What Quakers Can Teach Us About the Politics of Pronouns

In the NYTimes Opin­ion sec­tion, a fas­ci­nat­ing com­par­i­son of the lan­guage pol­i­tics of ear­ly Friends and today’s pro­noun expan­sion­ists. By Tere­sa M. Bejan:

Mod­ern prac­ti­tion­ers of pro­noun pol­i­tics can learn a thing or two from the ear­ly Quak­ers. Like today’s egal­i­tar­i­ans, the Quak­ers under­stood that what we say, as well as how we say it, can play a cru­cial part in cre­at­ing a more just and equal soci­ety. They, too, were sen­si­tive to the hum­ble pronoun’s abil­i­ty to rein­force hier­ar­chies by encod­ing invid­i­ous dis­tinc­tions into lan­guage itself.

Yet unlike the ear­ly Quak­ers, these mod­ern egal­i­tar­i­ans want to embrace, rather than resist, pro­nouns’ hon­orif­ic aspect, and thus to see trans‑, non­bi­na­ry and gen­derqueer peo­ple as equal­ly enti­tled to the “title” of their choosing.

I should note that while Bejan’s dis­cus­sion of Friends ends in Her­man Melville’s time, many of us are still very aware of how lan­guage can lib­er­ate and oppress. Friends Jour­nal uses the sin­gu­lar “they” upon author request, for example.

The one place we do have ten­sions is around hon­orifics. The Quak­er tes­ti­mo­ny has been clear against using them — in a man­ner Bevan describes as “lev­el­ing down” but there are instances in which hon­orifics have been used to lev­el up. The most com­mon occur­rence is the use of titles for Black cler­gy. I under­stand the argu­ments on both sides but in the end the rea­son we still talk about Mar­tin Luther King Jr. is his brav­ery, clear-sightedness, and stir­ring words. His doc­tor­ate degree con­tributed to his devel­op­ment I’m sure, but as Friends we know that his aca­d­e­m­ic record is not the source of his moral authority.

Posted November 17th, 2019 , in Quaker.

One thought on “What Quakers Can Teach Us About the Politics of Pronouns

  1. I asked not to be called Sir in a Quirky Quixot­ic Quak­er Ques­tion at Marine Corps Base Quan­ti­co in Vir­ginia argu­ing that SIR is an acronym for Slave-I-Remain sys­temic racism and that no Black, Indige­nous & Peo­ple of Col­or (BIPOC) ☻ should have com­pelled speech to call a white man sir because of the Loy­al White Knights of the KKK cor­rupt­ing the British hon­orif­ic for a knight. Espe­cial­ly after the Unite the Right Ral­ly in Char­lottesville sparked by icon­o­clast Vice-Mayor Wes Bel­lamy vot­ing to remove Lee & Jack­son statues.
    Natal Male Trans Female Vir­ginia Del­e­gate Dan­i­ca Antho­ny Roehm Bring Your Ideas to the Table.

    Trump Arti­cle III Con­sti­tu­tion­al appointee 4th Cir­cuit Court of Appeals Judge Quat­tle­baum asked why there was NO Evi­dence in the Arrest of Jules Bar­tow USMC Code Red Her­ring 🐠 Quandary putting a ☻ negro in a Mayel­la Ewell 🥒 pickle. 

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