Friday, September 1, 2023

Gendered pronouns


 I had a boss who indiscriminately confused her gender pronouns. Her own husband was often "she" in a story; I heard many females, including myself, referred to as "he" and we had a non-binary colleague who was rarely "they." I was always a little puzzled by this quirk. True, English was her second language but she was super smart and had technically perfect written English. I wondered why she didn't have this dialed. Then it happened to me. I have no control over the pronouns that come out of my mouth. Carol estimates that I call her "ele" about 60% of the time even though she corrects me with "ela" every time without fail. Because all the nouns in Portuguese use genders, my communication is a mess with people places and things misgendered at random. I think about my old boss and I'm sorry if I judged her. The brain can be very specific when it comes to language and I think there is something up there in charge of picking proper pronouns that just spins in circles in some people.

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