems natural that linguistic changes are merely a reflection of social changes. One example is in the decreased usage of the N-word by people who are not Black. The shift in this linguistic change follows a complex history with Black folks that will not be explored here. However, whatever the nature of that social change is merely reflected, and not propelled by the change in the N-word being less utilized. The meaning of the N-word going from a derogatory slur when used by white folks turned into an empowering word used by Black folks in the social movement to reclaim language. | | | | |
<
< | Section II: Language in the context of Pronouns | >
> | However, linguistic changes could also prompt social change. The language we use already shape the way we conceptualize the world. Many ancient civilizations lack the word for blue. Not only does this influence the way they describe the world, but they also physically see the world with less blue. Studies conducted demonstrate individuals who speak one of these languages have a harder time distinguishing green from blue than other people. Here, the very difference in the languages people chose to identify colors shape the way they see the world. | | | | |
<
< | This restrictive understanding of pronouns rob an individual’s ability and opportunity to identify themselves. For many people, pronouns are words that ascribe various external characteristics onto individuals. For someone to be described as “she,” she likely has various feminine features like a softer jawline or the lack of facial hair. However, this exteriority takes away the ability for individuals to express their humanity and interiority. When individuals incorrectly assume someone’s pronouns, it is considered “misgendering.” However, more than a mismatch in label, misgendering someone forces a label on them for the presumed rationale of the convenience of language. In exchange for the convenience of language, society has erased the ability for pronouns to describe the interiority, which causes a key aspect of someone’s life to be ignored. | >
> | Case for Linguistic Change Pushing Social Changes in Attitude Towards Gender Non-conforming Folks | | | | |
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I don't know what this means. English has lost almost all its inflections; our nouns do not have case endings, except for a mechanical pluralization. English pronouns still have vestigial cases: in addition to gender and number, they inflect between nominative and accusative forms. The cases are vestigial, however, and we continue to lose them. (Most spoken language ignores the difference between accusative and nominative cases: speakers confuse "I" and "me" in most contexts, and almost no one correctly uses "who" and "whom." I doubt we will still inflect pronouns at all in another couple of generations.) So as you say, language changes over time, and this is an evolving, not a determined, outcome. How we speak is not how we think, unless the loss of ability to detect that "It is I," is correct while "It's me" is wrong indicates a cognitive alteration. We appear to be in the process of adopting the third-person plural pronoun (which is ungendered) for use as a non-gendered singular pronoun. (If English, like some Slavic languages, had a "neutral" set of pronouns, no adaptation would be necessary. My girlfriend Jasna, whose mother tongue was Serbo-Croatian, assumed it was good English to say, for example, "Everyone should bring its own pencil." That's wrong, from the point of view of most English speakers, but nothing prevents us from being comprehensible if we say that.) In order to assert, as you implicitly do, that these changes represent changes in thought, we have to adopt a view of how language works that is, to say the least, contestable. Why not surface the issues directly, if this is a philosophical essay, or avoid them altogether, if it isn't?
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> | In the context of pronouns, there is an opportunity for the change in linguistic conventions to move social change, even though it would be a glacial and nonlinear shift. One reason that social change affects linguistic change is the very “rightness” of adapting language to action. Similarly, de jure changes more naturally follow de facto shifts. The primary source of legitimacy of the law comes from the buy-in from the people. And that buy-in is often reflected in the zeitgeist of morality and social expectations. The problem with linguistic movements affecting social change is rooted in the idea that language merely reflects, not dictate the individual psyche and, more broadly, social attitudes. | | | | |
>
> | However, the proposal for linguistic change pushing social change can be rooted in analogy to de jure change moving de facto change. In the Civil Rights Era, the white majority was heavily opposed to a world with integrated schools. Even in the aftermath of Brown v. Board of Education, many people vocally oppose desegregation. This reflected a de jure change attempting to push for de facto shift in social attitudes. However, at the core of the controversy, there is a fundamental and underlying appeal to morality that couples the de jure ruling to forbid school segregation. Although without threat of violence through the law, this force is insufficient to surface social change to desegregate on its own, the legal desegregation forced society to grapple with this moral qualm. | | | | |
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< | Language does not and should not live in a vacuum. It changes over time with ideas and conventions. What people think about when someone says “fashion” is different today than the U.S. a century ago. What constitutes “fundamental right” of bodily autonomy to abortion is no longer the case today. Similarly, gender and sexuality has the capacity to change with language. Rather than assuming “she” refers to someone who is traditionally feminine, language can adapt to a more progressive understanding of pronouns as a respectful shorthand to refer to individuals and their interiority. | >
> | Similarly, at the core of the controversy around individuals not respecting others’ pronouns, linguistic change could begin a dialogue to push for social change. Each person has a preferred set of pronouns they feel most comfortable using. A cis-gender man would most likely feel comfortable with the pronouns he/him/his. For Lia Thomas, she prefers people to use she/her/hers pronouns. However, the harm is done when many hostile individuals who deny her personhood insist on using he/him/his pronouns while expressing their disapproval in Lia’s participation in women’s swimming. | | | | |
<
< | Section III: Moving Forward | >
> | Linguistic changes that people are making could lead the efforts to respect the gender identity of people like Lia. Like in the de jure desegregation movement during the Civil Rights Era, advocating for the change in the language we use to refer to someone’s preferred pronouns reflect the fundamental desire to be recognized as human. When Lia asks for people to use she/her/hers pronouns, she is implicitly asking for the public to recognize that her way of expressing her gender is just as valid as a cis-gender person’s gender expression. At the root of the linguistic push to urge social change is a similarly fundamental moral demand that individuals who do not conform to society’s gender expectations be equally recognized. | | | | |
<
< | One pathway to evolving our understanding of language is to create misunderstanding and encourage empathy. When individuals continue to be reaffirmed in their language that their prediction about someone’s gender identity is foolproof, their paradigm of pronouns will continue to solidify in opposition to exceptions to their rules. To do so, individuals must occasionally be shown that their initial presumption of someone’s pronouns are wrong. On one hand, it requires individuals to be bold enough to see the possibility of using pronouns that society may not automatically prescribe to them. On the other hand, people must also be receptive to the proposition that something that they’ve established as a paradigm can be wrong. | >
> | Current efforts to correct individuals who misgender others reflect an example of a push for linguistic change that could prompt a broader social change. Just like the prohibition of de jure segregation after Brown, reminding individuals who misgender others that their misgendering is harmful would bring the topic of gender to the forefront. By demanding this linguistic shift to use the proper set of pronouns for individuals who do not conform to their gender identities, I hope to see a world where our conception of gender and sexuality broadens to a complex spectrum of identities rather than a strict binary. | | | | |
<
< | Progress is glacial and nonlinear. It would be unreasonable to expect that transgender and non-binary individuals will have their pronouns respected overnight. However, the requirements for progress is clear. We must simultaneously change the way we understand pronouns as well as broaden our underlying conception of gender and sexuality. Just as meanings of words evolve overtime, our conception of pronouns must be abstracted from its roots of strict classification of individuals in a binary. We also must broaden our conception of gender and sexuality to consist of a complex spectrum of identities. However, this ask is almost as impossible as uprooting the machineries of society today. All I can expect is a continuous tug of war between the status quo and progress. Hopefully, one day, our conceptions of pronouns will change and we can respect each other simply as human.
We do see one another simply as human. (Or less simply, if we are better at understanding humans.) This is really about how we speak, in the sense that our concerns are with how people hear one another (and feel about what they hear) rather than about how we read (possibly generations old) text on the page. But how we speak is not how we think. For most people, the process of speaking in public, to more than their intimates in groups larger than one or two, is a completely separate process from thinking. From a structuralist perspective, in which language speaks us, we could perhaps imagine that whether we use "it" or "they" or "he" to indicate an undeterminate singular human being in an abstract sentence indicates whether we regard human beings as persons or things, but—as I suggest above with respect to the English of a Serbo-Croatian speaker—that's a confusion between social convention and linguistic structure. Language speaks us only when we are not speaking.
What English will sound like in another couple of lifetimes I have no idea. How human beings will reflect upon and alter their social lives and public policies as the mutability of social gender and biological sex expand over those two lifetimes is also uncertain, at least to me. I'm sure there will be relationships among those changes, but that the linguistic ones will determine to any significant extent the social ones seems implausible to me. If the point of this essay is to take the opposite view, the next draft must more clearly explain why. I look forward to reading it.
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You are entitled to restrict access to your paper if you want to. But we all derive immense benefit from reading one another's work, and I hope you won't feel the need unless the subject matter is personal and its disclosure would be harmful or undesirable. |
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AndyZhengFirstEssay 3 - 31 Mar 2024 - Main.EbenMoglen
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< | It is strongly recommended that you include your outline in the body of your essay by using the outline as section titles. The headings below are there to remind you how section and subsection titles are formatted. | | | | |
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< | Paper Title: The Paradox of Progress in Pronouns | >
> | The Paradox of Progress in Pronouns | | | -- By AndyZheng - 23 Feb 2024 | |
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< | Section I: The Duality of Language | >
> | The Duality of Language | | | Language is expansive and enables precise communication. Part of language is synthesizing an individual’s essence into a noun. When we say “Beyoncé,” we summon a general image of a pop star in the collective psyche of individuals we are communicating with. Rather than describing all of someone’s essence, a name stands in the place for their accomplishments, personality, and history. While the specific details about Beyoncé that each person knows may differ, there is a collective image associated with the name that fulfills the purpose of communication. This is helpful to convey large amounts of information in a short period of time. Series of carefully chosen words can be strung together to deliver ideas and thoughts that would be difficult to express without language. Thus, language is a useful tool for expressing complex thoughts and feelings using prescribed words that have concrete meanings.
Language is also restrictive. We use language to express our thoughts, but we are simultaneously confined by language in our expression. When we describe a person as “she,” we inherently trigger each individual’s understanding of what a “she” should be. Through internalizing a large volume of data, and being told how to label each person we see as “she” or “he,” we each develop a paradigm that quickly and mostly accurately identifies individuals into one of the two buckets. Over time, our understanding of language becomes solidified. Rather than being fed information, we begin to predict information from what we see. We start to predict that the individual of shorter stature, long hair, lack of facial hair, and larger pelvis would be labeled as “she.” The problem is that the label is not necessarily reflective of how others think about themselves. | |
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If it is worth spending almost 300 words on this part of the essay, it is probably worth not making up one's linguistics and philosophy of language on the fly. These aren't self-evidently true statements, and it would be worth learning what the people who also think hard about these matters think. Whether words correspond to objects, in the way you suggest is so obvious as not to require discussion, has been much discussed since St. Augustine at least. I'm not sure you actually want this to be an essay about the philosophy of language, however, so perhaps it could be edited away.
| | | Section II: Language in the context of Pronouns
This restrictive understanding of pronouns rob an individual’s ability and opportunity to identify themselves. For many people, pronouns are words that ascribe various external characteristics onto individuals. For someone to be described as “she,” she likely has various feminine features like a softer jawline or the lack of facial hair. However, this exteriority takes away the ability for individuals to express their humanity and interiority. When individuals incorrectly assume someone’s pronouns, it is considered “misgendering.” However, more than a mismatch in label, misgendering someone forces a label on them for the presumed rationale of the convenience of language. In exchange for the convenience of language, society has erased the ability for pronouns to describe the interiority, which causes a key aspect of someone’s life to be ignored. | |
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I don't know what this means. English has lost almost all its inflections; our nouns do not have case endings, except for a mechanical pluralization. English pronouns still have vestigial cases: in addition to gender and number, they inflect between nominative and accusative forms. The cases are vestigial, however, and we continue to lose them. (Most spoken language ignores the difference between accusative and nominative cases: speakers confuse "I" and "me" in most contexts, and almost no one correctly uses "who" and "whom." I doubt we will still inflect pronouns at all in another couple of generations.) So as you say, language changes over time, and this is an evolving, not a determined, outcome. How we speak is not how we think, unless the loss of ability to detect that "It is I," is correct while "It's me" is wrong indicates a cognitive alteration. We appear to be in the process of adopting the third-person plural pronoun (which is ungendered) for use as a non-gendered singular pronoun. (If English, like some Slavic languages, had a "neutral" set of pronouns, no adaptation would be necessary. My girlfriend Jasna, whose mother tongue was Serbo-Croatian, assumed it was good English to say, for example, "Everyone should bring its own pencil." That's wrong, from the point of view of most English speakers, but nothing prevents us from being comprehensible if we say that.) In order to assert, as you implicitly do, that these changes represent changes in thought, we have to adopt a view of how language works that is, to say the least, contestable. Why not surface the issues directly, if this is a philosophical essay, or avoid them altogether, if it isn't?
| | | Language does not and should not live in a vacuum. It changes over time with ideas and conventions. What people think about when someone says “fashion” is different today than the U.S. a century ago. What constitutes “fundamental right” of bodily autonomy to abortion is no longer the case today. Similarly, gender and sexuality has the capacity to change with language. Rather than assuming “she” refers to someone who is traditionally feminine, language can adapt to a more progressive understanding of pronouns as a respectful shorthand to refer to individuals and their interiority.
Section III: Moving Forward | | | Progress is glacial and nonlinear. It would be unreasonable to expect that transgender and non-binary individuals will have their pronouns respected overnight. However, the requirements for progress is clear. We must simultaneously change the way we understand pronouns as well as broaden our underlying conception of gender and sexuality. Just as meanings of words evolve overtime, our conception of pronouns must be abstracted from its roots of strict classification of individuals in a binary. We also must broaden our conception of gender and sexuality to consist of a complex spectrum of identities. However, this ask is almost as impossible as uprooting the machineries of society today. All I can expect is a continuous tug of war between the status quo and progress. Hopefully, one day, our conceptions of pronouns will change and we can respect each other simply as human. | |
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We do see one another simply as human. (Or less simply, if we are better at understanding humans.) This is really about how we speak, in the sense that our concerns are with how people hear one another (and feel about what they hear) rather than about how we read (possibly generations old) text on the page. But how we speak is not how we think. For most people, the process of speaking in public, to more than their intimates in groups larger than one or two, is a completely separate process from thinking. From a structuralist perspective, in which language speaks us, we could perhaps imagine that whether we use "it" or "they" or "he" to indicate an undeterminate singular human being in an abstract sentence indicates whether we regard human beings as persons or things, but—as I suggest above with respect to the English of a Serbo-Croatian speaker—that's a confusion between social convention and linguistic structure. Language speaks us only when we are not speaking.
What English will sound like in another couple of lifetimes I have no idea. How human beings will reflect upon and alter their social lives and public policies as the mutability of social gender and biological sex expand over those two lifetimes is also uncertain, at least to me. I'm sure there will be relationships among those changes, but that the linguistic ones will determine to any significant extent the social ones seems implausible to me. If the point of this essay is to take the opposite view, the next draft must more clearly explain why. I look forward to reading it.
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AndyZhengFirstEssay 2 - 01 Mar 2024 - Main.AndyZheng
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| META TOPICPARENT | name="FirstEssay" |
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It is strongly recommended that you include your outline in the body of your essay by using the outline as section titles. The headings below are there to remind you how section and subsection titles are formatted. | |
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< | Paper Title: Acceptance of Pronouns | >
> | Paper Title: The Paradox of Progress in Pronouns | | | -- By AndyZheng - 23 Feb 2024 | |
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< | Societal resistance to using individuals’ preferred pronouns both stem from ignorance and the limits and glacial pace of progress in society. Before interacting closely with trans and non-binary folks like J, I viewed pronouns as things given by society, just like names given by parents, both nothing more than an identifier. This view is shared by many others, where individuals assume others’ gender and preferred pronouns by the way they present themselves. Meeting gender non-binary individuals like J began challenging my view of pronouns, allowing me to see the ignorance towards pronouns as the tool of indoctrination to view gender as a binary. However, I must reconcile my interest in advocating for the dignity of transgender and non-binary individuals with the natural constraints of society and language, making the path towards shifting our views of pronouns murky and unlikely. | >
> | Section I: The Duality of Language | | | | |
<
< | Section I: Pitch for using proper pronouns
“Neutrality in the face of oppression is choosing the side of the oppressor.” That quote prompted me to scrutinize my biases. While I saw a mental shortcut to assume someone’s gender as a binary, I unwittingly invalidated J’s identity. I realized my ignorance towards pronouns was rooted in colonialism. One way colonizers dehumanized people was through effacing their history. Immigrants coming to the U.S. were denied the spelling of their surnames for an Anglicized version, and slaves in America were denied their surnames completely. In each instance, what was denied is more than an epithet, but humanity, memory, and history. Revoking the opportunity for transgender and non-binary individuals to label themselves is rooted in the colonialist ideology of assimilation, to force those individuals to ignore their own identity. | >
> | Language is expansive and enables precise communication. Part of language is synthesizing an individual’s essence into a noun. When we say “Beyoncé,” we summon a general image of a pop star in the collective psyche of individuals we are communicating with. Rather than describing all of someone’s essence, a name stands in the place for their accomplishments, personality, and history. While the specific details about Beyoncé that each person knows may differ, there is a collective image associated with the name that fulfills the purpose of communication. This is helpful to convey large amounts of information in a short period of time. Series of carefully chosen words can be strung together to deliver ideas and thoughts that would be difficult to express without language. Thus, language is a useful tool for expressing complex thoughts and feelings using prescribed words that have concrete meanings. | | | | |
<
< | On the flip side, colonizers attach arbitrary labels to subordinate them. Puerto Ricans continue to not have all the rights of a citizen of the U.S. because of their label as a n unincorporated territory, Native Americans continue to have their rights to form contracts denied because of their presumed status as “domestic dependent nations.” Transgender folks are also forced labels on them for the presumed rationale of the convenience of language or even society’s denial of their existence. | >
> | Language is also restrictive. We use language to express our thoughts, but we are simultaneously confined by language in our expression. When we describe a person as “she,” we inherently trigger each individual’s understanding of what a “she” should be. Through internalizing a large volume of data, and being told how to label each person we see as “she” or “he,” we each develop a paradigm that quickly and mostly accurately identifies individuals into one of the two buckets. Over time, our understanding of language becomes solidified. Rather than being fed information, we begin to predict information from what we see. We start to predict that the individual of shorter stature, long hair, lack of facial hair, and larger pelvis would be labeled as “she.” The problem is that the label is not necessarily reflective of how others think about themselves. | | | | |
<
< | I learned the importance of decolonizing my language to protect trans and non-binary people — humans who deserve dignity. As we continue to make assumptions regarding people’s pronouns, what we reaffirm is the history of insensitivity committed towards trans folks. We tell these folks that their self-identity is mistaken, their memory of using their pronoun is unacceptable, and the history of trans and non-binary folks is irrelevant. Complacency becomes more than a neutral error: It is the perpetuation of the language of colonization and discrimination. | >
> | Section II: Language in the context of Pronouns | | | | |
<
< | Section II: Reasonable resistance to pronouns | >
> | This restrictive understanding of pronouns rob an individual’s ability and opportunity to identify themselves. For many people, pronouns are words that ascribe various external characteristics onto individuals. For someone to be described as “she,” she likely has various feminine features like a softer jawline or the lack of facial hair. However, this exteriority takes away the ability for individuals to express their humanity and interiority. When individuals incorrectly assume someone’s pronouns, it is considered “misgendering.” However, more than a mismatch in label, misgendering someone forces a label on them for the presumed rationale of the convenience of language. In exchange for the convenience of language, society has erased the ability for pronouns to describe the interiority, which causes a key aspect of someone’s life to be ignored. | | | | |
<
< | However, the call to decolonize our language directly conflicts with the more rigid societal context of language. One key reason for language is to clearly associate an idea or concept with a word. It is difficult for someone to see a person who presents as Taylor Swift and refer to her with any pronoun other than she/her/hers. Taylor possesses many traits we associate with femininity, which naturally links Taylor to she pronouns. If Taylor demands to be called by he/him/his pronouns, it would be difficult for individuals to conform their paradigm of language to that because we’ve collectively created a paradigm of what “she” and “he” means. Ultimately, language offers a shortcut to communicate. The mentioning of a term immediately triggers various associations with it that enlivens that word in our mind. “Taylor Swift” is associated with ideas like singer, woman, pop star, entrepreneur, talented, songwriter. All of these associations are helpful for understanding the “meaning” of Taylor Swift. Similarly, the pronouns “he” is associated with a set of traits that would be inconsistent with “Taylor Swift.” | >
> | Language does not and should not live in a vacuum. It changes over time with ideas and conventions. What people think about when someone says “fashion” is different today than the U.S. a century ago. What constitutes “fundamental right” of bodily autonomy to abortion is no longer the case today. Similarly, gender and sexuality has the capacity to change with language. Rather than assuming “she” refers to someone who is traditionally feminine, language can adapt to a more progressive understanding of pronouns as a respectful shorthand to refer to individuals and their interiority. | | | | |
<
< | Section III: The context of progress | >
> | Section III: Moving Forward | | | | |
<
< | Nevertheless, language does not live in a vacuum. It changes over time with ideas and conventions. What people think about when someone says “fashion” is different today than the U.S. a century ago. What constitutes “fundamental right” of bodily autonomy to abortion is no longer the case today. Similarly, gender and sexuality has the capacity to change with language. Rather than assuming “she” refers to someone who is traditionally feminine, language can adapt to a more progressive understanding of pronouns as a respectful shorthand to refer to individuals. | >
> | One pathway to evolving our understanding of language is to create misunderstanding and encourage empathy. When individuals continue to be reaffirmed in their language that their prediction about someone’s gender identity is foolproof, their paradigm of pronouns will continue to solidify in opposition to exceptions to their rules. To do so, individuals must occasionally be shown that their initial presumption of someone’s pronouns are wrong. On one hand, it requires individuals to be bold enough to see the possibility of using pronouns that society may not automatically prescribe to them. On the other hand, people must also be receptive to the proposition that something that they’ve established as a paradigm can be wrong. | | | Progress is glacial and nonlinear. It would be unreasonable to expect that transgender and non-binary individuals will have their pronouns respected overnight. However, the requirements for progress is clear. We must simultaneously change the way we understand pronouns as well as broaden our underlying conception of gender and sexuality. Just as meanings of words evolve overtime, our conception of pronouns must be abstracted from its roots of strict classification of individuals in a binary. We also must broaden our conception of gender and sexuality to consist of a complex spectrum of identities. However, this ask is almost as impossible as uprooting the machineries of society today. All I can expect is a continuous tug of war between the status quo and progress. Hopefully, one day, our conceptions of pronouns will change and we can respect each other simply as human. |
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AndyZhengFirstEssay 1 - 23 Feb 2024 - Main.AndyZheng
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| META TOPICPARENT | name="FirstEssay" |
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It is strongly recommended that you include your outline in the body of your essay by using the outline as section titles. The headings below are there to remind you how section and subsection titles are formatted.
Paper Title: Acceptance of Pronouns
-- By AndyZheng - 23 Feb 2024
Societal resistance to using individuals’ preferred pronouns both stem from ignorance and the limits and glacial pace of progress in society. Before interacting closely with trans and non-binary folks like J, I viewed pronouns as things given by society, just like names given by parents, both nothing more than an identifier. This view is shared by many others, where individuals assume others’ gender and preferred pronouns by the way they present themselves. Meeting gender non-binary individuals like J began challenging my view of pronouns, allowing me to see the ignorance towards pronouns as the tool of indoctrination to view gender as a binary. However, I must reconcile my interest in advocating for the dignity of transgender and non-binary individuals with the natural constraints of society and language, making the path towards shifting our views of pronouns murky and unlikely.
Section I: Pitch for using proper pronouns
“Neutrality in the face of oppression is choosing the side of the oppressor.” That quote prompted me to scrutinize my biases. While I saw a mental shortcut to assume someone’s gender as a binary, I unwittingly invalidated J’s identity. I realized my ignorance towards pronouns was rooted in colonialism. One way colonizers dehumanized people was through effacing their history. Immigrants coming to the U.S. were denied the spelling of their surnames for an Anglicized version, and slaves in America were denied their surnames completely. In each instance, what was denied is more than an epithet, but humanity, memory, and history. Revoking the opportunity for transgender and non-binary individuals to label themselves is rooted in the colonialist ideology of assimilation, to force those individuals to ignore their own identity.
On the flip side, colonizers attach arbitrary labels to subordinate them. Puerto Ricans continue to not have all the rights of a citizen of the U.S. because of their label as a n unincorporated territory, Native Americans continue to have their rights to form contracts denied because of their presumed status as “domestic dependent nations.” Transgender folks are also forced labels on them for the presumed rationale of the convenience of language or even society’s denial of their existence.
I learned the importance of decolonizing my language to protect trans and non-binary people — humans who deserve dignity. As we continue to make assumptions regarding people’s pronouns, what we reaffirm is the history of insensitivity committed towards trans folks. We tell these folks that their self-identity is mistaken, their memory of using their pronoun is unacceptable, and the history of trans and non-binary folks is irrelevant. Complacency becomes more than a neutral error: It is the perpetuation of the language of colonization and discrimination.
Section II: Reasonable resistance to pronouns
However, the call to decolonize our language directly conflicts with the more rigid societal context of language. One key reason for language is to clearly associate an idea or concept with a word. It is difficult for someone to see a person who presents as Taylor Swift and refer to her with any pronoun other than she/her/hers. Taylor possesses many traits we associate with femininity, which naturally links Taylor to she pronouns. If Taylor demands to be called by he/him/his pronouns, it would be difficult for individuals to conform their paradigm of language to that because we’ve collectively created a paradigm of what “she” and “he” means. Ultimately, language offers a shortcut to communicate. The mentioning of a term immediately triggers various associations with it that enlivens that word in our mind. “Taylor Swift” is associated with ideas like singer, woman, pop star, entrepreneur, talented, songwriter. All of these associations are helpful for understanding the “meaning” of Taylor Swift. Similarly, the pronouns “he” is associated with a set of traits that would be inconsistent with “Taylor Swift.”
Section III: The context of progress
Nevertheless, language does not live in a vacuum. It changes over time with ideas and conventions. What people think about when someone says “fashion” is different today than the U.S. a century ago. What constitutes “fundamental right” of bodily autonomy to abortion is no longer the case today. Similarly, gender and sexuality has the capacity to change with language. Rather than assuming “she” refers to someone who is traditionally feminine, language can adapt to a more progressive understanding of pronouns as a respectful shorthand to refer to individuals.
Progress is glacial and nonlinear. It would be unreasonable to expect that transgender and non-binary individuals will have their pronouns respected overnight. However, the requirements for progress is clear. We must simultaneously change the way we understand pronouns as well as broaden our underlying conception of gender and sexuality. Just as meanings of words evolve overtime, our conception of pronouns must be abstracted from its roots of strict classification of individuals in a binary. We also must broaden our conception of gender and sexuality to consist of a complex spectrum of identities. However, this ask is almost as impossible as uprooting the machineries of society today. All I can expect is a continuous tug of war between the status quo and progress. Hopefully, one day, our conceptions of pronouns will change and we can respect each other simply as human.
You are entitled to restrict access to your paper if you want to. But we all derive immense benefit from reading one another's work, and I hope you won't feel the need unless the subject matter is personal and its disclosure would be harmful or undesirable.
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