My pronouns are…

I don't want to misportray myself. I'm not a big fan of Saturday Night Live. When I was younger, I watched some episodes. I know some of the sketches.

One sketch that I remember, although it certainly wasn't among the best, was about a character named Pat. The idea behind this sketch is that it was considered insulting if someone had to ask about gender, so people would try to figure out if Pat was male or female without asking.

This is one sketch that wouldn't work today. People could just ask, "What are your pronouns?" Pat could simply answer the question. The sketch would be over.

Sharing pronouns has become a common practice. In many cases, it is politically incorrect not to offer your pronouns without being asked. Although I am certainly open to change, this is one change that has caused me some problems.

Part of my issue with aggressive gender sharing is that we embrace an odd structure. We are generally supposed to provide a sentence where we start in the first person and switch to the third person in mid-sentence. Logically, it makes more sense to say, "My pronouns are I, me, my, mine, etc." That brings up another problem. We have more than two pronouns. In the example I just provided, which two am I supposed to use?

Even with the switch from first person, it makes more sense to share the pronouns to be used by the person you are talking to. If I am talking to you, my pronouns would be you, your, yours, etc. I get that a big part of sharing pronouns is that everybody should already know first and second person pronouns, but it doesn't make much sense from a structural perspective.

If it's outside of a conversation, we tend to be more specific about how you are supposed to share pronouns. We are expected to provide our first name, last name, then two of our many pronouns in parentheses separated by a slash. I have even seen third parties use this format in a profile that already includes pronouns. Why do we need to specify if we can already pull that information?

I try to be fair. When sharing pronouns took off, I wasn't as quick to dismiss the idea as some. Instead of deciding based on the concerns I just mentioned, I decided to ask myself a question. Would I rather be misgendered or have political correctness control my life? As someone who feels that our lives have become too controlled, this was an easy question for me to answer. I would much rather be misgendered.

I have been fairly consistent ever since I asked the question. I do not offer my gender if I'm not asked, and I never include my gender next to my name. This is not driven by issues with people who are non-binary and the broader transgender community. This is resistance to political correctness gone wild.