my identity as a person for whom English isn’t a first language
“I identify as ESL” . . .
Hmm, that’s thinking small. I think that I shall identify as a billionaire, and berate banks that don’t hand me millions . . .
I think most companies remain traditional but will go along with this transgender nonsense because they’re afraid of being sued or labelled as bigoted.
The president of twitter
apologized under heavy fire this week for eating at Chick-Fil-A . . .
They/them is usually accepted by gender nonconforming folks.
Insensitive to those with multiple personality disorder. Also mocks those who self-identity as grammaticians . . .
If I say “he” that means it will also be “his, him”.
he-her-it is no less logical than the basic premises . . .
This hasn’t always been true, mainly because the English language doesn’t have a singular pronoun for an unknown gender.
That is simply incorrect.
Digressing . . .I took an upper division class on Set Theory as an undergraduate. The professor was this odd little man, whose beard, hair, and yiddish accent marked him as an Orthodox Jew. I had a bit of trepidation when I read the intro to the book which acknowledged him . . .
Anyway, midway through the class introduction, he stopped and started asking about grammar. Then, to paraphrase (but reasonable accurately, although without the accent) “some languages have pronouns for persons of unknown gender. English is one of those languages. The word for a person of unknown gender is ‘he’. So forgive me if I do not say ‘he or she’.”–and he then resumed the introduction mid-sentence.
Years later, in a a graduate math class at Iowa States (Stochastic [random variable] Calculus), I mentioned something in passing about the class from him and the room came to a halt, the professor included.
It seems that Paul Halmos was easily one of the top ten mathematicians of the 20th century . . . (I would also come to unwittingly take other classes there from other professors of his/Einstein’s level, but that’s for another day).
Anyway, plural pronouns have been used by illiterates for quite some time, but the claim that such is proper grammar is
quite recent.
hawk