Wow. First time in a long time that anyone has actually thrown a question straight up my alley!
I am a grammar teacher. I have at least as much authority to speak on grammar as you would grant an auto mechanic to tell you what's wrong with your car. And as an EFL teacher, in terms of language I really AM the auto mechanic, and you guys are just the automobile owners. I can kick unwarranted claims of expertise, but I claim it in grammar.
English grammar is NOT your private property. It is a public thing, determined by convention, with rules that must be prescribed to people that don't know them (so talking of "descriptive grammar" is REALLY stupid, it's like talking about "subjective internal combustion"). Convention is super important - it is how we preserve the ability to understand what anyone said a couple of centuries down the road. Terms CANNOT be legitimately ripped from their etymological roots (as has been done with terms like "gay"); when they are evil euphemisms we aid and abet their evil purpose when we use them whether we know it or not.
Personal pronouns are a vital part of that convention. All of English-speaking society has long determined that subject pronouns have a definite purpose, one of which is identifying the sex of people in the third person singular, just as Russian does so in its past tense verbs, for example. No individual has any right to impose on others a demand counter to that social convention, especially one that seeks to subvert it. Therefore there is no legitimate basis on which people may claim or expect that we assent to their desire to deny truth, other than our own soft-headedness and ignorance of these matters, which is still not legitimate.
This is a rather unique situation. I don’t mean to be insensitive, but at what other time have people tried to change standard language to fit their own desires? To the point of demanding that others adjust their use of common language to fit what they themselves deem appropriate I mean?
I’m not talking about something like racial slurs or other insults. He/she/him/her are very ingrained in our language.
If a person wants to present themselves as the opposite sex, well ... that’s not up to us to personally judge. (Of course we know people are born a sex but I don’t think you’re asking what the Church thinks of people rejecting it?) But if I meet you and you look like a female, present yourself as female, I’ll call you “she” or “her” when I’m talking about you. Your private parts or what you’ve done to them are not my business, and we can leave it at that. But if you want me to invent a word just for you, and others are the same, all wanting invented words, and each preferring a different invented word, and I’m supposed to remember which one you want? Sorry - that’s not how language works.
I’ll honestly try to be respectful. If you present female I’ll use she/her. Male I’ll use he/him. There have been a few cases in life where I couldn’t tell and I try to be judicious and structure my sentences so as not to make a mistake (they or them and y’all are useful, if it fits). Using the name is an easy fix, if known.
I can’t imagine myself in a social group with many people all preferring different pronouns. I wouldn’t be able to keep up with it all.
Hi, Anastasia! I think you're the bee's knees, and almost always agree with you, but here I do have to pick a bone with you (which I hope is not too big a bone for you!) When you say "IT is not up to us to personally judge", I get a sense that you are buying, at least a little, into a purely modern interpretation of the command to not judge that is far from its original intent, that amounts to asking us not to think or decide whether a thing is true or not. We MUST judge, as best we can - and as people who live according to convention, have every right and even duty to judge whether a person is a man or a woman in fact, and not merely in wishful thinking. A person may deceive us, but if we KNOW that they are for example) males casting themselves as females or even some other imaginary being altogether, then we buy into the lie they have already deceived themselves with, and now seek to deceive others as well.
And the whole point is that this modern movement seeks to put you into a place where many people do in fact prefer different imaginary pronouns, and you would indeed be expected to keep up with it or be punished for failing to do so. The Christian martyrs were far better than us, but they did show us that we ought to prefer the Truth and the truth over the phantoms and phantasies of the world. We CAN be respectful, and being respectful does NOT mean that we must agree with them when they tell us to lie according to the convention that has been passed down to us. There is a reason, after all, that they are asking us to do that: because THEY know that it does in fact matter what we say.
