Woe Is They
To the ever-growing list of
mental ailments the contemporary mind is heir to, we can add Pronominal Phobia. This disability means that those who selves-identify as non-binary fear
non-plurality of pronouns, thinking the old-fashioned grammatical ones unsafe. It's hard to address these “two-spirit” persons
however, for like Schrodinger's cat they might jump either way
mid-communication, declining to be pinned down to any linguistic spot
they feel you might be inequitably consigning them to.
"Oh let myselves not be mad, not mad, sweet heaven," they might cry like King Lear.
So good-hearted
inclusionists, fearing to use the wrong pro-noun about anymany, will chase
after whatever handy non-nouns they can invent in a
desperate attempt to anti-name the world in pursuit of equity. We
must do this because we can't expect any everymany who declines
binary-ness to feel unsafe just because we want to be comprehensible.
You can't ask non-binary persons themselves about this in case it triggers their Pronominal Phobia. That much is clear to everysome, for it depends on how a
person feels themself. But why, to themself, does this they-ness feel safer? It's a mystery. Don't ask me (sic). We don't know – we only
know that in the face of singularity, woe is us -- and woe is they. Speaking
for ourself (all my me's) we feel safest therefore inside the
shelter of silence – thou too?
