Oh the horror of pronouns!

14 comments

you
The pronouns have infiltrated our language!
- Off topic? : 80+ year old friend asked me if he did wrong. As he tells it, when dining out, his waitress announced her pronouns were she/her. That was fine by him. Later, he says he asked, "Could you get me a refill on my iced tea?" He says her reply was hostile, "How rude! I told you my pronouns!" He was truly baffled. He did not know how to use her pronouns in a 'you' context. I told him he was fine and if it ever came up again, to shoot back with, "Excuse me Miss, but I didn't ask some other HER for a refill, I asked you, and 'you', 'thee' and 'thou' include all genders." Maybe I'm ignorant of some new usage, but from grammar stance, I can't make she/her fit into his request and am fine with 'you'.
  
  Lol wtf did she mean..? It's not like your friend said "Hey can you call that waitress over there? I want to ask him for a drink"... I'm so confused as to what she expected in this scenario, and I say this as someone who uses they/them pronouns (not some weird "anti-woke" extremist)
  
  That's got to be a case of her mishearing something, surely? He didn't do anything wrong at all, her response is completely mystifying
  
  I don't want to doubt your 80 year old friend, but I'm doubting your 80 year old friend.
  I use they/them pronouns and work in the service industry. I've also worked with a few other trans people. That story is basically the opposite of how trans people act in public at their jobs, in my experience. We'll only every really correct people who misgender us if they're regulars and give off an OK vibe.
  For me or anyone I know to call out a customer and tell them they're being rude would require something really egregious.
  If the story is at all true, I'd bet your friend called her "sir" or something when asking for the refill.
- I live in Southeast Asia where almost every language does not use gendered third person pronouns, but there’s still a tiny subset of people trying to push pronoun-related culture war bullshit. It’s confusing and surreal.