It’s steam engine time when it’s time for steam engines and right now it seems to be “being creepy around transgendered people” time. This time it’s a Canadian gay and lesbian magazine ignoring one person’s request to address they with the pronoun of their choice:
It started in November when Xtra refused to honour artist Elisha Lim’s request to be referred to by the pronoun “they.” Although the magazine did run a story quoting Lim saying these words, it would not honour the pronoun switch. A few weeks later Xtra interviewed Lexi Tronic, a trans and sex worker’s rights activists. Edmontonians may remember her for the time she spent hosting weekly drag shows here and others might have caught her as one of the original stars of Showcase’s breakthrough sex series KinK. The story’s editor, Danny Glenwright, decided to share the story on his personal Facebook wall and when he did so he added Tronic’s birth name. Tronic was naturally uncomfortable with this, especially since it turned out the two had known each other since childhood in Winnipeg and shared many acquaintances. Glenwright, an editor at an LGBTQ paper, claimed he didn’t know sharing the birth name of a trans person was a faux pas, which would mostly be OK if he had just removed it after Tronic asked. Instead he defended himself profusely, used the creepy “some of my best friends are trans!” argument and basically reacted in a variety of transphobic ways.
Among the excuses offered for this faux pas has been the argument that singular they isn’t good English, an ugly neologism that’ll confuse readers. Something that, as the Wikipedia article on singular they shows, would be news to some of the greatest English language writers:
Eche of theym sholde … make theymselfe redy. — Caxton, Sonnes of Aymon (c. 1489)
Arise; one knocks. / … / Hark, how they knock! — Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet (c. 1595)
‘Tis meet that some more audience than a mother, since nature makes them partial, should o’erhear the speech. — Shakespeare, Hamlet
I would have everybody marry if they can do it properly. — Austen, Mansfield Park (1814)
That’s always your way, Maim—always sailing in to help somebody before they’re hurt. — Mark Twain, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884)
Caesar: “No, Cleopatra. No man goes to battle to be killed.” / Cleopatra: “But they do get killed”. — Shaw, Caesar and Cleopatra (1901)
Even if this argument did hold merit, surely a basic politeness should trump a rigid adherence to inadequate grammar rules? If it is all that confusing, just explain it up front. There seems to be a certain mulish willingness here to cause offence, an anger at people being so awkward as to insist to want their identity represented a certain way, something a bit surprising in a magazine for people who quite likely have some experience at being misrepresented… It’s not active malice perhaps, but more the sort of stupidity you get when you do something dumb and insensitive, get called upon and get angry about being shown your errors. It’s a trap progressive people especially can fall in when we do say something unwittingly racist/sexist/othering, because it’s obvious we’re not bigots and how dare people assume we are!
It shouldn’t be hard to be polite and respect the wishes of others about how they would like to be addressed, but we can get right nowty when we do get it wrong and are corrected, something I still struggle with myself.
No Comments