The Pronoun Wars

During the second millennium, at various times and places, to speak the language one grew up speaking was made a capital crime by the powers-that-were.

In the Languedoc region of France, where the word for yes—oui—was oc (“langue d’oc”), the old language was thus wiped out, eventually, by the central power in Paris.

For centuries, those who spoke their native Irish in occupied Ireland risked instant death.

In America, the second century of the third millennium witnessed the advent of—

The Pronoun Wars

By the end of the First Pronoun War all the professors and professionals who had mastered standard English grammar, indeed who had learned anything at all—because they had paid attention back in school and cared about accurate communication, but now, having once uttered he or she instead of the flexible they—were fired.

More than mere pronouns were involved, of course. Greedy for power, “influencers” posted new lists of words to be forbidden. Thus the drama department that produced “Gypsy” without changing its name first was drummed out of business. And whenever the word “womyn” was spelled the old way—with an a or e, in print, on-line, even in texts—heads rolled. A certain well-known and well-intentioned stalwart, once champion of civil rights, replied to a student, colleague, or customer who’d asked what C stood for in NAACP, because the person did not know and wanted to learn. Well, that generous soul was overheard, reported on, and fired as well, for offering information to an inquiring mind who wished to know. Education, it was called, once upon a time.

A certain foreign power, which I’ll not name, had infiltrated American minds through the social network called Talk Talk. They had learned from the Russians. The Russians had infiltrated the United Kingdom through financing internet twits and buzz during the time of the impending vote for BrExit. Both Europe and the UK were so weakened that enemies of liberty could be seen twirling virtual moustaches like villains in a Gilded-Age melodrama, plotting yet more evil in the world, like the conquest of neighboring Ukraine.

This nameless foreign power also learned from history, from how the rich and powerful, with the gall to invoke “patriotism,” had manipulated the poor and oppressed for centuries. The Irish, first identifying with the children of Africa, eventually burned down their orphanage in Manhattan and joined lynch mobs and massacrists themselves. Italians, once Italians were lynched, reminded the world that Rome had been the first great empire of oppressors—not to be lumped in together with the oppressed—then touted the famous Genovese lyncher and made a national holiday for him. Likewise, impoverished palefaced patriots—“poor whites”—were persuaded to lynch and massacre children of Africa, both poor and rich, and fly the Confederate battle flag (not the official one, the “stars and bars”) as a symbol of terror they were proud of, a North American swastika. Why, even some children of Africa were convinced that the original Americans were not quite people—Frederick D. himself, for one! So too the social network Talk Talk tricked the potentially compassionate not to inspire tolerance, but rather to become intolerant themselves.

And bully culture spread to every walk of American society. Bullying became the new “opiate of the people.” Soon all that teachers could teach, and professors profess—the teachers and professors who were left—was proper pronoun usage in post-post-post-modern American English. No one knew anything else, or dared let on they knew anything else. So no one learned. And education became nothing more than handing down credentials like bad credit, diplomas and degrees at clever costs. And thus the foreign power orchestrated the downfall of America at last, once the land of hope, albeit imperfect, then the land of bullies, finally the land of ignorance, the land of losers, a mere vestigial of significance.

Later in the century, the Second Pronoun War came about when someone, hitherto a they—having accidentally clicked a popup meme, again, on Talk Talk—insisted on a pronoun distinct from all the other theys, the variations of which, it soon was evident, were rife: a person male genetically, XY, still biologically male, but choosing to identify as female; a person male genetically, who has transitioned biologically to female, and choosing to identify as female; a person male genetically, who has transitioned biologically to female, and choosing to identify as neither female nor male; and the likewise person who intends to transition but has not yet transitioned. Ditto for XX genetic females, transitioned or not, identifying as male, female, or otherwise; and then all of those who have no intention of transitioning at all, but who self-identify as what they wish. Then there were the true hermaphrodites, that 1 or 1.5% in any population, so long forgotten by this time. Genetically female or male, XX or XY, but, say, testicles had not dropped, or one had both female and male attributes, and so forth. Think of George, the first transexual, who became Christine. And then a slew of whole new categories, only emergent since the onset of DNA testing: those whose DNA was, in fact, indeterminate. They really needed more kindness from humanity and could have been well served, not marginalized, by the humane adjustment of language so as not to be beaten up for being different, as did the speakers of once-standard English.

But all the other Theys, not to be lumped with others, insisted on two things. First, a pronoun of our own. New pronouns were concocted and had to be learned, and fast, by anyone and everyone who thought that they or he or she might dare to keep her, his, their job. Second, the inalienable right to persecute those who did not adapt.

And that is how the Second Pronoun War commenced and continued—a third “cold war”—where all the erstwhile oppressors became the oppressed until the foreign power, through Talk Talk, saw the dismantling of American society through the anomie of grammar and goodwill, decided the time had come to invade, and did; and, because it is still in power, remains unnamed, at least in this report, for even poets fear now for their lives.

JAMES B. NICOLA is the author of eight collections of poetry, the latest three being Fires of Heaven, Turns & Twists, and Natural Tendencies. His nonfiction book Playing the Audience won a Choice magazine award. Recent nonfiction can be found on-line at Unlikely Stories and Lowestoft Chronicle; fiction, at Neither Fish Nor Foul and The GroundUp. A graduate of Yale, he has received a Dana Literary Award, two Willow Review awards, Storyteller‘s People’s Choice award, one Best of Net, one Rhysling, and eleven Pushcart nominations—for which he feels stunned and grateful.

Get new stories, sports musings, or book reviews sent to your inbox. Drop your email below to start >>>

NEW book release AWRY by duncan b. barlow. Order the book of stories of which Brian Evenson calls “meticulous and precise, painful and surprising.”