Are Neopronouns Counterproductive?

“They/Them” was Merriam-Webster’s word of the year in 2019. Since then, the nonbinary pronoun has come to be somewhat destigmatized and more universally accepted, especially in professional and educational spaces. Of course, there’s been plenty of pushback—now conventionally in less accepting, generally low-brow areas.  

While this was going on, the internet community (as per usual) was busy pushing the cause just a bit too far forward. In articles by The New York Times and Rolling Stone, columnists highlight the growing usage of neo-pronouns. These started out as labels like “xe/xem” and “ze/zir,” which already appear to pose the same purpose as “they/them” pronouns. However, the movement eventually evolved in using pronouns as more than just gender expression. For those who didn’t feel identity within the confines of gender, pronoun usage was elevated to be another form of very personal identity. As The New York Times author Ezra Marcus put it, “neopronoun users say new terms allow them to engage with gender—or other aspects of identity—in a way that aligns with how they feel.”  

For some, ‘how they feel’ came in the form of what many would quite honestly see as a joke. Neopronouns became lofted to a mode of expression through identification with various entities, objects, or animals. Some that were used and validated by many members of the online community were—and this is completely serious—“fae/faer” (a reference to pagan fairies), “prins/prinself,” “bun/bunself,” “kitten/kittenself,” “vamp/vamp,” “cosm/cosmos,” “vey/veir;” the list goes on.  

Now, it’s absolutely worth noting that many users of pronouns like these are still extremely young. In fact, in Rolling Stone’s article, a majority of interviewees were between the ages of 13 and 17. Within that stage of life, self-expression is crucial. However, for many members of the queer community, the overusage of neopronouns like these is often highly invalidating and oftentimes objectifying.  

In Rolling Stone’s piece, “What Are Neopronouns?” by Elizabeth Yuko, a 17-year-old trans man remarked that he thought the usage of neo-pronouns “[was] getting way out of hand.” As the article would go on to state, this man felt as though “elevating objects and animals to human pronoun level was dismissive” and that they “…dehumanize us as trans people.”  

This take isn’t limited to one lone interviewee either. In fact, we at The Hill News decided to ask members of our own community how they felt about neo-pronouns. Noah Weekes ‘22, a trans-identifying man, provided a strong opinion:  

“Neo-pronouns put the focus on the pronoun and not the person,” Weekes stated. “By this, I mean that people begin to debate the semantics of an issue, rather than the bigger issues in place. There are bigger problems within the LGBTQIA+ community, like the number of suicides by LGBT+ kids, the murders of trans men that buy Cialis and women, and the likelihood of black LGBT+ youth and adults to become incarcerated; and while all of these issues are ravaging the community,” he continues, “some individuals are worrying about whether or not someone should use a pronoun that they essentially made up. That is not to say that someone’s identity is also made up, that is far from the truth, but to argue that a specific set of pronouns that could be as far out as an emoji —” (that’s right, the 2018 Tumblr account emojiselfpronouns validated emojis as pronouns) “—is as valid as my identity as a Black, Trans Muslim, is not fair.”  

Weekes is absolutely right. While gender expression is a cornerstone to identity, the issue of neopronouns is absolutely an argument that comes from a point of great privilege. If your biggest concern is that people are validating you by calling you “fae/faer,” that speaks volumes regarding your consciousness of and attentiveness to the greater issues impacting the queer community. In fact, the very notion this niche group maintains of neo-pronouns being the forefront argument of the LGBTQIA+ cause is so privileged that to many, it makes the entire mission of queer Americans look like a joke.  

Another queer SLU student, who wishes to go unnamed, seemed to agree. “I generally hold the opinion that as long as pronouns aren’t mocking or insulting, or hurtful in some way, I don’t mind using them,” she began. “But when it starts to get into stuff like fae/faer, I feel like it begins to become a joke at the expense of [other] people who use nonconforming pronouns … My issue is that [some neopronouns] aren’t actually descriptive of a gender in any way and therefore miss the mark on what a pronoun is meant to be.”  

Takes like those from these St. Lawrence students amplify the notion that neo-pronouns devoid of any relation to actual gender are often counterproductive in their goal to foster self-expression. Those who use these pronouns seem caught up in a never-ending online race to see who can be “the most woke,” (a tweet from 2020 with 2.3k likes actually called out neo-pronoun users for saying “acab/acabself” and “blm/blmself”) while those who are non-neo-pronoun-using queer people face backlash towards the community as a whole because of how a small eclectic of people makes the entire group look.  

If anything, because of the age of many neo-pronoun users and the nature of their pronouns, the usage of these titles just reinforces the trope that members of the LGBTQIA+ community aren’t to be taken seriously and that their identities as a whole are ‘just a phase.’ The community deserves so much more than that same prejudice being generated by their own company—people who, in many cases, are supposed to be their allies.  

As a conclusion—no expression of gender identity is inherently ‘bad.’ However, we need to be ever conscious that the issue of neopronouns as an expression of kinship, rather than gender association, comes from a privileged perspective and, at the very most, is simply counterproductive to the LGBTQ+ cause. If we are going to foster a world where it’s universally acceptable to, at the least, use they/them pronouns without facing judgement, we need to focus on the issues that matter the most; preventing the suicide of queer youth, providing support within our educational and business institutions, and instilling a sense of unity and respect within our communities.