It’s been a few years, and there’s a chill in the air. When the time comes and my current books are launched, they may have to include a new paragraph on the copyright page. To whit:
Dear Reader:
This whole work is about me — my story about as much of the world as I’ve experienced. The world is vast. Imagining, let alone claiming, that I’m trying to speak for or in the voice of you or your family or your kinfolk, tribe, culture, religion, conspiracy theory or whatever you identify with or as — well, that’s about you and the alchemy of storytelling. If you find yourself in this work and dislike what you find, don’t make it about me. Write your own story. That’s where you’ll find what you’re looking for.
One of the main characters in Otherwhere, the novel I’m writing, is presented as gender-indeterminate. I’ve been using they/them and it’s hella awkward. I’m a skilled craftsperson striving to make my prose as clear as possible, and some of my readers still say it’s confusing.
Otherwhere is an SF novel involving a world of three gender categories, so this is pretty key. As a reader, I get impatient with having to learn rafts of vocabulary to get along in an invented world, so I chose to go with the now-familiar they/them substitution. I included the neologism “themself” because it seemed strange to have a self-reflexive pronoun be plural when the character it referred to was obviously singular. It mostly worked.
As a reader, I get impatient with having to learn rafts of vocabulary to get along in an invented world.
Then I changed my mind. I admitted to one of my readers that I was making a point. We all know that they/them is an imperfect solution. I wanted to prove how imperfect it is. I was proving it — but was it at my story’s and reader’s expense? I’d invented names for the third gender category (par for children and twane for adults); it now seemed logical that I should do the same with its pronouns. I wanted something simple and easy on the English-language ear and tongue, and I settled on eh/em/ans. Then I went to work.
And discovered that I wasn’t done with they/them as neutral third-person singular pronouns. Let me show you:
Vesca frowned and looked at her hands, thinking. “Have you ever met someone who just does what they want, without hesitation? When you challenge them, or take exception, if there’s injury of some kind, they apologize and make amends if they can. But this woman … she wasn’t like that. She didn’t seem to feel she’d done anything wrong. No one in her community would give her a child, so she took one. From a stranger, so no House in her community would be offended. She talked like it was logical … clever, what she’d done. Like we were stupid for not seeing that.”
Now, the rule I’ve put in place in my world and my novel is that, until a character has been formally introduced, their pronouns must be third-gender/neutral. I tried replacing they/them with my invented pronouns in the paragraph above and found myself thinking, Wait. Who am I talking about? The meaning of what I was writing had changed — because it turns out that, although using they/them as singular pronouns is natural to English grammar, it is necessary and specific to ONE situation. In the paragraph above, Vesca is talking about an indeterminate, hypothetical someone, not an “actual” person, and they/them is absolutely correct. We use they/them as impersonal personal pronouns: referring to persons but still belonging to the group that includes it, this, and that. We use they/them when it feels rude to use “it.”
We use they/them when it feels rude to use “it.”
That’s why using they/them as gender-neutral singular personal pronouns feels awkward and wrong: because we’re coming from a place where this usage is wrong. In conversation, where we have an actual person in mind, we can manage it. In writing, where our minds are already working full-time on suspending disbelief or following a train of thought, this new usage is especially challenging.
However, we’re stuck with it, because invented pronouns are even MORE awkward, especially in writing. Rereading my draft, I found myself struggling with my own inventions, because, unlike the few-and-far-between nouns I’d invented, the pronouns called attention to themselves constantly. I believe this has been my difficulty with invented vocabulary all along: it’s a visual-mental distraction that burdens the reader with too much decoding, thereby disrupting understanding and sympathy.
That’s why I changed my mind and changed em/en/ans back to they/them/themself.
Invented pronouns are more awkward than they/them, especially in writing. They are a visual-mental distraction that burdens the reader with too much decoding, thereby disrupting understanding and sympathy.
Tears are the waters of truth. As in labour, they flow to ease delivery.
Truth will out; to stifle it completely means a death. Arriving, it pains; abandoned, it dies. Protected, it has a chance. It will teach those who receive it what they need to know to raise it up. Truth transforms.
Truth is so strong. Even the worst parents produce miracles, while the best parents release into the world something steady and ready to repeat itself. Truth is also vulnerable, dependent as it is on cracked vessels to carry it. Despite our best efforts, it gets twisted, it frays. When the truth is that we’ve botched it, the tears are scalding, hot as fire. Bitter truths still bless our attention, though. When the blood is washed away and the broken body carefully wrapped, we will receive the same truth again, more softly, in a shower of sorrow.
Therefore, respect tears, yours and other people’s. Respect them especially when they come in anger or relief, or inexplicably. Don’t suppress or ignore: interrogate. Pause the conversation and ask yourself — ask the weeper — calmly, curiously, without fear or haste: “Where are these tears coming from?”
Spread your hands and prepare to catch the birth of truth.
Photo copyright LauraPeetoomWriterOnline, 2020
With thanks to Kathleen Sutcliffe, BA, MDiv, RMFT, RP, for asking the question.
I’ve done some emotional learning in my time and one of the most useful little tools I was given was to stop using the word “but”.
It’s a small word with a powerful punch that you can feel coming. The tension of its imminence raises hackles and closes ears and when it lands it negates everything that came before it. So often, it acts not like a simple conjunction but more like an injunction. Let me give you some examples.
This is a great piece of work! But you made some spelling errors.
You have some great ideas but they aren’t very practical.
We’re really proud of how well you’re doing in school but you could be a little more helpful around the house.
Now let’s revise, using alternatives.
This is a great piece of work! One final pass and it will be ready for posting.
You have some good ideas and I’m eager to see how you would put them into practice.
We’re really proud of how well you’re doing in school and would love to see that same improvement around the house.
Do you feel the difference?
It takes some practice to be able to censor yourself, pause to rethink, and then go on along the lines I’ve shown above. The first step is to simply replace the word “but” with “and”. It will feel unnatural, even silly, but and it works!
Butting Heads
Remember how I said we can feel that “but” coming? Well, people with low self-esteem or a lot of insecurity are especially sensitive to that tension and develop ways to cope with it. (This is a subject worthy of its own post, so I won’t elaborate right now.) Whatever their strategy, it takes energy and thought and they end up missing half of what you’re saying — the complimentary half. All they hear is what comes after the “but” — the criticism, which they respond to according to their particular coping method: excuses, accusations, anger, tears, withdrawal, some act of passive aggression or active rebellion.
When the “but” doesn’t arrive, it’s disarming. The anxious listener is surprised and quickly runs through what they just heard, realizing that half of it was positive. Suddenly, where there was an enemy there is now an ally. Where there was conflict, there is cooperation.
The word “but” invalidates what comes before it: “This is true but this is more true.” The word “and” sets up a dialectic, in which two opposite truths are balanced as equals. Human beings like balance. It feels good. In balance, there is space and time for thought, choice and meaningful action.
Let’s go back to that second set of examples used earlier and unpack them a little.
This is a great piece of work! One final pass and it will be ready for posting.
The writer (for example) gets a no-strings compliment and is invited to prepare the work for publication, the implication being that there are some minor fixes to do. The writer can choose to leave the work as-is and not publish or find out what the errors are, fix them, and post the work.
You have some good ideas and I’m eager to see how you would put them into practice.
The colleague (for example) gets some clear validation and an invitation to build on their success. They can choose to continue on their own or ask for some input or guidance. They can also ask for clarification: “I understood that this was a brainstorming exercise. If we are problem-solving I can come up with more practical ideas.”
We’re really proud of how well you’re doing in school and would love to see that same improvement around the house.
The teenager (for example) gets both validation and praise and an invitation to go further. It’s not a demand which they have to respond to in the moment; they can carry the invitation until they choose a way to define it—by cleaning up their room unasked, or taking out the trash, or attending to a younger sibling. The good feeling coming from the no-strings praise will be their motivation.
I have had great success with the “but out” strategy with my kids, at work and in relationships with friends and family members. Try it yourself and, if you get a positive result, consider encouraging others by sharing your experience in the comments section.
