In the eternal struggle to construct an ever-lighter cloth for the emperor we have lost track of more important issues. Case in point: a teacher is fired merely for choosing not to use the reappropriated pronoun a student chooses to identify with. Then there was the tiny wrinkle where legislation was passed to criminalise the misuse of pronouns in Canada. I personally think English is hard enough as it is; French even harder. It tickles my brain just a little to think that French may have to (e.g.) become gender-neutral for cars which choose not to identify as female (you should note that all objects have an associated gender in French).
Would you believe that in the continuing desire to be inclusive of all minorities we will soon need to learn imaginary gender-neutral pronouns like zim, zir, zie (Peterson is my hero btw). It seems a little totalitarian but, really, it is completely totalitarian - especially if it's legislated. The powers that be are moving us all towards a society which polices ourselves through fear of being ostracised for being misogynist, homophobic, ageist or unwilling-to-toe-the-lineist etc. It's all getting a bit silly, really. How long will it be until we extend this legislation to include Pastafarians who request we use either under-cooked or al dente as their preferred pronoun?
Personally I wouldn't mind if our society has evolved to such an extent that this is our most-pressing issue. But it isn't. It seems our society is immunised toward gun violence, the impending climate collapse, the need to feed our burgeoning society and the laissez faire approach to fossil fuel regulation. Maybe our energies would best be served covering our, you know, desire to remain in existence upon this planet rather than focussing our efforts merely on language. Just maybe?
