Give Me Liberty, Not Pronouns

Authored by Kenin Spivak via RealClearPolitics,

It’s time to defrock the word police.

The election, polls, and anecdotal evidence confirm that Americans want to end the obnoxious recitation of pronouns – “Latinx,” “birthing persons,” and other entries in the radical left lexicon – except in eulogies for progressive virtue signaling.

In a March Gallup poll of more than 12 million adults, 4.4% identified as bisexual, 0.9% as transgender, and 0.1% as pansexual. In exit polls this year of more than 110,000 voters conducted by NORC at the University of Chicago, just 1% identified as “nonbinary,” a subset of the Gallup categories. Some of these individuals, most often nonbinaries, dominate use of non-standard pronouns such as “they,” “zir” and “hir.”

If 100% of bisexuals, transgenders, and pansexuals used non-standard pronouns (they do not) and all are offended if the remaining 94.6% of us do not publicly proclaim our pronouns in our signature cards and profiles (also untrue), then the pronoun kerfuffle risks offending 5.4% of Americans. From 10 to 20 times more Americans are offended by this babble. According to a Pew study published in June, nearly 56% of registered voters are uncomfortable with someone using the pronouns “they” or “them,” rather than “he” or “she.” Most of the 53% of Americans who consider religion to be “very important” in their lives likely agree.

Even in Canada, where polls show greater support for gender fluidity, a survey of 3,016 adults from the Angus-Reid Institute found that 66% opposed (36% strongly) and just 22% supported (6% strongly) that “everyone should put their pronouns in their social media profiles/emails.” Media savvy squad member Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez deleted her pronouns from her X profile.

The core question is not whether those who choose non-standard pronouns, other than “they,” should be dissuaded from doing so, but whether we must all subjugate ourselves to pronoun activists by beclowning our signature cards and profiles to confirm that we are adhering to at least 2,000 years of gender identification, and whether we must adopt idiosyncratic pronouns when describing others.

At the least, no one should use the pronoun “they.” The use of “they” to describe an individual is grammatically incorrect in nearly all circumstances. It is narcissistic and pompous. When discussing multiple people and also using “they” as a pronoun for one or more of them, the result is indecipherable. (Try to understand the sentence I just wrote if the word “them” could mean both more than one individual, and one or more specific individuals.)

More than a few times I have had the following conversation with a professional whose firm uses pronouns in its signature cards. Me: Does anyone in the firm use pronouns other than him or her? Partner: “No” (or, rarely, “a few”). Me: Why then do you do this, since it must be off-putting to many more people than the number who like it? Partner: Some variation of, “We only care about the feelings of the few.”

This goes even further when people are penalized for refusing to participate in this farce. Being LGBTQ may be protected by law or common decency, but the Constitution unambiguously protects free speech and the exercise of religion. It does not protect an individual’s right to force others to refer to him or her as a “they.” At least 10 states have passed legislation to ensure that teachers, staff, and students aren’t required to use students’ pronouns or names if they don’t align with the student’s sex at birth.

Nothing, of course, is more absurd that the misogynistic “birthing person,” or that a nominee for the Supreme Court can’t define “woman.”

U.S. passport applicants now may select any gender, or an “X” gender, as may residents of 16 states on birth certificates, and at least 25 states and the District of Columbia on drivers’ licenses and other identification, defeating the purpose of identification.

French, Italian, Portuguese, and Spanish assign gender to most nouns. Hence, Americans from South America refer to themselves as “Latino,” “Latina,” or just “Hispanic.” The same misogynistic pathology that causes progressives to insist there are more than two immutable sexes, erase women, and put biological males in girls’ sports, drives them to the despised slur “Latinx.”

A 2021 poll of 800 registered voters of Latin American descent for Bendixen and Amandi International, a Democratic firm, found that only 2% described themselves as Latinx, and 40% found the term offensive. A Pew survey in September found that only 4% of Hispanics use it, 51% have never heard of it, and 75% of those who have, oppose it. In October, a study conducted by professors from Georgetown and Harvard found that the use of Latinx by Democrats was increasing Hispanic support for Donald Trump and other Republicans.

The progressive lexicon is based on tenuous connections (“grandfathered” is racist), wordy (“people experiencing homelessness” for “homeless”), kooky (“assigned female at birth” for “girl”) and offends vast number of Americans, including women and members of minority groups whom the progressives claim to be supporting.

According to Future Forward, Kamala Harris’ lead PAC, variants of Trump’s campaign advertisement about her support for taxpayer-funded sex reassignment surgery for transgenders with the tagline “Kamala is for they/them. President Trump is for you.” shifted the race 2.7% in Trump’s favor.

Trump’s success among most demographic groups, and exit and post-election polling (see here, here, here, and here) tell us that Americans don’t want to be told by the radical left what to think or how to speak about social issues. It is time to put pronouns, Latinx, and other progressive terminology in the waste basket.

Kenin M. Spivak is founder and chairman of SMI Group LLC, an international consulting firm and investment bank. He is the author of fiction and non-fiction books and a frequent speaker and contributor to media, including The American Mind, National Review, the National Association of Scholars, television, radio, and podcasts.